Who We Are: An Interest Led Day

Who We Are: An inquiry into the passions and interests of each child and developing an understanding of being bucket fillers through developing friendships. 

We began our day reviewing the letters we've learned (or reviewed) for the year already.  We've talked about the sight words we've introduced (the, a, I, my) and practiced using our reading strategies.  We are taking a mini break from adding letters this week and dove into interest led reading.  I utilize a site called ReadingA-Z.com where I can print books for kids.  Each child shared an interest and I did my best to find a book that supported that interest.  Then everyone was handed a yellow marker to highlight all the words that they could read in the story.  Some books were the "just right" reading level for the child and they could read all or almost all of the words.  Some books were too difficult and the child could mark only a portion of the words.  Find the book in your child's binder and help them read it if necessary.  If it's a too hard book, use it as a companion reading book.  That's where the adult reads all the words not highlighted and the kids read the words that are highlighted.  It gives the kids access to text that is interesting to them through your support.  Those books do not need to be returned to school.

 Then we turned to our body maps.  Our body maps are a growing collage of images that represent the things that are most important to us.  Having a lot of experience now following "how-to-draw" pages we found pages that represent things that are interesting to the kids and drew them on our body maps.  We also talked about drawing people so we could draw our families and friends.

 Side note: I have a USA map with 4 clocks representing the time zones and I totally freaked out when I looked up and saw that it was 5 after 3 and we were over time already.  Thankfulness then took over as I realized that I had referenced the wrong clock.  Phew!

 As we continue our work on number sense we've started playing with the 100 chart.  Right now we're only working on the numbers 1-20.  The first game the kids found super easy.  I pulled out all but a couple cards in the 1-20 section and then handed one card at a time to a child to put back in its correct home.  Our second game started the same way with the majority of the cards 1-20 being "blown" out of their "homes".  This time, however, I lined up the cards (out of order) on the floor and asked kids to find a certain number.  Using phrases like, "Raise your hand if you can tell me what number comes before 3." and "Raise your hand if you can tell me what number comes after 15." the kids took turns finding the correct number and putting it back where it goes.  This turned out to be MUCH harder than the first game.  For both games I always asked something like, "How did you know the number 16 went there?" or "How did you figure out what card you needed to pick up?"  These questions encourage mathematical language and kids begin to build a vocabulary around number sense.  Try to play games like this at home if you can!

Earth Day

This morning in preschool A we had a great time learning about plants.  And how fitting that it fell on Earth Day.  We talked about the parts of plants that we eat (a review) and then had oranges for snack time.  I love having the preschoolers peel their own oranges.  They feel so proud of themselves when they are successful.

 After snack we dissected seeds.  The key to this is to soak large beans (I use large white beans) overnight and then let the kids take them apart. There is the skin, the food (cotyledon), and the baby plant inside each seed.  It's fun to let them discover this.  Then we moved on to art where we made pictures of plants and labeled them with their parts.

At the end of the day we reviewed numeral 7 and introduced numeral 8 on the TouchMath app.

This afternoon we had a fantastic lesson about reading strategies.  We talked about how we're really good at all the things that good readers do (look, point, listen, say sounds).  Now we need strategies to help us when words are harder than the basic phonics we know.  Each child now has a flip book of reading strategies in their baggy book to help them when they get stuck.  If they ask you what a word is in their book turn the question back to them and ask what strategies they have used to try and figure it out.

 Our reading lesson moved into a lesson about cement patios as the cement truck (finally) pulled up and there was a group of men working on pouring a patio in the back.

We continued our lessons with work on decomposing numbers and counting to 100.  We're working on writing numbers to 100 and then counting to 100 by tens.

Trees

This morning in preschool we had fun talking about the different types of trees and how they change (or don't change) through the seasons.  We drew trees and learned the letter X.  We worked on our super fun X book "Max" from the Amazing Action Alphabet.  We did leaf rubbing pictures and learned the number 7.

This afternoon in preschool we had a really fun lesson about our reading strategies (what we can do when we're reading and we are stuck).  We worked on utilizing those strategies in new guided reading books that are a bit trickier for us.  In art today we made our own puzzles.  They were super fun and are REALLY hard to put back together.  We continued our work on numerals and the 100 chart.  Today we also started talking a little about comparing numerals with "greater than", "less than" and "equal to". 

Preschool 3/25

It was a surprise to have snow this morning!  What a fun way to talk about weather.  I had planned on going out in the rain but since it was awful cold snow instead we stayed inside.  We talked about the different types of weather and how it changes from day to day.  We talked about how weather changes with the moving air which can be hot or cold.  We practiced our letter W beginning reader and drew pictures of our favorite weather.  We even started exploring the idea of writing words to match our pictures in our journals.  We learned about quarters today to finish out our unit about money and had a great time practicing our songs in music. 

This afternoon we started off with puzzles and worked through a few last Ready2Read pages and our guided reading groups.  Many of the kids are ready to start a new unit on Monday.  Yay!  We're currently reading the "Now I'm Reading" series of books that utilize short vowel words so we can be successful in reading.  We also continued our discussion of place value and counted to 100.  I had each child write their numbers as high as they could to assess where any misconceptions were. 

Animals in Spring

This morning we had a great reading lesson about stretching out sounds to write words.  We're working on the -in family today.  We did some work on rhyming words and made a list of as many -in words as we could.  Each time we'd "grab" the word from the air and stretch it out (sound it out slowly) to figure out what letter to write down and then repeat to find the next letter sound.  We read tons of books about spring and animals in spring.  We also sang the song "Popcorn Popping" and did fun popcorn art. 

 After art we learned all about the nickel and continued with our "Which coin is in my pocket?" song that we learned on Monday.  We just switched it up now to talk about the nickel and how it's worth 5 cents.  After math was the best part of the day.  We took turns holding the chicks and feeding them their snack.  Most kids were okay with holding them in some manner and all kids were really excited to feed them when they were back in their brooder (sounds better than cage, yes?).

This afternoon we worked in our guided reading groups and then read a book called "Very Special Friends".  We got to draw a favorite part from the story or about our own very special friends in our journals and then share them with Miss Amanda.  We sang about spring (see popcorn song above) and made popcorn tree art as well.

 We also got to play with the chicks this afternoon.  It's always interesting to see the different reactions to being able to hold the chicks.  It is the most wonderful thing for some and the most horrifying thought for others.  After we played with the chicks we worked on piecing together the number 1-20 on the 100 board.  We're still getting 16 and 19 upside down so we have 61 and 91.  We'll continue talking about the place value importance and hopefully it'll stick soon!

Circus and Insects

We had a blast learning the letter E with our Elephants and Circus theme this morning.  We started by playing with blow up elephants, a circus tent, and Starfall on the SmartBoard.  Each child got a turn to get their face painted and had the opportunity to pick through different designs to get one that matched what they wanted.  I love how they all turned out.

 We read books about the circus and choral read "Hiccups for Elephant".  There are many words in that book that your little reader should be able to read to you.  We practiced lifting weights like the letter E and saying /e/.  We did a dot-to-dot alphabet page and learned all about the cone shape.

 This afternoon we started our investigations of the insects we're raising in preschool.  We learned what insects are are pretended to use our finger antenna to smell just like insects.  We read a few books, did some observation of the live insects and then drew pictures and wrote words to match.

 We did our baggy book reading and finished our math booklets.  We drew pictures to represent quantities up to 20.  We also practiced sorting out the first two rows of the 100 chart.  Eventually we'll be able to take all the cards out of the chart and put them back in order!

Healthy Bodies and Preschool B

We had a very active morning this morning in preschool A.  We were moving and shaking, jumping and balancing.  We were working on the letter K and learning all about healthy bodies.  We played with 3D shapes that had silly pictures of germs on them.  We read all about the different parts of our bodies (brain, heart, skin, bones, muscles) and how they are important for us to keep healthy.  We read all about germs and about how they live on the ground, in the air and everywhere!  We learned the importance of cleaning and washing our hands with warm water and soap.

 We read stories and drew pictures of how to keep ourselves healthy.  The art below says "This is how I wash my hands".  We also played with blocks and would randomly have everyone hold up a cube.  By the time they were done building their city they all knew what a cube was!

 This afternoon we worked oh so hard on our Ready2Read lessons. I was super impressed with one kiddo who was struggling a bit a few weeks back and has reached amazing new heights of understanding in the past couple weeks.  It's so fun to see it click and become fun to read.  We read a fun story called "Tom" by Tommie dePaula.  It's such a cute story about Tommie and his grandpa Tom.  They have some fun with chicken feet so it seemed appropriate for today since we just got new baby chickens.  They all drew pictures and wrote about their favorite parts in their journals and were (once again) so disappointed that we didn't have enough time to share our work with the class.

 We moved into exploring the 100 chart for the first time today.  We did some coloring of it looking for patterns, such as columns that has the numbers 1-9 in order or the same number (like 1) in the units place in the whole column.  We pointed to the numbers and counted out loud to 100 as a group.  Practice counting your 100 chart out loud at home.