Passionate Reading and Writing in Preschool

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom!  On Tuesday in preschool we used a loved classic to work on reading the word "and" as we reviewed the letter D.  We talked in great depth about how we don't write or color in books at the library, books at home, or books at Miss Amanda's house.  However, they were being gifted a special book where they had permission to highlight all of the words they know how to read in the story.  We read through the story together, highlighted the words we knew, and then read the story again...maybe even two more times.  The kids were so excited about their own books and a story many of them already loved.

 We also read two other story books and used all three read alouds from the day to make a graph of which story we liked the most.

 Yes, I really do teach kids to write this way.  In the bottom left picture you'll see how we worked on sounding out the following words: family, dump truck, Dora, Hello Kitty, villains, dinosaurs, dragons, and dino trucks.  We "grab" the word in the air and then slowly "stretch" it to find out what sounds we should write next (imagine grabbing bread dough and then stretching it long and thin).  We are not looking for accuracy in spelling here.  These guys are 4 years old, and even at 5 and 6 years old phonetic spelling is perfectly acceptable.  After we spoke in great deal about how to write words we continued our work on writing our very own books.  A few kids decided to start new books and the rest continued working on the book they started last week.  We have some great authors!  Encourage this phonetic spelling at home!

Books Galore

Books, books, books.  Today I nearly lost my voice in 2.5 hours of preschool.  The reason?  Books.  It is much more rewarding to read books with a theatrical emphasis, especially if one is sharing their favorite book that happens to be called "Where the Wild Things Are".  It just needs some roaring and eye rolling to really sell it.  Today we hit on our passions very intensely.  We talked about our favorite stories, the types of books we love to read and found something suitable for each of us from our classroom library.  We talked about how reading a book is more fun when you get into the story and read fluently.  It's less engaging when you stop part way through a sentence.  It is certainly more fun if you read it with fun voices. 

 Through a variety of high interest books and leveled readers we took time today highlighting and marking parts of fascinating  stories that we could read on our own.  Though there was a lot of jumping around to quickly find sight words we will continue our focus to hopefully start at the beginning of each sentence and do our best to actually read the majority of the text.

 Our fantastic exploration of books today led to our first writer's workshop where we each started writing our own books.  With a few sheets of paper stapled together and all the writing tools we could think of we wrote and drew stories.  There were stories about villains, being a vet, a ride at the local amusement park, a camel, a whirlwind, and a few other ideas.  The kids did fantastic with adding their name to the cover just like real authors and adding words and pictures throughout their books.

Moms and Interest Led Learning

We talked all about Moms this morning in preschool.  Since we're practicing the letter O spelling "Mom" is a perfect and engaging activity for preschoolers.  We discussed how we are all fantastic readers and we do all the things that good readers do.  We use our eyes to look at the letters, our fingers go point to the letter we are reading, our lips to say the letter sounds and our ears to hear the letters in words.  Some kids also started utilizing "Baggy Books".  Baggy Books are simply books that belong to me and I loan to kids to read and return.  I use a freezer ziplock bag so the books don't get ruined from snow or a leaking waterbottle.  It helps them come back in one piece.

 We enjoyed drawing pictures of our moms for art today and then we wrote the word "mom".  The pictures turned out so cute!  We continued our lessons on patterns and worked on playing an ABAB pattern on a set of 2 black keys on the piano keyboard.  If you have a piano at home please let your child explore patterns on the keys.  If you don't have a piano at home you can use a computer at http://virtualpiano.net/ or a touchscreen device (such as a smart phone or tablet) and the app "Tiny Piano".

 We transferred our new knowledge about patterns to unifix cubes (or at least attempted it).

This afternoon was chalk full of interest led learning.  Upon arrival we pulled out our encyclopedias and found topics that were interesting to us.  Then I pulled up readinga-z.com and found matching books for each topic.  Each child then took their yellow marker and marked the words they know how to read.  Apparently I need to do a little more instruction on this step, since many kids marked many words that they can't actually read :).

 Then we pulled up clips of information on the SmartBoard about each topic.  Afterwards we drew pictures and wrote about what we were learning in our journals.  Then each child took a turn presenting their reading, drawings and writing to the class.

The reading took the majority of the day, but we did get to discuss 3D shapes again today.  We reviewed the sphere (which we learned on Monday as being a ball shape rather than a flat circle) and we talked about cubes compared to squares.  We counted faces of the cubes, we compared what would roll better and what shape would be better for stacking.  Then we built towers out of the cubes.

It was a fantastic day of learning!

The Art of Playing

We went to a city park yesterday and found this great little playground. The boys played well together on the seesaw first before moving on to other things.

Playing is a child's work.  They learn through making and testing hypotheses even though they wouldn't explain that like a scientist to you.  With a little parental guidance they quickly master a new exploration.  I love how CJ responded to the digger in the sand.  "This is good work!"

Speaking of "Good Work" I believe that fostering a good work ethic early in children is important for long term success.  Digging in the sandbox is in fact "good work". 

 According to constructivist theory (Piaget, 1945), children have an inner drive to build an understanding of their world as they explore and interact with materials.  Concepts about how the world works are built gradually and become increasingly complex as the child enters a rich learning environment and exercises his or her freedom to play.

 Looking back, I wish I would have used more open ended questions to guide him in his discovery instead of just telling him how.  Parents and teachers have the responsibility to structure a rich enviornement, observe what children are doing and thinking, and interact as appropriate.  To encourage problem solving I could have asked questions such as:

• How could you change/fix that?
• What else could you do?
• What would happen if you...?
• What do you think/feel about ....?
• How did you do that?
• Is there another way to...?

By asking these open ended questions I could have provided a framework to enable him to learn more by himself.

I love that when EMan came back around to this scooper CJ worked with him to make him feel successful!

So, here is to more open ended play and questions.  It's my goal for the week.  What's yours?

DIY Water Wall

I had a conversation with my sister a month back about creating a water play area for her littles in their new back yard.  Then I set up an activity day with my playgroup for water play and put in the description that I'd try and put together some pvc pipe for playing and exploring and promptly forgot.  Just 2 days before said play date I reread the description and found myself suddenly inspired to create a fully customizable water wall.  So, off to Lowes we rumbled.

 We returned home with pvc pipe in 1/2 inch and 1.25 inch and oodles of connectors as well as wooden dowels and peg board. I put the pegboard up on my fence and started drilling holes in the connectors to add dowels. *Note, drill the holes slightly smaller than the dowels.

 I had some help from CJ and EMan along the way.  There are a few things I'd do differently and will most likely still go back to fix.  I'd add glue to the dowels in the pvc so that they don't come off in the peg board and fall behind it.  I'd also glue the tubing inside a pvc connector so that it doesn't fall out so often.  I will also fill up the swimming pool farther away from the water wall from now on.  We were working so hard on building that we tripped over it too many times!

 I did cut all the lengths by hand with our nifty red tool.  My hand muscles were awful sore by the end of the day though.  I did have great intentions to make numerous 1/2 lengths of pipe (2 half circles from each pipe) but it ends up that cutting pipe that direction is hard!

 With pegs in each of the joints we simply stuck pipes in the joints and stuck them to the wall wherever we wanted them.

 This became hours of fun.  In fact, we spent the entire day doing just this.

 I did grab a storage box to keep all the pieces handy for this adventure.

 Our setup provided an excellent opportunity for a lesson in gravity.  Being a gravity operated water wall we talked about how we had to get the water up higher than the tube before it would all go in.

This activity is awesome because it provided everyone the chance to explore on their own playing field.  They could build on the wall if they wanted.  They could just put together pieces on the grass.  They could splash in the swimming pool.  It was great fun for all ages!

 We were still playing when dad got home from work and he rejuvenated our creativity to build even more!

Grab some pieces of pvc and create your own hours of entertainment! 

Ladybug Release and Giveaway!

Be sure to scroll all the way down to enter the Ladybug Land Giveaway!

We had such an awesome day today.  Our ladybugs had finally arrived in the mail and we had a friend over for dinner that enjoyed releasing the ladybugs with us.  We first read a book about ladybugs from one of our science reader sets.  All three kids had great questions and were so interested in the details!

 Did you know a ladybug's wings are yellow before they get hard and turn red?  And their dots are the equivalent of freckles on a person.  Each lady bug is different.

 We talked about what ladybugs eat (aphids) and how that is good for our garden because the aphids eat the leaves and plants that we want to eat.  We happen to have a few extra aphids hanging out in our greenhouse on the lettuce right now so we took our bug jars and captured a few.

 Then the ladybugs came out to play.  They can live in your refrigerator for up to 3 months because they can hibernate and live off their body fat.  We decided to dump out about half of the bag and save the other half for our Little Learners - Summer Bugs activity day with our home school group LEARN in August.

 Just a quick tip - if your spritz the ladybugs with a 50/50 water/soda mix it creates a temporary "glue" that makes them unable to fly for a few days.  This way we were able to observe them and then transfer them to the garden where they will make their home instead of flying off right away and leaving our cute little space.

 I love that DH was able to join us.  It's fun to have him participate in the fun activities that we do.

 EMan was constantly brushing ladybugs off his neck and arms.  They were so "tickly" to him and he kept squirming.  So cute!

 Miss Katrina was so nice to take photos for us (she's generally the one behind the camera if I'm in the photograph).  I used the camera though for a few shots to let her get in on the action.  I love the sleeping LittleMiss in the ergo :)

We had a fantastic time learning about and observing our ladybugs.  It was definitely worth the investment and I'll most likely repeat this activity every year.  It's a great science activity and then when we're done they're great for our garden!

Now for the fun stuff!  I have one Ladybug Land to give away.  It comes with an order form to order your very own ladybugs!  Just leave a blog post letting me know who you'd use it with and why you'd be excited to use it.  Then click the enter button below.  You can also like us and share about Little Adventures Preschool on Facebook.  Good luck!

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