Circus and Insects

We had a blast learning the letter E with our Elephants and Circus theme this morning.  We started by playing with blow up elephants, a circus tent, and Starfall on the SmartBoard.  Each child got a turn to get their face painted and had the opportunity to pick through different designs to get one that matched what they wanted.  I love how they all turned out.

 We read books about the circus and choral read "Hiccups for Elephant".  There are many words in that book that your little reader should be able to read to you.  We practiced lifting weights like the letter E and saying /e/.  We did a dot-to-dot alphabet page and learned all about the cone shape.

 This afternoon we started our investigations of the insects we're raising in preschool.  We learned what insects are are pretended to use our finger antenna to smell just like insects.  We read a few books, did some observation of the live insects and then drew pictures and wrote words to match.

 We did our baggy book reading and finished our math booklets.  We drew pictures to represent quantities up to 20.  We also practiced sorting out the first two rows of the 100 chart.  Eventually we'll be able to take all the cards out of the chart and put them back in order!

Nursery Rhymes and Elephants!

This morning in preschool we talked, actually sang, all about Nursery Rhymes.  When CJ was a newborn, I learned from a dear coworker that teaching children nursery rhymes before kindergarten was of the greatest importance to her.  She was the most fantastic kindergarten teacher I'd ever met and I want to make sure that these kids know their nursery rhymes.  That's why we sing them every week and have a few days each year dedicated to only doing nursery rhymes.  Sing and say them at home with your little ones to reinforce language skills that will help them as they grow and develop.  

In math today we went back to the unifix cubes to attempt to make AAB patterns. It's amazing how complex this idea is to preschoolers.  Please be patient with them at home as they clarify the information about the difference between ABAB and AABAAB.  Practice, practice, practice to make it easier!

 This afternoon our letter focus was letter E and boy did we have fun with it.  We had the blow up elephants and the circus tent out.  We played with all the animal masks and puppets and read "Hiccups for Elephant".  We had a fantastic time.  We moved forward with the Ready2Read program, drew pictures and wrote words in our journals and learned about pennies and nickels. 

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.