Little Adventures Preschool: Moms

Showing posts with label Moms. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

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!

Thursday, January 9, 2014

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!

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Moms

We loved talking about Moms and the letter O today. We even worked on spelling "Mom"! We played all sorts of mom activities. The felt play house was a big hit (hangs over a card table). There are so many pieces like flowers and plants and even a little felt squirrel that ended up climbing on everyone's heads and arms. It was so fun to play with them. Every time I'd poke my head in the dog door and say "woof, woof" they would squeal with delight :). I rearranged the room a bit and put the princess mirror where everyone could reach it. The girls loved checking it out today.

We also practiced other jobs that moms do. We were doctors and nurses and we took care of babies and read books galore! We had so much fun!

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Tot School Thursday - Moms

Tot School today started off with a bang - banging pots and pans. It is quite often my own children who dive into the craziness immediately upon having their friends come over :)

I've started leaving the Fridge Phonics set up on the magnetic board and it's gotten a lot of play over the last few weeks.

We spent the day playing with the Moms Tot Pack sorting moms and dads (that was their favorite page to play over and over again) and playing with the peg board.

LilGalP wanted to read books all day long, so we read quite a few over and over again.

Coloring pictures for our moms.

Reading the picture dictionary.

LilGalB was working her hardest with the tweezers from the kitchen set to pick the child safety lock to my computer room. It was so cute! She was all the way across the room so I had to super zoom in, hence the poor photo quality.

We made pipe cleaner flowers for our moms, too. Each child picked out their favorite color. We took 4 of that color and bent them in half. Then we took a green and bent it in half over the crease in the first 4. We spun the green around itself to make a stem. Then we twirled the colored pieces (8) on top. They're super cute and were fun to play with. They even went around "smelling" their flowers and their friends flowers.

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Preschool - Moms

I don't often show pictures of us working on our name cards because I feel I need to protect the kids by blocking out their names and that's more work than I want to do every week. We do, however, do this activity often and it is very obvious how many families encourage their child to do their name tracing at home. PLEASE do it weekly at a minimum and daily if you can. Being able to write their own name is a goal for the end of preschool and I need your help at home to make it happen.

We had a little "Listen and Move" break right away since we were a bit antsy.

We learned how to spell mom and that good readers make the sounds of the letters they see written in words. Each child got 3 circle stickers, each with one letter of the word "mom" on it. We put the stickers on our fingers and tap our fingers to our thumbs. When the letter is touched by our thumb our mouth has to make the sound that the letter represents. We say the sounds faster and faster until we know what the word says.

Practicing our letter sounds.

We took a little movement break and did a Sun Salutation (Yoga - Track 1 on Dance for the Sun). I love this track because the lyrics sing the movement you should be doing, so with a very little yoga information you can be successful.

Here are the boys working on reading their Letter O book about all the jobs moms do.

We had our first lesson on patterns with some unifix cubes today. Each child took home 20 blocks (theirs to keep at home) please help them make an AB pattern with their blocks EVERY DAY for the next 2 weeks. You can also encourage them to make different designs and explore what they can do with the blocks.

We ended the day working on the 2, 3, 2, 3 pattern of black keys on the piano. We play the black keys all the way up the keyboard saying the number of keys we're playing.

Preschool B is working on short vowels for the next few weeks. Our focus for today was short e.

We also spent a lot of time reading from our encyclopedias and finding all the vowels in every word.

Coloring all of the vowels.

We were reading about light and the different colors we can see with light in one of the encyclopedias and the kids decided that they wanted to paint and mix the paint to make new colors for art time. So we did.

We played with the Touch Math 3D Numerals for the first time today as we tried to match up the correct number of dots onto each numeral.

I have to say that I've been quite leery of paint and messy projects lately since my house has been so clean (due to an awesome barter with an awesome mom). Perhaps EMan is the true culprit in my leeriness since he had to have a mini bath in the kitchen sink before we could move onto math in preschool B...

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Moms - Tot School Tuesday

As we learn the letter O this week our theme is "Moms". Today we talked about all the many different things that moms do for us. We read a silly book, "I Love You, Stinky Face" where a mom loves her little boy even if he's a dinosaur or a stinky skunk. Moms love us no matter what.

I had a few different centers set out at the beginning of school but it seemed that the table full of kitchen things was the biggest hit.

The babies were a part of almost every activity, we dressed them (and undressed them) and fed them and carried them all around.

The peg board didn't get a whole lot of action today, which is highly different from most days that I pull it out, either the other activities were just more engaging or they've mastered the art of playing with peg boards and moved on, I'd like to think it was the former.

EMan wore this fabric picnic basket as a hat all morning, I think it was his chef hat.

LilGalA and LilGalE had fun sorting the mommies and the daddies. Toddlers are starting to understand gender differences and this is a great activity for them. You'll find it and other great activities in the Moms Tot Pack.

We played dress up and EMan looks great in my red shirt and black church shoes.

We're so excited to have LilGalBR join us for our Tuesday Tot School class, it's so much fun to have a new friend!

So fancy!

We had a lot of fun making pipe cleaner flowers for our moms. Everyone picked out their own colors and we twisted them together.

There is a coloring page at the back of the Moms Tot Pack that has penguins holding flowers. Everyone colored one for their mom.

We're still using our gingerbread shaped crayons and they still smell so yummy every time we pull them out.

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

January Tot Packs

Find the year long theme calendar {here} and follow along with us! This post gives details and pictures of all 5 January Toddler Packs. Be sure to scroll down to see all of them.

Tot Packs 20-24
Tot packs are about 20 pages in length. They each have 2 pages of activity ideas, book suggestions, and links to the materials I use. You can certainly use all or part of the lesson plans. The printable pages include songs, matching games, drawing games and other activities. Tot packs are designed to be a first introduction to math concepts, letters, shapes and colors. They are not meant to obtain mastery in any subject. Let them be a guide for educational play between you and your child.

January
{Download all 5 January Tot Packs}