Thanksgiving - Monday Preschool

Last Monday our preschool theme was all about the things we are thankful for.  We talked about how being thankful for something means it makes you happy.  There was a strong focus on non-materialistic things like the sun, smiles and hugs, and friends playing nicely together.

We continued our study of words and I introduced the idea that words can have different lengths and still be a word.  A word has to have meaning on its own, and can be long with a lot of letters and sounds, or short with just a few letters and sounds.  This is in preparation for introducing syllables.

As we learn to read it is important to be able to visually differentiate words.  We played with the Do-A-Dot markers to mark all of the words in our letter L book.  The idea was that they were to mark the word "the" the same color throughout the page, same concept with the words "is" and "last". 

We played the turkey grid game in math time.  Roll a dice and take that number of counters to cover that number of turkey pictures.  IE: If you roll a "3" take 3 counters (poker chips, pennies, etc) and cover 3 turkey pictures.  When you cover all of the turkeys you are a winner!  We don't play this game against each other.  Each person is playing individually on their board and when they reach 10 they dump off the counters and play again. 

We also made an ear of corn out of green and yellow paper.  Kids cut the paper and glued it together themselves.  Then we made fingerprints to represent the kernels of corn and texture on the leaves.

We're continuing to work on tempo and rhythm in music.  They LOVE playing with the rhythm sticks and tapping them to the beat.  We're getting better as a class to tap them all on the beat.

Preschool B is working on some new sight words and word families.  They are doing excellent at blending single consonant and short vowel words.  They are also picking up their sight words better than I had expected.  We'll be ready for Level 2 of Ready2Ready in late January or early February.

Snack time was an artistic adventure as we turned apples, Cheerios, craisins, and candy into turkeys.

We're spending November talking about 2D shapes and the different attributes that the shapes have.  They are starting to recognize angles, corners, straight and round edges.