School Tools

What a busy and fun second day of school!  Today we talked all about the school tools that we'll be using in class, but before that we talked about being SUPER FRIENDS!  Can you believe it?  I turned all the preschoolers into Super Friends today.  They learned that super friends do some important things: 1. STOP 2. Think of a solution 3. Act.  We talked about our super powers being solutions to problems.  The four main super powers we have as super friends are: 1. Use Nice Words 2. Share 3. Walk Away 4. Get the Teacher.  I heard so many nice words and witnessed so much sharing today, it was fantastic!  Of course we all got to make and wear super hero masks to show our Super Friend abilities.

 We also got super hero pointer sticks.  We talked more about reading today and how good readers (and Super Readers) do four main things: 1. Look at the Letters 2. Point at the Letters 3. Make the Letter Sounds 4. Listen to the Letter Sounds.  We practiced these skills with our super hero pointer sticks all around the room.  For art today we explored many school tools.  The biggest hit was the scissors and the hole punch.  PLEASE let your preschooler cut scrap mail at your house as often as possible.  Have them sit at the table with a pair of scissors and some junk mail and cut it any way they would like.  Don't guide them to do anything, but let them explore it on their own.  Letting them cut often improves the muscles in their hands and will help them gain dexterity which will help with handwriting, too!

 During math time we talked about the quantity of 2.  We had a super fun math game where we had to match pairs of socks.  We also practiced our super friend abilities while playing with the blocks and toy cars and trucks.  It was a fantastic second day of school!

This afternoon I turned our second bunch of preschoolers into Super Friends as well!  It's so fun to give them a task like making their masks and watching how the tackle (or don't tackle) the project.  They loved the masks and practiced finding words around the room with their pointer sticks.

 We spent the majority of time in reading today.  As I sorted through what each child already knows and is ready to learn I was able to get a better idea of what and how I should be teaching reading in the coming weeks.  I'm so excited about all these little learners!  I worked in small groups and one-on-one with almost every child during reading while the rest of the group practiced their Super Friend abilities while playing blocks.  We also read to our sock monkeys again, I have a feeling the sock monkeys will be WELL loved by the end of the school year.

Art was a lot of fun as we talked about the primary colors (red, yellow, blue) and what would happen if we mixed the colors.  We got to find out with finger paints.  As our first painting experience it went really well!  Thanks to all the parents for being patient at pick-up today.  We were so crazy busy all day and running behind.  I do appreciate when the kids help clean up after class.

Welcome Back to School!

Welcome back to school!  We had such a fantastic time learning and playing together today.  This morning we had our preschool A class join us for lots of fun.  We played puzzles and with Starfall.com on the SmartBoard.  We read books about going to preschool and talked about the different fun things we'll get to do in preschool.  We learned the morning routine and talked about how we can wash our hands before snack time.  Each child gets to pour their own water at snack and we had zero spills, fantastic for a first day!

For art we colored our names in our journals and drew a picture of what we did in preschool on the first day of school.

We read The Napping House for math time and talked about the quantity of one.  Each child got their own copy of the book, so be sure to check for it in their backpack and pull it out to read at home.  We also went "fishing" to catch one fish at a time.  The kids were so full of excitement telling me all about the type or color of fish they were able to catch.  We enjoyed talking all about sound in terms of volume during music time and then got to play with all the different instruments.

There is new homework in their backpacks.  Remember that it is completely optional and if you choose to do it you may take as long doing it as you need.  There is no need to return it.  Today's homework is working on the colors red, yellow and blue.  You can sing and color the pages with your child.

This afternoon we had a fantastic preschool B class.  We also started our day with puzzles and playing on the SmartBoard.  Quite a few of the 48 piece puzzles were pulled apart and we worked in teams trying to put them back together.  What great teamwork they all exhibited!  When we sat down to start reading we talked about the most important things that good readers do.  They LOOK at the words, POINT at the letters, MAKE THE SOUNDS of the letters with their mouths, and LISTEN with their ears.  We worked on the letters M, T, A and the sight word "the" today.  Please work at home on those letters and reading their mini reader books (in their binders).  At school we got to practice reading our mini books to our new reading buddies, the sock monkeys.  It seemed to be a hit with the kids. In our encyclopedias we looked through lots of different pages and marked the letters M, T, A and the word "the" with highlighter tape anywhere we could find it.  You could continue that activity at home if you'd like.

 For math we also read The Napping House and talked about the quantity of one through five.  There were two pages that we did in school where we needed to identify how many fingers were held up and then color the same number of items (some kids didn't finish - finish at home if you'd like) and the second page we talked about which items there were 1 of, 2 of, 3 of, and so forth.  After math we moved into music where we explored all the different types of instruments we have in our box and danced around to music.

We also learned to pour our own drinks for snack time and worked on coloring our names and drawing a picture of our first day of school in our journals during art time.  There is new homework in their folder.  It is a focus on red, yellow and blue.  We'll be mixing colors of paint on Wednesday to learn what makes orange, green and purple.

School today was a whirlwind of excitement.  Please holler my way if you have any questions.  It was a fantastic day of learning!

May Preschool

May preschool is so much fun!  We review all of what we've learned throughout the year - and that's A LOT!  We practice our reading, writing, drawing, singing, math, puzzles and have an all around good time.  I do a one-on-one assessment with each child to figure out what they know and what we'll be working on together next.  Find review activities and the assessment to do with your kids at home or school here.  We had a fantastic year of learning and I look forward to seeing most of these kids in Preschool B in August.  Happy Summer everyone!

Mud and Worms in Preschool

We started our preschool day reading oodles of books about worms.  We talked about how they are important for the Earth and how to handle them.  We talked about their body parts, how they move and what they eat.  Then we opened up the worm compost bin and investigated the worms in there.  Outside we dumped a couple pitchers of water on the ground and up came a big fat worm!  CJ held it up for everyone to investigate. 

Then we were free to play in the mud.  We started off with a pool of clean water and a pool of dirt.  We also had our play kitchen tools available.  There was oodles of fun to be had with the self designated "work" of making mud.  There was an amount of transferring dirt and water from pool to pool.

 In the end this is about what we looked like.  Boy it was fun!

Be sure to check Facebook Wednesday morning for another quick giveaway!

Wheels 2-20

We had a great day talking all about wheels again on Thursday.  We've been reviewing all the letters we've learned so far and all the kids are doing so great!  We sang the "Wheels on the Bus" what felt like 100 times and they loved it!  We also played in the dirt with the construction trucks, worked on using shapes to draw different cars and played the piano on the SmartBoard practicing Hot Cross Buns.  It was such a great day!

Manners

We had so much fun today.  As a review day we got to plug in all the activities that we've missed in the last few weeks.  We got messy and had lots of fun.  The kids really loved the "No, David!" series of books and read them over and over.  We continued working on AB patterns and hope to move to AAB patterns next Tuesday.  

Manners

We had a great day in preschool today!  It was fun to learn the letter N with manners and "No, David!".  We continued working on AB patterns and are starting to understand the concept.  We also got to paint with nail polish today!  Since it was such a small group I also let them paint their finger nails in addition to the paper.  We had so much fun!

Moms

We had such a fun day in school today!  We learned more about the letter O and Moms.  We talked about all the jobs that moms do and played with the card table play house.  We practiced spelling "MOM" like "YMCA" and we found all the letters around the room that we knew with our "Word Detective" cards. 

 We did a lot of reading and some practice on the piano.  Then we headed to art and learned about drawing our moms.  We talked about the shapes of the different body parts (circle for the head, curved rectangle for the torso, etc.) and then we drew pictures of our moms and wrote the word "mom".

 We also started our first lesson in patterning today.  We had to have some fun free time with the blocks that we haven't been able to play with yet and then they each picked 2 colors (10 blocks of each color) and worked on making an ABAB pattern.  Please make the pattern at home every day.  Then "read" the pattern by saying the names of the colors (green, blue, green, blue, etc.) as well as the corresponding ABAB pattern (A, B, A, B, etc.). Keep up the great work!  We're going to learn so much great stuff this semester!

Winter Holidays

We had a fantastic day in preschool today.  We reviewed the letters we've already learned this year and then spent our literacy block picture reading books and doing some one-on-one quick assessments to judge where were are at this point in the year.  You can find my preschool assessment in the "A Year in Review" Pack on Teacher's Notebook.

We spent the rest of the day learning about Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Christmas and New Year's.  We practiced rolling dice and graphing snowmen, singing winter holiday songs and reading stories galore. Have a great break everyone!  We'll see you in the new year!

Don't forget to swing by and enter to win the Jan-May Preschool Curriculum!

Ocean Animals

We had such a fantastic day today learning all about the letter J and ocean animals.  We enjoyed playing with 250 balloons at the start of our day, then we moved into talking about Jellyfish and making the /j/ sound. Everyone got 5 J stickers to put on themselves (EMan put his on his tummy).  We had jell-o for snack with carrot tentacles.  It was so yummy!  We're moving on to separating phonemes in words and stretching the words out super long.

 Art was oodles of fun.  I love this activity.  Everyone got a letter J on their paper and he was going to have a party.  All of the other letters were invited to the party with the letter J.  It is always so much fun to listen to the conversation about, "Please pass the O" to "T is coming to the party too!"  Then they would stamp the letter onto the party page.

 We also worked on the J the Jellyfish Amazing Action Alphabet art page and the Montessori style ocean animals games from 1+1+1=1.  What a fantastic day of school!

Preschool Polar Express

We had such a delightful time learning all about the Polar Express.  The kids loved watching the movie (a YouTube video with visual clips from the film as the book is read out loud).  We also sorted images according to syllables, practiced rhythm with our rhythm sticks and reviewed the letter F sound.  LittleA in the bottom left picture is signing "cold" and making the /f-f-f/ sound.

 We practiced reading bells with word family words, explored graphing some more and continued to make sets for "Guess My Secret Rule."  It was such a fantastic day of learning.  Find these activities and more in our Polar Express Preschool Pack.

Snow!

I love snow day!  It's so much fun!  We play with snow and talk all about what snow is and introduce the letter F.  We do F on this day because it's the sound you make when you're freezing.  We started the day playing with snow in cookie sheets.  We decided to use the fake snow since it wouldn't melt or cause any problems like cold fingers. 

 We had so much fun with our reading lesson today.  We continued with our shared reading and finding the words we know how to read within the text we have.  The kids have loved marking the words they know how to read.

 I'm so sad I missed pictures of them dancing in our snowstorm.  We have snowflakes suspended from the ceiling at varying lengths and everyone thought it was the best game to make them swing and "snow" a little bit while we were dancing and singing.  We worked on the letter F art from the Amazing Action Alphabet, made snowflakes with silver pipe-cleaners and even graphed snowflakes.  It was an option to go out and play in the snow at the end of the day but the girls declined since they were working so hard on their beading.  The boys enjoyed playing outside though!

Sharing and Manners

Welcome back!  We enjoyed our first day back after our mini Thanksgiving break.  We spend the first day in December talking about sharing and manners.  As we move into the holiday season it's important to give an upfront reminder about how to appropriately behave.  We played a review letter game to review all 10 letters we've already learned in school.  Make sure you're still reading your mini readers at home every day!  We had a little dance break between the letter activity and story time since we'd been sitting so long.  All the girls held hands and jumped/danced in a circle and little A waved the "I Love You" ASL to her friend little E.  It was so adorable!

 For art we worked on making paper chains.  It was the first time we'd worked on this idea.  We stressed only putting glue on the end of one of the papers and then pressing it to the other end to make a circle.  Many made raindrop shaped chains, a couple of the older kids were able to make circle chains and one didn't connect her loops together but did very neatly line them up :).

 We also made a group family graph to introduce graphing (our December concept) and worked on sorting and classifying shapes.  We're getting better at building our own sets.  We started talking about tempo with the rhythm sticks as we listened to holiday music at the end of the day.  Happy December!

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!

Play Ball!

We had a great day in school today. Our class was a little small due to illness but that just means that we got more one-on-one time than usual.  Our theme was "Play Ball" with the introduction of the letter P and sight word "ball". We read a number of books right away this morning all about baseball. One of my favorites is the Berenstain Bears Play T-Ball.  It describes how to play the game in a very simple story.  After reading all our books we got out the T-ball equipment and got to work playing!

 We had popcorn for snack to go along with the letter P.  After snack time we glued the extra popcorn into P shapes.  We did more baseball reading and enjoyed playing our math game with attribute blocks.  We're still playing "Guess My Secret Rule" where we have a set of 4 objects, 3 have the same attribute and 1 is different.  Kids are working on creating their own sets to try and trick Miss Amanda.  We had a lot of fun playing today!

Scarecrows

We had a fantastic day talking all about scarecrows.  We read stories and non fiction books about scarecrows and then got busy making our own scarecrows.  I love this activity because the scarecrows are completely adorable and the kids work really hard on their coloring and cutting to put it together.  They are so proud of their work when they were done.  Plus, along the way they get to enjoy conversation.  The conversation at the all girls table was about whether or not they each had cup holders in their cars.  It was a very memorable conversation. 

 We continued working on identifying which objects fit into a group and which don't.  Part of that is being able to verbalize "Why".  We've got a handle on the game when there is only one variable changed (all circles, 3 are yellow and 1 is red).  It gets much trickier when more than one variable is different (a triangle, a square, a circle, a rectangle - 3 are blue and one is yellow.  In this case they often say the circle doesn't fit because it's not a square... etc. Where the shape doesn't actually matter but the color is the common denominator).  I'd encourage you to play this game at home with your silverware drawer or your chest of toys, even with your shoes.  Remember there are always 4 objects, 3 of them have the same characteristic and 1 has a different characteristic.

We continued working on our L book by building the pages from it.  We talked about how it was like a puzzle and we had to match the words to the picture.  They got a kick out of fixing incorrect sentences.

Preschool Thanksgiving

On Tuesday of this week we were able to talk about Thanksgiving.  Since we already spent a day talking about the first Thanksgiving with Pilgrims and Indians we were able to focus on the thankful part of Thanksgiving.  We talked about all the different things that make us thankful and read a great book called "I'm Thankful Each Day". For the rest of our lesson plans and printable activities be sure to check out our Preschool Thanksgiving Pack. 

We learned about letter L this week in many fun ways.  We searched all around the room for the letter L and put highlighter tape on all the L's we found.  We also practiced saying /l/ by licking a lollipop and making our tongue touch the top of our mouth for /l/.   

We're working on using our newly acquired descriptive vocabulary to verbalize why an item doesn't match a set in our "Guess My Secret Rule" game.  Today we used silverware to play this game.  Silverware is great because there are different types (spoon, fork, knife), different sizes and different colors or material (metal/plastic).

Overall, we had a fantastic day of learning!

Insects

For the start of November we're introducing the letter I.  We love talking about insects, who doesn't? So, though most insects are starting to hide from the cold, we're happily playing with plastic bugs of all sorts.  We learn different facts about insects, such as they use their antenna to smell and they have compound eyes.  Imagine a group of preschoolers wearing glittery antenna and "smelling" everything around the room.  It was so fun!  We also got to go on a bug hunt.  Our cute ladybugs had letters and sight words on them.  As we found them we got to read them to the group. Check out our Insects lesson plans for all 43 pages of the printable goodness :)

 We practiced reading our letter I book from the Amazing Action Alphabet.  It's the first really "hard" book that we encounter.  Every page isn't exactly the same anymore and we really have to pay attention to what we're reading.  We also introduce the sight words "I" and "my", which also make the book tricky.  As we were practicing our reading one-on-one the other kids were playing a "Catch those Bugs!" game with tweezers.  They LOVE that game!  Today we also cut, glued and handprinted the letter I insect. Our cutting is really improving!  Keep up the practice at home!

 Throughout November we talk about rhythm in music.  Today was the first day that they got to play with the rhythm sticks and explore playing them fast, slow, loud or quiet.  We also had fun playing with insects in math and exploring a Montessori style insect matching board.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone!  I hope you're having as much fun as we are!  We started our day decorating our classroom.  We cut out many different Halloween images and taped them all around the room. 

 We also worked on reviewing the letters we've learned thus far by writing them in our Halloween Letter Book.  Get your copy of the book in the Halloween Preschool Pack!

 We also had oodles of fun playing with shaving cream and food coloring on our Halloween table cloth!  Those are just the super highlights of our day.  We also read oodles of stories, make Jack-O-Lanterns on Starfall, and had our parents join us for a party!

Preschool Pumpkins

Pumpkins day in preschool really is a lot of fun.  We get to explore so many different aspects of pumpkins.  We colored on pumpkins with washable markers and used washcloths to wipe them off and color them again. 

We practiced the letters we've already learned with our pumpkin spinner.  We circle the word "the" in our song Five Little Pumpkins and we played with squishy sensory bags.  For all of our awesome lesson plans and printables see our Pumpkins Preschool Pack.  

 Every child got a copy of the book "Pumpkin Town" as their first book of the year.  I love getting every child a copy of a book that we can read together.  This gives them the responsibility to turn the pages appropriately and stay along with the group.  Directionality, one page at a time, and matching the pictures to the one in my copy of the book were what we were working. As we get a little better at reading we'll also start choral reading.

 I love our science time on Pumpkin Day.  We measure, weigh, count seeds, and talk about sink and float.

 We're starting to play "Guess My Secret Rule" now.  We'll be playing it for the next few weeks. Remember Sesame Street's "One of these things is not like the other..." segment?  This is exactly the same.  We have 4 items, 3 of those items have a matching characteristic and the last one doesn't match.  We talk about which one doesn't match and WHY.  As an introduction today I used pumpkins and we had characteristics such as color, size, face/no-face.  They started to pick up on the game rather quickly but aren't quite ready to verbalize the WHY element.  We'll keep working on it and they'll get better with time.