Tot School - Sept 19 - Animals

I loved learning about the letter A and talking about animals at Tot School when we met on Sept 19th.  We started with playing outside as we have been doing for many weeks past.  We played with animal hand puppets and animal finger puppets.  After we washed our hands and had our snack we played downstairs for the rest of our time together.

 We're transitioning to spending part of our time inside and part of our time outside so when the weather is crummy the kids aren't surprised by a different play location.  We did animal puzzles, practiced the letter A book and colored it, and played with all sorts of toys!

Tot School - Zoo Animals

The last few days we've had some crazy wind in Denver.  This crazy wind took out two fence posts in my backyard.  I couldn't get them fixed before tot school today so we needed to stay inside for the day.  We did a slight swap of tot school themes and ended up doing Zoo Animals today.  I LOVE doing zoo animals.  We have some fun blow up zoo animals and some finger puppets.  We have puzzles and books galore.  It was so much fun!  

We made a zoo out of Lego Duplos, read "Goodnight, Gorilla" about a zillion times, and pretended to be animals ourselves.  I made some tear-free bubbles and put the bubble blower up high.  I LOVED the bubble solution, but it's residue was crazy.  Homemade tear free bubbles: 3/4 c water, 1/4 c tear free baby wash, 3 TBSP corn syrup.  The bubbles work amazingly well and there wasn't a single incident where it got in eyes and made anyone upset.  It did, however, leave an interesting sticky residue on hair, toys, and the carpet.  I'll definitely use it again, but outside for sure.  Those of you that have kids that played here today you may find this crazy residue on their little clothes and in their hair.  It should wash out easy peasy. 

Animal Friends and Reading

This morning was so much fun playing with our Animal Friends theme!  We read "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" which is a perfect text to read the word "at".  We also read "Big Red Barn" and found all of the a's.  We had tons of fun coloring our A watches from the Moffatt Girls, playing on Starfall.com and working on our Amazing Action Alphabet activity page and handwriting page.

In math we had oodles of fun learning about MORE and LESS.  We watched a few short clips of Sesame Street characters explaining the concept and then got to work on our game.  This is a great activity to encourage identifying more and less.  If you don't have flip chips you can easily spray paint one side of a poker chip and achieve the same affect.

On Monday we had a monumental reading lesson in our morning class.  Today's monumental reading lesson was in the afternoon class.  The morning class will get this lesson in about 3 weeks, though it'll be a year long lesson.  It was such an awesome lesson that I have no pictures.  But I do have a video to walk you through it.  The video is 9 minutes in length but shows you the key parts of our reading lesson.  Please watch it to know how to support your reader at home or, if you are a teacher, watch to see the strategy I teach in my classroom.  (The video was too large and had to be split into two sections, find both below.)

In math we learned the rules to the game Compare. This game is identical to the card game "War" but sounds much nicer to call it "Compare".  Using a set of 20 cards each with a quantity of stickers 1-10 (done twice to make twenty cards) we split the deck evenly.  Each player turns over their top card at the same time and the person with more stickers gets to take both cards.  Continue play until your deck is gone.  Then pick up the cards you "won" and repeat.  This is a fantastic game to be playing at home!

Preschool B enjoyed drawing and writing with colored pencils today and we had a fantastic time doing the "Freeze Dance" during music.  It was a great week of learning!

Opposites and Animal Friends

We had a fantastic day in preschool today learning all about the letter A.  In our morning class we talked all about opposites.  We talked about black/white, wet/dry, hard/soft and many other opposites.  Start pointing out opposites to your preschooler throughout your daily life. As we started learning about the letter A today we played on Starfall.com and played with the Amazing Action Alphabet.  The army ants take away the alligators apple, making him very angry!  Learning the letter A is the beginning of reading in preschool.  It's the first time that kids put their reading skills to a real challenge.  Write the word "at" or "am" on a piece of paper or a white board.  Ask your child if they know how to read the word.  Guide them to do the 4 things good readers do: Look, Point, Say, Listen.  Some kids at this stage show that they need more work and play with the letters before they are ready to read and that is perfectly ok!  Other kids are ready to start reading with a bang.  You can quickly identify where your child is at in order to set reasonable goals.  All children should be reading the A book 3x per night, regardless of if they have it memorized or if they are actually reading the text.  Acting like a reader is being a reader!

We continued our theme of opposites with art where we colored with wet and dry chalk.  Our math lesson is continuing on the counting and number sense topic.  Each child came home with a ring of 4 cards and 4 clothes pins.  They are to hold up one card and find the clothes pin with the same number of stickers.  They attach the clothes pin to the card and then move on to the next card.

I encouraged the language, "One is the same as one.  Two is the same as two." and so on.

In our afternoon class we explored the theme of Animal Friends with our new book, "Big Red Barn" (I think that's the title....).  Regardless, it gave us a fantastic opportunity to read through the book looking for adult (capital) A's and princess a's.  We also read about animals in our encyclopedias.  

For math today we made our cards for "Compare" (alternately known as "War", but "Compare" sounds so much more appropriate for preschool....doesn't it?).  Though we made the cards we didn't get past sorting them into sets, so PLEASE make sure the cards in the pocket in the binder come back to school on Wednesday.  For math homework tonight your preschooler can find matching sets.  Spread the cards all out and find both cards that have an equal number of stickers (8 is the same as 8) and stack pairs.  If you're feeling adventurous you could teach how to play Compare.  We will spend plenty of time playing it on Wednesday!

Animal Friends

We had a fantastic day learning about the letter A and animal friends today.  All of the kids loved coming in this morning to find these mini animals, fishing poles with fish, animal hand puppets and stuffed animals galore!  There was plenty of animal noises around the room as they played with all the items. 

 Art was amazingly engaging today.  We first drew with crayons and then water color painted over the top of our drawings.  Many of the kids were focused on their art for upwards of a half hour!

 We also talked about puppets and made sock puppets today.  Last year when we did sock puppets there was a bit of hesitation about them. This year the kids were ready to dive in and put them on themselves.  They even brought me a second one for their other hand so they could have a puppet on each hand.  The puppets played all around our back yard and some are still drying off from a bath in the tub of sandy water in the sandbox.

 We played with our Animal Friends tot pack today.  I loved playing one-on-one with this little man as we sorted where the animals should live - in the barn or in the house.

September Tot Packs

Find the year long theme calendar {here} and follow along with us!

This post gives details and pictures of all September Toddler Packs. Be sure to scroll down to see all of them.

Tot Packs 3-6

Tot packs are about 20 pages in length. They each have 2 pages of activity ideas, book suggestions, and links to the materials I use. You can certainly use all or part of the lesson plans.

The printable pages include songs, matching games, drawing games and other activities.

Tot packs are designed to be a first introduction to math concepts, letters, shapes and colors. They are not meant to obtain mastery in any subject. Let them be a guide for educational play between you and your child.

3. Feelings Tot Pack {Download}

Feelings are rather hard to teach to little ones, but with our exclusive art from Jon Boone it's so much fun! After I get this printed and bound together I'll add more pictures. This pack is intended to be taught third in the curriculum. Find the year long theme calendar {here} and follow along with us!

Printables in this pack:

• Gluten Free Play-dough Recipe
• Feeling Balls
• How do you feel today?
• Today I Feel Silly - a pouring activity
• Feelings Book
• 2 Piece Emotion Puzzles
• Size Sequencing
• If You’re Happy and You Know It

  

This tot pack has 2 pages of activity ideas, book suggestions, and links to the materials I use. You can certainly use all or part of the lesson plans.

4. Dentist Tot Pack {Download}

This pack is just full of great ideas for learning about the dentist! Each pack includes links to all the books and supplies you'll need to have a fantastic time with your toddler learning about the dentist!

The Dentist Tot Pack is 15 pages of great activities for toddlers.  There are 2 pages of ideas that are hands on experiences for kids, like flossing an egg carton!  There are also 2 piece puzzles, a "Where is the Dentist?" game, color matching, a game for practicing sets up to 5, and a "flossing" lacing card!

5. Animal Friends {Download}

Printables in this pack:

Shadow matching animals

Matching animals to their homes

Farm Animals and Pets Sorting

Color Matching Fish

Monkey Hide and Seek

Practicing Letter A

Tracing Letter A

Pet and Animal Friends Songs

My Animal Friends Book

This tot pack has 2 pages of activity ideas, book suggestions, and links to the materials I use. You can certainly use all or part of the lesson plans.

 The printable pages include songs, matching games, drawing games and other activities.

6. Nursery Rhymes {Download}

This pack is just full of great ideas for learning about Nursery Rhymes! Each pack includes links to all the books and supplies you'll need to have a fantastic time with your toddler learning about Nursery Rhymes!

 You'll be introducing ordinal numbers and working on identifying beginning sounds from the letters we've already learned.

 You'll also practice sequencing and be playing with nursery rhymes. There is overwhelming evidence that early learning of nursery rhymes and rhythmic poems, songs, and chants significantly enhances early reading skills and phonemic awareness. In fact research highlights phonemic awareness as a strong predictor of a child's reading success.

 There are fun shadow matching games as well as a simple homemade tutorial.

September Preschool Packs

Find the Year Long Theme Calendar here and follow along with us!

The preschool curriculum that is all inclusive and provides hours of fun and engaging learning!  The "September Preschool Packs" contain 7 theme based lesson plans, a total of 182 pages of lesson plans and activity printables.  My preschooler has begged to do his "homework" because it's a wonderful time that we spend together learning age appropriate concepts!  These plans are intended to be taught in a 10 month sequence from Aug-May, though may be adapted to use individually. 

5. Feelings {Download}
Feelings are an important concept to develop vocabulary around during the preschool stage.  The feelings packs provides 37 pages of lesson plans and printable activity pages to talk about feelings.  We also cover the quantity of 4, size sequencing, colors that relate to feelings, music and mood.

6. Fall {Download}

"Fall" is the most jam packed preschool printable when it comes to printable activities.  There is a location word book with a scarecrow that gets to sit over the hay, in the corn, and behind the pumpkins.  With cute graphics from ScrappinDoodles I absolutely love this pack. This pack introduces the second letter that we learn this year.  Letter T.  I highly recommend that you follow along with us in this non-alphabetical order to learn your abc's.  It makes much more sense to teach a child how to read while learning their alphabet.  Learning them in isolation is confusing!  A great resource for the alphabet is the Amazing Action Alphabet.  I use their flip chart to introduce the letters and then their mini books to demonstrate how to read.  I followed this curriculum last year, and you just can't beat 6 of 7 kids ending our 10 months together knowing how to read.  What power they now have!  There are some fun songs that show up in the packs as well as some sequencing activities (such as the tree activity below).

7. Dentist {Download}

I like to print all the pages of my packs, cut and laminate as needed, and bind them into books with a comb binder. We use wet erase markers or dry erase crayons on the pages to keep notes, color, circle and trace things.  Wet erase markers and dry erase crayons wash easily off of lamination. You can use dry erase, but it doesn't clean off as well.

 The "Dentist Preschool Pack" has a memory game with small cards.  I'd recommend keeping them in a small baggy in a folder with your pack so you always have them handy!
The dentist pack includes 29 pages of lesson plans and activities.  We start talking about quantities up to 5, play with puzzles, explore visual discrimination and color capital and lowercase T's.

8. Opposites {Download}

The "Opposites Preschool Pack" has 3 pre-reading books with pages that illustrate different opposites.  I like to cut them out, laminate them, and bind them together with a simple binding ring.  We continue working on tracing, equal quantities up to 5 and the letter a.  This pack is 32 pages of awesome!  The opposites Tic-Tac-Toe game is one of EMan's favorite activities to play.  Though he doesn't have strategy to win yet he does have strategy to stop me from winning. It's so fun to have some intentional play time with my little man. 

 9. Animal Friends {Download}
The Animal Friends pack is 24 pages of letter review and activities about animals.  It is a review pack for the previous 3 letters we've learned (M, T, A).  There are phonemic awareness games in almost every pack and the one in this pack I completely love!  The way this game is laid out clearly shows parents and teachers how learning what sounds the animals make transitions into learning what sounds the letters make.  Both versions of the game are in this pack. This pack also finishes up the "More, Less or Equal" unit in math.  I very strongly believe that there are certain mathematical principals that kids need to learn BEFORE they learn to recognize numerals.

 10. Families {Download}

The families pack is 19 pages of lessons and activities about families.  It's a review pack that reviews our first 3 letters (MTA) and kids practice reading with a little Road to Reading game.  We practice reading the sounds of the letters as we drive our car on the road. It's so much fun your preschoolers will play it over and over.  Because of the sequential learning through my curriculum your preschoolers will be successful at reading these words (and nonsense words) even though they only know 3 letters.  This pack also introduces ordinal numbers, a short path game, tracing, visual discrimination, and sets up to 4. 

 11. Nursery Rhymes {Download}

I was told just before leaving the public school system on maternity leave that nursery rhymes are one of the most important things a kid needs to know before entering kindergarten.  The teacher that told me this is one of the most loved and respected kindergarten teachers I've ever met.  I remember then that I didn't know much about what a kid should know by the time they are school age.  Boy have I learned a lot!  There is overwhelming evidence that early learning of nursery rhymes and rhythmic poems, songs, and chants significantly enhances early reading skills and phonemic awareness. In fact research highlights phonemic awareness as a strong predictor of a child's reading success.  This pack includes a half dozen nursery rhymes (in case you've forgotten them from your youth).  There are also numerous activities that go along with nursery rhymes.  It's the last pack of review of the first 3 letters that we've learned and kids get to play this fun initial sound sorting game. There are pages in this pack specifically for art as well.  There are name recognition activities and a star for making into a twinkling star!

This set of September Preschool Packs is certainly moving our preschoolers in the right direction to be successful as adults!