Writing Workshop Takes Off in Preschool!

We had such a fun day of school today.  I'm very impressed with the writing we are producing already.  Today we had a nearly complete actual story about Batman.  It had a cover, a beginning, and a middle.  We talked about how fun it was to listen to the story and how we hoped that the last page would be worked on during our next class to finish the story.  Being able to create a story line in writing form is very difficult and it's so fun to see it emerging already!  I am impressed with the attempts to sound words out and add them to our books.

Sharing what we did as authors today.

 We continued working on reviewing the alphabet today.  We added the letter "G" which we practiced by opening our mouths really big and making the /g/ sound at the back of our throats.  Through our interest led reading books and our decodable "Now I'm Reading" sets we had plenty of practice with the letter G.  We're continuing our graphing conversation in math using the books we read aloud each day.  Today we read three books that all had "Moon" in the title.  It was fun to talk about our favorite story out of the three and "vote" to make our graph.

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.

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!

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!

Ocean Animals and Interest Led Learning

What a wonderful day of school!  Today we learned all about the letter J this morning with our Ocean Animals theme.  We used the phonics headbands from the Moffatt Girls and added "tentacles" to the back of them.  It was so much fun to dance around as jelly fish.  We worked on reading the letter J and the J book.  We also spent some time going back to the beginning and reading together all the mini readers.  It seems that a couple of kids are stuck at about the B book.  When you are working on reading at home please back up and read the books that your child is attempting with most success and leave the other letter books (with more letters) for study later.  Next we worked on art, coloring J the Jellyfish and adding tentacles to her.  We also drew our favorite sea animals and practiced writing our names.  In math we continued graphing.  It was a super fun day!

 Preschool B had an interest led day today.  We started with our encyclopedias and each found a topic that was interesting.  I then pulled out kid books on the same topic to give them a larger browsing library.  We worked in our Ready2Read (congrats to the kids who passed of Level 1 Unit 4) and we worked with the letter G.  Make sure when your child is reading the g book that they make the /g/ sound in their throat.  For art we drew and wrote about what we had looked at in reading time.  There were space themes, animal themes, transportation themes and knights and dragons.  We spent our math time building shapes and building with shapes.  It was wonderful!

Letter T with the Dentist and Interest Led Reading

We had so much fun in our morning class today!  We started the day with the puppets and toothbrushes.  We had a silly time talking about where we use our toothbrushes (On our hair?, NO!).  The kids got a kick out of brushing the puppets teeth.  We then moved into our shared reading activity.  We reviewed all the things good readers do and read the "T Book" on the SmartBoard.  I love reading together that way because I can highlight letters and everyone can see what we're doing.  Next we read the dentist book together.  For this activity every child had their own copy of the text (it's in their binder, they get to keep it at home!).  I introduced my magic tape that can help us identify letters.  The letter "T" can be quite confusing.  There is a unique design that we call the "Princess t" to identify it.  It gets confusing with a capital "J" but they'll pick it up as they identify more letters.  With our magic tape we highlighted all the T's we could find on the cover and then a t or two on the following pages as we read it.  As you're reading to your children encourage them to point out the letters they know and what sounds they make.

 We had a ton of fun with our math lesson today.  It was our first time playing "Hop Along the Path" a game we'll play often during the school year.  The idea is to hop from object to object while counting.  It's the first step in learning how pieces move in board games, helps with counting one-to-one and is a FANTASTIC large motor activity!  Art was also a ton of fun because we had tiger teeth that needed a cleaning.  We "cleaned" them with toothbrushes and "toothpaste" (white paint).

 Our afternoon class got to look through the dentist book today as well.  We marked many different Ts as we found them.  It was really exciting to have our first day to pick our own theme to read about.  They thumbed through the encyclopedias and found a page that looked interesting.  Then they would read the words they knew or point out the letters and their sounds to their sock monkey.

This is such a cute example of what they do with their encyclopedias.  The volume is really quiet, so if you turn up your speakers be sure to turn them down after :). 

 We also played the "Hop Along the Path" game today.  The afternoon kids picked up the process of standing in a line, waiting your turn, moving up and going when appropriate quite well.  For art we played with do-a-dot markers and wrote words or letters to describe what we drew.  Their journals will reflect their wonderful growth in learning throughout the year!

If you turned up your speakers for the previous video be sure to turn them down for this one.  It's a little "Hop Along the Path" fun!

The Praying Mantis

A number of months ago I ordered seeds for our garden. In their catalog they had two beneficial insects: the lady bug, and the praying mantis. I thought I'd get them because they'd help the garden and the boys would get a kick out of them.

So I also put a mantis kit in my wish list on Amazon so we could watch a few of them grow in our home. Well, I finally ordered it (I needed my cart to make it to $25 so I could order a few arrows - that blasted add on program :). It arrived a day or so ago and has been sitting on the piano. Steve was over by the piano tonight and his eyes got all big and super excited about it. I hadn't shown it to the boys yet since our Mantis eggs won't arrive for a few weeks, but they jumped on it and CJ said, "I want to watch a movie about those!" So, enter YouTube, the perpetual teacher.

Maybe in a few minutes I'll pull out the Praying Mantis book I ordered when I ordered the eggs. I'm sure they'll eat it up.

That, my friends is how you learn without a curriculum.  It's learning for life. Take interests from life, real life, and learn to read, process math, write, grow a garden with beneficial bugs or shoot a bow and arrow.

You'll notice over the next couple of months a few changes coming to the blog.  Thursday's will boast reviews and giveaways.  Be sure to check out the "My First Science Experiments" post coming next Thursday.  There are also giveaways for a subscription to ABCmouse.com, book giveaways, curriculum giveaways, and much more coming soon.  Be sure to follow us on Facebook or by email to stay on top of all the great stuff that will be happening!

You'll also see "Nexus Academy" starting to pop up on the blog.  Nexus Academy is what I've decided to call our homeschooling adventures.  It will take us into the high school years much better than "Little Adventures Preschool" would.  So, Little Adventures Preschool, meet Nexus Academy.  Both preschool and Nexus Academy ideas will be posted here throughout the years to come.

Let me know what types of things would be helpful to you by leaving a comment below.  Together we can educate the next generation of world changers.

Happy Learning!
-Miss Amanda

Encouraging a Love of Reading

My philosophy on teaching reading is far different from many homeschoolers I’ve met.  I believe that children can learn to read at a very young age.  Children younger than 3 are introduced to letter names and sounds though aren’t expected to retain the information.

            Once children are 3 years old they have the ability to learn letter sounds and how to use them at the same time.  We focus on one letter per week.  We do not learn the letters in alphabetical order.  We learn them in an order that presents the highest number of CVC words for them to sound out.  As we focus on a new letter each week we add it to the letters we've already learned to successfully read decodable texts. 

            When you give young children this power to successfully read they are so proud of themselves.  They look forward to utilizing their new found skills in increasingly difficult books.

            We can encourage a love of reading by providing children the opportunity to be successful readers.  Giving them the opportunity to be surrounded by books encourages them to pick up a book, even if it just means looking at the pictures.

            We also encourage a love of reading by demonstrating a love of reading.  We can take the opportunity to read for ourselves as well as read to our children.

            I love using a child’s interests to encourage them to read more.  My oldest (a kinder) has a set of picture encyclopedias.  His reading lessons go as follows:

·         *He gets to browse through all the encyclopedias any time he is interested.

·         *If he’s interested in something specifically we read the encyclopedia page about the topic.  He reads the words he can read and I read the rest.

·         *If that satisfies his thirst for knowledge on the topic we move on and browse again.

·         *If he’s still interested in a topic after we read the encyclopedia we find other sources of information.  Sometimes this means visiting the library, finding books around our home, or utilizing an online leveled book library.  We find a text on his reading level about the topic of interest.  We also find a text that is much harder that we can read together.  He takes both books and highlights the words he can read (either with a highlighter or highlighter tape).  This empowers him by giving him the responsibility to discover what he can do.

·         *Lastly, we read the books together, over and over.

As we read together children are improving their reading skills and learning about ideas or reading stories on a topic of interest.

            We read things according to our interest in the topic.  We love reading because it satisfies something within us.  The stories captivate us.  The non-fiction texts empower us with knowledge.  It’s crucial to give children the same satisfaction with appropriately leveled texts and support for their current skills. 

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.