Emotions: How We Express Ourselves

This week in preschool we started our new inquiry block "How We Express Ourselves".  With preschoolers this starts of with discussing emotions and actions/reactions.  We read tons of stories like "The Way I Feel" and "Today I Feel Silly" to discuss the wide variety of emotions.  I love that "Inside Out" has been seen by many kids in the past year.  They have more vocabulary to describe the different emotions because of it.  We identified emotions all day long on Tuesday and then on Thursday we talked about what emotions look like on your body.  If you're happy you smile, if you're sad you may be quiet, if you're excited you may be jumping up and down.  We also talked about the possibility of changing a negative reaction (hitting, snatching, wailing, sulking) into a helpful reaction.  The idea that we have control over how we react is still being worked out within preschoolers.  I hope that our conversations this week have opened them up to a possibility of choosing a different reaction, though as an adult it is still hard for me personally to change a reaction. One small step at a time, I suppose.

The first couple of weeks of December will also be spent reviewing the 4 basic coins, their value and their identifying characteristics.  On Tuesday we talked about pennies and shined our pennies in a salt and vinegar solution.  That's why my house was stinky when you picked up your kids :).  On Thursday we talked about the nickel.  We're also dilligently working through the Moffatt Girls Ready2Read program and reading our interest led reading books.

Thursday we pulled out the puppets and let the kids play with the puppets and the emotion bean bags together.  It turned into a silly game of very emotional puppets :).

Where We Are In Place and Time

We had so much fun today talking about where we are in place and time.  With preschoolers it's a continual conversation to help them understand how each day is different and how they are represented on the calendar.  He acted out a whole week of waking up on a day, eating, playing, eating, playing, eating, brushing teeth, going to sleep, and waking up the next day.  While they were "sleeping" they were asked to figure out what day would be next when they "woke" up by singing our days of the week song.  They picked it up really quickly.  Encourage this conversation at home by telling them what day it is and asking them what day will be tomorrow.  The words "yesterday, today, tomorrow" are still not a concrete idea but the pattern of the weekdays should be well learned by now (at least in my classroom as we sing the days of the week all the time).  The kids were even singing it without prompting as they were working on their Very Hungry Caterpillar book today.

We spent a good deal of time talking about how things don't stay the same.  As we grow and learn time is passing and things are changing.  We talked about if we remembered when a sibling was a tiny baby and are they still the same tiny baby or have they grown?  We worked through a very real broken arm scenario with one of our gals by discussing how in the summer her arm wasn't broken and she could do whatever she liked, now her arm is broken and she has some limitations, but in a couple of months her arm won't be broken any more and she can go back to ice skating and other things she loves doing. 

 We've continued our lessons on digraphs (sh, ch, th, wh) and blends (bl, cr, etc).  We're seeing harder words (CCVC* rather than CVC**) in our reading books that indicate a blend at the beginning of the word.  We're also seeing more digraphs as we're ready to dive into more complex reading.  Our practice in 2D vs. 3D shapes is proving that these kids have quite nearly mastered this concept already.  I scheduled the whole month of November to work on them. Maybe we'll start counting faces and vertices, something I've never done with preschoolers before, but they're ready for more than just names. 

*CCVC = consonant, consonant, vowel, consonant

**CVC = consonant, vowel, consonant 

I Like to Move It, Move It!

I still am not sure why the song "I Like to Move It, Move It" broke out among all 8 kids today but it became the theme music to our day.  We got right down to business this afternoon as kids walked in and immediately started working on their reading books.  They are doing so fantastic.  I'm using the series "Now I'm Reading" with them.  It's working great to have a whole set for each child.  They can practice and work on the books at their own pace.  They are a fantastic next step to reading BEFORE tackling any harder phonics.  The simple CVC words are tricky and this series is great practice.  We then wrote about our weekends, most about what they did for Halloween, and then shared with the whole class.

 Today we started learning about the difference between 2D and 3D shapes.  I was quite impressed with the kids who remembered many of the 3D shape names from our lessons last year.  We had fun playing with all the blocks and there was a ton of calling out the correct shape name.  There was also a lot of "I like to move it!" singing, which proved very helpful when it was time to clean the blocks up :).

I utilized the Moffatt Girls November Kindergarten pack for our study about Where We Are In Place and Time.  We worked on filling out the November calendar today.  We sang the days of the week and talked about which day was today and which day would be Thanksgiving.  We also talked about how each day we wake up, eat breakfast, play, eat lunch, play, eat dinner, go to bed and then when we wake up it's a new day and number on the calendar. That was fun to act out :).

Review Day 1-14-2015

We had so much fun this morning in Preschool A.  We continued practice on our name writing pages and they are looking so fantastic!  Once we had practiced our names a few times we also worked in the Amazing Action Alphabet Handwriting 1 book and did a trace and cut assessment page.  We had tons of fun working on our letter N book at the SmartBoard and learning that an exclamation point means that the sentence is yelled (I apologize in advance for them yelling "NO!" at the end of each page, I was trying to make a point :) ). 

 We also continued our work on ABAB patterns.  Our tool of choice today was colored chips.  We made long snakes in our patterns and then mixed them up and did it again.  We utilized VirtualPiano.net to practice the piano on the SmartBoard because it gave me the ability to circle sets of 2 black keys and 3 black keys and write on the page "A" and "B" above certain notes to practice making musical patterns.

 This afternoon we worked hard in our Ready2Read program.  What you can't tell from the pictures is that my house, and the children, were all covered in glitter by the end of reading.  Glitter certainly makes learning sight words that much more fun!  Four kids passed off their units and moved on to more sight words and word families.  They really like when the whole class cheers for them, it's so cute.  Writing today was tons of fun.  I read "Alice the Fairy" by David Shannon aloud to the class.  Then we did a 5 finger retell as a group.  We each shared our favorite part of the story and then we went to work drawing and writing about that part in the book.

 The kids really enjoyed math today because it involved playdough.  We made the playdough together and then worked on making our 3D shapes with it.  Today was the last day of 3D shapes since we'll be working on coins for the rest of the month.  Please point out spheres, cubes, pyramids, cones and cylinders to your kids as often as possible.  This is important vocabulary.

What a great day of learning!  Enjoy Monday off for MLK Day!  See everyone Wednesday!

Opera and Vehicles

What a fantastic morning of school! We started the day off working on writing our names.  It is a goal for all of my 3 year olds to be able to write their name by mid February with the final push being writing their names for their Valentine cards.  If your child can write their first name already go ahead and start working on the last name.  If they can't write their name yet, start with the first letter and practice it over and over.  Then add the second letter and practice those two in a row over and over.  Repeat the process until they can write their name.  Then we worked on the letter O and sang along to "Carmen" (an opera) with the /o/ sound.

 We had a fun snack of sweet peppers and popcorn and then moved onto art.  It was great fun to paint with corn syrup!  I love how shiny the pictures look.  We also got to play the piano a little bit, looking at groups of 2 black keys and 3 black keys.  We finished up our graphing unit today with a little cut and paste activity.  The kids did great!  Now we are ready to move onto patterning! 

 This afternoon was a ton of fun as well.  I think my favorite part was when they were telling their own jokes at snack time.  They were jokes like, "Why did the chicken cross the cow?  Because a bird held popcorn in its face!"  They were completely hilarious!

We got right into reading today, practicing the letter R with the Amazing Action Alphabet mini book.  The kids are doing fantastic at sounding out the words.  We also played with cars, trucks and blocks to go along with the vehicles theme.

 We found a page all about vehicles in our encyclopedia and marked all the words that each child should be able to read completely on their own.  Hopefully at home you are companion reading these pages and reading all of the hard words for them and letting them read the marked words.

For math we learned all about spheres.  We talked about how circles are flat and spheres are shaped like balls.  We had a few ramps set up in the room and experimented with rolling spheres and circles down the ramps.  It was super awesome!  During art time we drew pictures and added words.  This seems like a simple activity, but it should be done LOTS at this stage.  The spelling doesn't have to be correct, the grammar doesn't need to be correct, they just need to see themselves as writers writing letters to match their pictures.  If you child has the opportunity to draw at home please encourage them to add words to match.  When they ask you to spell a word ask them what sound it starts with and encourage them to write the sounds they hear.

What a fantastic day!  I look forward to seeing everyone again on Wednesday!

Weather

The weather today was perfect!  It started off a little bit chilly with a little wind.  Then the sun came out and warmed us all up!  It was fantastic to experience the change in weather while we were reading books about it.  We continued working on letter W and drew on the chalkboard again, it was still super exciting for them.  We were on Day 5 of a game called "Learning About Spelling".  Up to this point in the year we've been working on making the sounds of the printed letters to figure out what a word is.  Now we're going a bit backwards.  We say a word (today my funny word was 'op') and then stretch it out to determine what letters we should write down that represent the sounds we made.  Then we added different consonants to the beginning of the word to make new words.  So today we figured out that we can make words like 'stop' 'mop' and 'cop'.  We did a lot of wiggling like W the Worm and even painted a worm brown.  Today was the introduction of the quarter.  We sang the Pocket Song to the tune shortening bread and practiced all 4 coins now.  Remember that coins are just an introduction in preschool and there is no need to master them.  Just understand that there are different coins each with its own worth. 

W is for Wind!

We had such a fun time talking about the letter W and wind today in school.  The weather was nice enough for us to go do much of our class outside.  We learned letter W and got to write it with chalk on the big chalkboards.  It was an experience they haven't had for a while and was so exciting we'll most likely do it again on Thursday.  We made kites for art today and had a blast flying them around.  We also learned about the dime and practiced playing "Mary Had A Little Lamb" on the piano.  It was a great fun day!

Animals in Spring - A Preschool Chick Experience

Wow! Talk about a great day in school!  How fun is playing with baby chicks for the "Animals in Spring" theme?  With the bigger preschoolers we were able to sit in the kiddy pool and let the baby chicks explore.  

 This is a great photo grouping of how nearly everyone reacted.  1. "I'm not certain about this..." 2. "They're climbing on me!" 3. "This is so exciting!" 4. "I love chicks!"  It took a little bit to get accustomed to each other but in the end everyone was happy to have one climb on their lap and be able to pet it.  We even held out little grains of their food for them and loved watching them jump from one person's lap to the next.

 The rest of our day included our lesson in spelling, which is a great activity if you haven't looked into it yet.  Up to this point in the year we've been working on reading words written down.  Now we're talking about how the words that come out of our mouths are just combinations of letters that we can then write down.  Check out the "Animals in Spring" pack for more information. We also did a group reading of "Mouse's First Spring" a book with many little words that the preschoolers can already read.  The bonus is that they each got to keep a copy of the book.  In math we learned about the nickel.  In preschool it's purely introduction and they love it.  We sang our pocket song to "Shortning Bread".  It goes like this: "Which coin is in my pocket, pocket? What's in my pocket worth __ cents? (then they guess what it is and we continue) It's a shiny ____, _____.  It's a ____ worth ___ cent."  The kids love it!

Elephants and Circus - Letter E

We had so much fun learning about the letter E today.  We started off by playing with the circus tent, circus finger puppets and face painting.  Everyone wanted to be a clown, which was easy enough.  We simply used watercolors for the face painting.  Using just a small amount of water gives you a thicker paint and it still washes off very easily.  E the Elephant lifts weights, so we practiced our exercising, "e-e-e".

 We're continuing our study of 3D shapes and played with cones and spheres today.  We cut out cone shaped circus tents and practiced an ABC dot-to-dot from the Amazing Action Alphabet.

With the letter E in our knowledge bank we can now read the word bed.  We write the word bed and then outline the letters to make a picture of a bed.  I then draw a little person sleeping on the bed.  I teach a lowercase b and d trick with the word bed.  Simply make two fists and put them together to make your bed.  When you run into a lowercase b or d check your fists and see if the shape matches the b at the beginning or the d at the end of your "bed". Train your preschooler to reference this trick and they'll always be able to determine the lowercase b or d.

Healthy Bodies

We had so much fun in school today!  We talked about how to have a healthy body by exercising, eating healthy, drinking water, and washing our hands.  We practiced reading our letter K Amazing Action Alphabet book, naming our colors and our letter sounds. 

 We practiced our handwriting, drew in our journals all the ways that we can be healthy.  Talked about spheres and cubes with our fun germs printables and danced for exercise.  It was so much fun!

Weather - Wednesday Preschool

What a fun day to talk about weather.  The snow if finally melting and it's getting a little bit warmer outside.  I'm hoping that spring is finally here!

 We started the day coloring paper that would eventually become our own kites.

 Then we headed outside to try and fly our kites.  As it turns out, the snow wasn't quite melted enough so running in the grass area was rather difficult.  I hope everyone brings their kites Friday to our Field Trip Friday so we can see how they fly when we can really run.

 We headed downstairs to work on our reading activity.  I put a secret word up on the board and when you knew what it was you were supposed to act it out.  The secret word was "hop".  How fun!

 Remember the mud art we didn't get to do on Monday because of the cold and snow?  Well, insert that activity here:

 W the worm wiggled through some watery mud. (Amazing Action Alphabet Activity Page)

 Today we learned about quarters.  When I told them that a quarter was worth 25 cents the majority of the eyeballs in the classroom became the size of silver dollars - WOW! 25 cents!  It was so exciting to them that they got to keep their very own quarter!

 We've now finished "Mary had a Little Lamb" on the piano.  Even if your child hasn't mastered this song they are making great gains in learning the basics of playing the piano, the rhythms in music, and that music is fun.  Woot woot!

 Afternoon preschool started off with some playtime.  It was requested that we first play our card game (I can never remember the name of it...).  It involves quick thinking to match one of 4 attributes on the card that's on the top of one of the piles in the middle.

 We also practiced our sight words with "Zingo Sight Words".

 Writing time was focused on writing a list.  We talked about different types of lists that we could write: our favorite colors, people in our family, what to buy at the grocery store, etc.

 Art time was so much fun in tot school yesterday that we decided to repeat the activity with preschool B.  Mix glue and shaving cream for a fantastic sensory art time.

 Boy, what a mess!  It's so much fun, but super messy!

Monday Preschool - Wind

What a fantastic day of school!  I love talking about the wind with preschoolers.  They get such a kick out of it. We started the day off tracing our names at the tables and then we met at the rug to work on our reading skills.  I read a few books about wind to them and then we practiced the 4 things that good readers do.
We look with our eyes.
We point with our fingers.

We make the letter sounds with our mouth.
We listen to the word with our ears.
Great reading!

The letter of the week is W and the w book from the Amazing Action Alphabet always makes the kids laugh.  Be sure to pull it out of your child's backpack and read it with them.

 For art we were supposed to do a mud art project, but due to the snow we had to pass on it for today.  Instead we pulled out our journals and drew and wrote whatever we wanted.

 Next came our science time.  We pulled out a couple of fans and everyone got a feather to play with.  They had so much fun chasing their feathers around in our homemade wind :)

 We're continuing our unit on coins and today we talked about dimes.

 Preschool B is now working on R controlled vowels. This week we're talking about R controlled A.  Words like "car" sound like /k/-/letter name R/ instead of /c/ /a/ /r/ (like trying to say cat and throwing an /r/ sound on the end).

 Picking through the boxes of reading books to find one they like.

 We've been working on counting to 100 by 1's and 10's.  We've moved on to representing quantities with numerals.  We've been talking about all the patterns in the 100 chart and now we're putting those thoughts into practice by writing the missing numbers in the 100 chart.

 At the end of the day a little game of "Circus" broke out as we showed off tricks and set up chairs for the audience :).  It was a lot of fun.

Animals in Spring - Preschool Wednesday

We had a lot of fun learning about animals in Spring today in preschool.  We've been working on puzzles all year long and are starting to get into bigger puzzles (24+ pieces).  Be sure to play with puzzles at home to foster critical thinking skills. 

 We also got to play with the spring eggs and try to match them and put them together (and of course take them apart!).

 The kitty and the tiger.

 Everyone got a copy of Mouse's First Spring.  We practiced reading it together as a group.  We worked on staying on the same page, pointing to the words, and saying the words that we already know how to read (or had memorized by the end of the story).

 The tiger and the lion.

 Art was seriously adventurous today...

 We each picked a flower color and were supposed to match the decorations of our flower to the color of the paper we picked.  Some of us got it, some just had fun making a collage.  At a minimum, we all had super fun.

 What happens when you give a bottle of glue to a 4 year old?  He decides to glue his hair and then needs to give himself a bath in the sink.  Silly boys :)

 Today we moved onto nickels.  They are silver colored and worth 5 cents.

 In afternoon preschool we continued with our Easter book.

 We sorted some pictures, worked on the short e sound and started learning about sentences.  Please start pointing out capitals at the beginning of a sentence (we colored them green to signal "go") and punctuation at the end of sentences (we colored them red to signal "stop").

 Then we drew a picture of our favorite part of the story.

 We had free art with all the supplies from the morning class, and once again...a large mess ensued.

 Thank goodness they were willing to clean it up in the end! :)