Animals in Winter - Tot School

We had such a fantastic time in tot school today!  I love talking about all the things that animals do in winter time.  We practiced saying some big words like "Hibernation" and "Adaptation" and "Migration".  

 We pretended we were animals in winter needing to do different things.  We built "dens" to "hibernate" in, pretended to be butterflies flying somewhere warmer, and we pretended to hunt for food and grasses.

Animals in Winter, Reading and a Jewelry Shop

We had a very interesting day in school.  It seemed that I spent most of the time running around helping kids with their individual 3 year old type needs and didn't spend enough time teaching.  Nonetheless we had a great day talking about Animals in Winter.  We talked about how the weather is changing and now it's cold outside.  We talked about all the animals that live outside and not in our warm houses.  What do they do during the winter?  They either hibernate, migrate, or adapt!  We had lots of fun playing with the animal toys and our blanket den, reading "The Mitten" and acting out the explosion out of the mitten, and drawing winter animals in our notebooks.  We even added a little glitter snow!

 We also continued work on out "Guess My Secret Rule" game.  We played a very structured making our own sets game.  Each child was instructed to take 3 of the same and then take 1 that is different.  We seemed to get the hang of that with shapes and then switched to working with colors.  That was harder to get 3 shapes of the same color.  Not needing to be the same shape was a little confusing but a great first introduction to multiple characteristics to classify by.  We also enjoyed working with our rhythm sticks to a little Christmas music.  With all the snow it seems like Christmas time already!

This afternoon we had a lot of fun breaking into reading groups and working on our puzzles.  At this moment I'm able to work with all kids in 2 groups making management and engagement much easier.  The first group were rock stars right off the bat.  They were working on blending an initial consonant and vowel a or i.  We really focused on reading it the first time by blending the first sound into the second.  Another way to phrase that is to "not stop the first sound until your mouth is making the second sound."  It seemed to click.  I'm trying to get them to jump from sounding them out separately to sounding them out as a chunk, which will help them in their future reading. 

 Our second reading group worked on reading their Bob Books.  The way I have them read is called "whisper reading".  I'm not giving them any content or book walks at this time.  I simply give them the book and ask them to whisper read it to themselves.  They've picked it up and do quite well.  When they get stuck they most often tell me and I respond with, "What strategy are you going to use to solve that problem?"  They point to the picture card of a strategy and get right back to work on their own.  With whisper reading I can lean closer to any of the children in the circle and listen to them read a page or two and know exactly how well they are doing and what areas they are struggling with.  When they finish reading the book we do a 5 finger retell one-on-one.  They come stand next to me and we work through the characters, setting, beginning, middle and end of the story.  We use the book to reference all the details.  Then they repeat the 5 finger retell without opening the book and trying to recall it with minimal prompting.  They did really well and I'm quite proud of them.  They also worked on their phonics and sight word work from Ready2Read.

We combined art and math today since reading went so long.  Today we decided we were a jewelry shop designing necklaces.  Our customers wanted all different types of necklaces but they wanted them all to be in patterns.  We played around with adding a third color so we could do ABCABC patterns and all the variations that come with that.  They did as many patterned necklaces on their pages as they could before their parents arrived for them.  I thought they did quite well and it was tons of fun!

Animals in Winter

We had such a great time in preschool today.  I just love this top picture of all of them in our Bear Den.  They loved playing "Bear Family" and pretending to hibernate in our cardboard box den.  We continued working on letter P today as well as working on our Guess My Secret Rule game.  We read many stories about animals in winter and acted out hibernating and migrating.  They are such cute kids!

Tot School - Animals in Winter

We had such a fantastic day learning all about animals in winter.  We talked about the letter P and loved playing on the SmartBoard Starfall.com game.  We built dens and burrows out of blocks, dressed up in winter clothing and pretended to be animals hibernating in a big cardboard box den.  One of our favorite activities was reading "The Mitten" and acting it out.  As we came to each new character each child got to hold a mask and be that character.  Our favorite part of when the bear sneezes at the end, "ahh, ahh, ahh...choo!" and all the animals flew out of the mitten!

November Tot Packs Are Up!

NovemberTot Packs

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

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

Tot Packs 12-15

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.

12. Indians and Pilgrims {Download Here}

NOTE: This pack is meant as an introduction to Native Americans and Pilgrims. I have intentionally used the word Indian to introduce the letter I. Indian, however, is not an accurate description of Native Americans. For more information please see this link. There are also many different tribes of Native Americans that have very different traditions. Though the Pilgrims were in contact with the Wampanoag, this pack introduces ideas from many different tribes.

Printables in this pack:

· Two Piece Puzzles

· Indian Feather Headbands

· Native American Teepee Paper and Straw Craft

· Dream Catcher Lacing

· Letter I

· Songs

13. Scarecrows {Download Here}

Printables in this pack:

• Color Matching Scarecrows


• Scarecrow Body Parts


• Location Word Book


• Shadow Matching


• Size Sequencing


• Letter L


• Spin a Scarecrow


• Cornmeal Play-dough


• Scarecrow Songs

14. Thanksgiving {Download Here}

Printables in this pack:

Handprint Turkey

• Thanksgiving Dinner Plate - Trying New Foods


• 3 Piece Puzzles


• Letter L


• Turkey Grid Game


• Thanksgiving Songs and Poems

15. Animals in Winter {Download Here}

Printables in this pack:

Animals in Winter Songs

Tracing Winter Animals

Animals in Winter

Letter P

Cave Size Sequencing

Animals in Winter, a Short Path Game

November 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 "November Preschool Packs" contain 6 theme based lesson plans, a total of 179 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. 

November
{Download all 6 November Preschool Packs}
21. Insects {Download}
The insects preschool pack contains 43 pages of lesson plans and activities for preschoolers all about insects.  We introduce the letter "I" and the sight word "my".  We spend November talking about comparing attributes of objects and rhythm in music.  We talk about ant pheromone trails and how that relates to following a path and standing in a line. There are mini books about insects and insect safety.  We match beginning sounds to pictures, follow instructions in art, find shapes in pictures, and talk about attributes of objects.

22. Indians and Pilgrims {Download}
NOTE: This pack is meant as an introduction to Native Americans and Pilgrims. I have intentionally used the word Indian to introduce the letter I. Indian, however, is not an accurate description of Native Americans. For more information please see this link. There are also many different tribes of Native Americans that have very different traditions. Though the Pilgrims were in contact with the Wampanoag, this pack introduces ideas from many different tribes.

The Indians and Pilgrims pack has 17 pages that will teach all about the group of pilgrims that settled on the east coast of America and celebrated the first Thanksgiving.  Activities include listening skills that will lead into phonics instruction and math skills that build upon each other week after week.  There is a long path phonics game, sorting the words into a sentence, science activities about corn, a letter I headband, matching words to pictures (from the initial sound), and an introduction of a Venn Diagram. 

23. Scarecrows {Download}
Scarecrows is a super fun day with oodles of scarecrow activities!  You can play "Old Scarecrow" just like "Old Maid" but fall themed, and even make your very own dancing scarecrow.  There is an alphabet dot-to-dot with the introduction of letter L.  There are scarecrow puzzles and mazes.  There is a scarecrow mini book as well as the anatomy of a scarecrow and looking at scarecrow characteristics.

24. Thanksgiving {Download}
The Thanksgiving Pack is jam packed with activities.  With 36 pages of lesson plans and activities there are plenty of review games and new games!  There is a large motor hopping and counting turkey game, a word game with animals to talk about how words can be long or short and are defined by a set meaning.  There are also 5 piece puzzles, a short path game and a grid game.  There are 8 different 3D shapes as well.  Kids need a lot of experience playing with 3D shapes.  You can cut out and glue together all 8 shapes in this pack.  I like to laminate mine and Velcro them so they can be put together and laid flat over and over again.  Did you know that being able to recognize what a flat outline will turn into in a 3D shape is a skill that is tested through the school years?

25. Play Ball {Download}
The Play Ball pack has 28 pages of lesson plans and activities all about baseball.  We introduce the letter P and the sight word "ball".  There are baseball letter and word wheels to play with, football picture and numeral matching, a ball game for practicing letters and the sight word 'ball'.  We also learn about words having meaning in context and out of context.  We take the sentence "Take me out to the ball game" and play with the word order to find out what makes sense.  There is an activity where preschoolers manipulate the baseball players around the field as they answer questions such as what color, quantity, shape, or word is on the card.  There is also a tracing page full of words that the preschoolers should already be reading, a long path bouncing ball game, a one to one correspondence game, matching upper and lower case letters, and a word wheel to practice their reading.

26. Animals in Winter {Download}

Animals in Winter has 30 pages of preschool lesson plans and activities all about what animals do in winter.  This is a fun pack that talks about the changing season and how that affects different animals.  We talk about adaptation, migration and hibernation.  We sort summer and winter clothing and play a short path game to help the squirrel get his acorn! We also match pictures to beginning sounds and words, follow mazes to get the animals that migrate to their new destination, play a winter snowball reading game and read a book "Goodnight Summer" written by my best friend based on the children's book Goodnight Moon.

We have so much fun playing with the November packs and learning oodles along the preschool path.  I hope you enjoy them as much as we do!

Animals in Winter

Today in Little Adventures Preschool we talked about what animals do in winter. We started by talking about winter and what people do to get ready for winter.  We made this fun graph with all the kids faces to identify what types of clothing everyone had.



Then, we talked about what animals migrate and what that means.  We used the do-a-dot painters to paint some butterflies.

 Snack time is an important time to learn new skills.  I was very focused on pouring her water.  Of course there are messes every day, but that's part of growing up!

 Next we learned about animals that hibernate in winter.  I didn't get any good pictures of that.  Lastly, we learned about animals that adapt in winter.  All the animals that we talked about are brown in the summer (to match the dirt) and white in the winter (to match the snow).

 When our book was finished we used crayons to find the word 'the'.  Here A astounded me by finding the word 'the' in together!

 Some of us are still working on recognizing the word the, and the twins have an excuse since they started after the 'the' lesson :)

We didn't get to the printables that I started creating (grid and short path math games).  If you'd like to download them click this link here: Animals in Winter Math Games

Short Path Game

I've been reading a great book lately to help me up my math exploration with the kids.  It's called More Than Counting.  It's inspired some game making and I took a plunge and installed Adobe Acrobat Pro (the trial version) to see if I could make printables to share.  I started with an Animals in Winter Short Path Game.  Our preschool topic tomorrow is about Animals in Winter, so what better to start with?  Using the homemade 1-3 die, kids will roll to see how far along to move their counter.  When they get from the squirrel to the acorn they win.  Every child has their own game board for this type of game. 

So, what did I learn when I tried this out with the boys?  LOTS!  First of all, we are NOT READY for this type of game yet.  There is still a lot of 1 to 1 correspondence lacking in my boys knowledge.  Also, the idea of leaving a game piece and each move adds on to where you already were along the path.  So, the conclusion?  HOLD UP!  BACK UP!  It's time to start with something easier.  Now, I'm off to make a grid game instead, we'll see if we can master some of these skills yet!

To download the file for the Animals in Winter Short Path Game, just click on the image of the game above.

Update (just a few minutes later) I've finised a grid game. I've yet to try it with my boys and will be heading off to lunch time now, but go ahead and try it with your kids.  If you download the game PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT!  I'd love to know who is using these and how.  Just click on the picture below to download the grid game.