Manners

Today in Little Adventures Preschool we learned all about manners.  It was so fun to read the children's books on the subject and watch how the kids implemented the ideas.  For example, we talked about when you are talking to someone in our culture it is manners to look at their eyes with your eyes.  I had many more attentive eyes for a few minutes then!

We started the day playing this new game that just popped into my head around 5 pm last night.  I was so excited about it that I stayed up until midnight to complete it for this morning.  Each child was assigned a color of paper.  We laid out 6 circles of their color in a short path to the Christmas tree.  Using the spinner I made we determined which child got to jump one jump to the Christmas tree.  Once they got there they were the winner and got to start at the beginning of their path to see if they could be the winner again.  Everyone gets to be a winner once they get to the tree.  Later in the day we played the game with a game board.

At the reading table today we did a Do-A-Dot with the words from our new L book.  The words are The, is, last.  Being able to visually determine what is similar and different is a skill some are mastering while others are still figuring it out.  We'll be doing more of these in the future.

 I love how I and M were reading today during their reading center time :)

 Finger paint art today was so interesting!  Lately I have been doing a lot of directed art, which isn't always the best, but I'm a sucker for cute things!  Today I put four bowls of paint in the middle, gave everyone paper and let them do what they wanted.  Some did handprints, some were picking up the paint with their pincher grasp, many were smearing it all over - and even painting themselves!

I love what T does in this video.  Listen to him say, "Watch what happens."  It was an interesting discovery that he made, moments like this make me smile - there was no prompting from me!

 Here I and M play our game board version of the short path, hop along the path, one jump at a time, spinner game.  -Humm...I wonder if I can come up with a better name for it :) To make your own, download the template I created {here} and add your own pictures to it.  I'd highly recommend laminating it all and gluing the arrow to a thick piece of cardboard.  Then hole punch it to fit the brad in and the kids can spin it wonderfully!  This is a great game for one to one correspondence and you could put the pictures of your class, your kids, your family, your playgroup - anything on it!  To play, spin the spinner to determine which character gets to jump one jump forward.  When a character (we used pompom balls) gets to the last circle they are the winner!  Each person takes a turn spinning the spinner and then moving the corresponding pompom, that way a character wins, not a child.  Enjoy!

 T decided he wanted to play as well.

 I got out the attribute blocks for the first time today.  We did some free play and exploring with them and occasionally when I was prompted by a curious child I showed them something new, like sorting by colors or sorting by shapes.

 Here is the aftermath of the pink paint.  Pink hands!  They all thought that their pink hands were super funny!

 I took the pieces of our L book from the Amazing Action Alphabet and made the pages into individual pieces so the kids could begin putting sentences together.  I expected them to ask about the dot after the word last, but they didn't today.  We'll play with them again on Wednesday and I hope someone asks then.  It would be a great intro to what a sentence is... we'll see.  If they are ready for it someone will ask.