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!

Play Ball and Ocean Animals

In preschool this morning we introduced the letter P with a "Play Ball!" theme.  We had tons of fun playing with different types of sports balls and talking about our favorite sport to play.  We used the foot print words under contact paper to play our reading ball game.  Everyone got a ball at the beginning, read the letter or word of each step they would step on and then shot a basket at the end.  They seemed to love it.  We talked about P the Pelican popping popcorn from the Amazing Action Alphabet and glued popcorn onto the activity page. 

 Each child got a couple baseball reading wheels today.  Check their binder for them.  We spin the wheel and say the letter name/sound or read the word.  The sight word "ball" was a new sight word today that needs to be memorized.  We continued our "Guess My Secret Rule" game in math.  Some of the kids were able to make their own sets without prompting and were allowed to go play the game as a group.  The rest of the group made sets with me following a step by step instruction.  "Take 3 blocks that are the same." (Interestingly difficult for them).  "Take 1 block that is different from the 3 you already had." (Relatively easy).  "Which block is different in your set?" (Difficult). "Why" (even more difficult).  PLEASE play this game at home to help us move forward in class!

This afternoon we had some fantastic reading lessons.  We practiced our nonsense words and sounds to warm up and then dove into some hard core reading.  We worked on the strategies readers should use when they get to a word they don't know.  There are 8 strategies in my February Dr. Seuss Preschool pack that we covered.  We'll continue referencing them as we're reading more difficult text.  We also talked about giving a 5 finger retell (1. Characters 2. Setting 3. Beginning 4. Middle 5. End). 

 We talked about ocean animals with the letter J this afternoon.  We read lots of books about ocean animals and found a great page in the encyclopedia that talks about the ocean.

 We continued our patterning in math by making patterns with giant beads.  We practiced making the patterns that were shown on the pattern cards today.  At the end of the day we enjoyed drawing with chalk in our notebooks.  The kids often talk about how their parents are going to be so proud of their art when they get the journal at the end of the school year.  It's so cute!

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!

December Preschool Packs

Find the Year Long Theme Calendar here and follow along with us!

The preschool curriculum that is all inclusive and provides hours of fun and engaging learning!  The "December Preschool Packs" contain 7 theme based lesson plans, a total of 205 pages of lesson plans and activity printables.  My preschooler has begged to do his "homework" because it's a wonderful time that we spend together learning age appropriate concepts!  These plans are intended to be taught in a 10 month sequence from Aug-May, though may be adapted to use individually. 

You can now download the bundle of December Preschool Packs HERE, or get them individually by following the links below. 

27. Sharing and Manners {Download}

What can possibly be better than starting the holiday season with a good dose of sharing and manners review?  Start the month off on the right foot with the fun games, activities, books and lots of learning in the Sharing and Manners Preschool Pack.  We'll practice the letters and words that have been introduced already this school year and continue talking about syllables.  Work together to create a paper chain and start a study about graphing.  Continue your conversation about super friends and how they share! 

28. Gingerbread Friends {Download}
The gingerbread theme is one of my favorites to teach.  We have so much fun on gingerbread day.  It's filled with baking, sorting, graphing, syllables and ideas for Gingerbread based learning that leaves everyone happy!  Preschoolers will practice writing their letters, play with puzzles and size sequencing, read a fun position words book and explore graphing!

29. Snow {Download}
The Snow Preschool Pack continues our learning about syllables and graphing.  The letter F is introduced, don't you say /fffff/ when you're freezing?  There is so much fun to be had with different tracing pages, activities about symmetry, patterning, individuality of snowflakes and people, Tic-Tac-Toe, a spinner counting activity and a play-dough mat!

30.  Polar Express {Download}
I am thrilled with the (now 2nd) remake of the Polar Express Preschool Pack.  You'll find word family bells to practice reading all the letters that we've learned thus far. There are counting pages and a Do-A-Dot train.  You'll also find a hop along the path large motor game (one of our favorites to play at Little Adventures Preschool).  It's been introduced before as a jumping game, but now we'll start making it more challenging by adding dice. There is a pattern block train as well as patterning pages. You will practice making tally marks and discus comparison words like larger, smaller, fatter, skinnier.  There is a train for standard and non-standard measurement and a short path game with a spinner.  There are also train cards with sight words that we've learned this year for a game of Matching, Go Fish, or Memory.  You'll also find beginning sound clip cards with all the letters we've learned thus far and a few extras for an extra challenge!  

31. Ocean Animals {Download}
The Ocean Animals Preschool Pack introduces the letter J with a focus on phonemes (specifically initial phonemes).  We continue graphing with goldfish crackers and a cut and paste activity.  There is Sea Star Bingo, a play-dough mat, a beginning reader book, size sequencing activities, color matching games and a mini lesson on the different ways we can observe Ocean Animals since they live under water and we live on the ground!

32. Winter Holidays {Download}
December is considered the holiday season because there are so many holidays that we celebrate.  Different families from different cultures and backgrounds celebrate the holiday season in different ways.  This theme gives a few tidbits from a few of the December holidays.  You'll find beginning sound presents, a letter to Santa and a Santa paper doll, New Year's activities and countdown chain toppers!

33. Thank You Notes {Download}
This is a nice little set of plans to remind us to teach the importance of writing thank you notes.  There are a few letters that are set up as tracing templates to add details and write thank you notes.  We review counting the quantity of items, read a few beginning reader books, practice our graphing, play Go Fish and match uppercase to lowercase letters, and even cut out our own envelopes and practice folding it and a note card.

**Preschool packs are lesson plans intended for a small preschool classroom or homeschool.  They are not to be used individually as they follow a year long curriculum that builds upon itself.  The themes specify what the underlying topic is that we'll be talking about with literature, in our art, and any science or social studies activities.  Reading and Math activities most often do not relate to the theme and these lesson plans are heavy in the reading and math department.  Printables expand on what we're able to cover in our 2.5 hours allotted to learn the materials and are often used as homework practice. The reading lesson plans are designed to be used with all the materials from the Amazing Action Alphabet and have been proven to teach children to be successful readers.

**Each preschool pack has 3 pages of lesson plan ideas.  Each child should be introduced to activities that don't involve something you can print from a computer, such as building blocks or painting.  These first 3 pages of lesson plans have all of the ideas that match the theme in one easy spot.  The lesson plans pages are organized by subject for easy referencing.  I've linked many of the materials listed to Amazon.com to provide you with more information about products you might want to consider using.  These packs have a lot of research behind them as I am a licensed teacher with experience teaching PreK-2nd Grade for 10 years.  

JellyFish

On Monday morning we started learning the letter J.  J the jellyfish jiggles, in case you were wondering :)  I opened up the idea of jellyfish by having all my ocean animal books all over the floor.  After reading a few of them we turned our attention to National Geographic to teach us some specifics.  The site I used is {here} and was excellent! 

 We even took the word tentacles and decided to trace the tentacles on the picture of the jellyfish.

 We learned that the letter J likes to hang out with his friends, so we made a jamboree party of stamp letters.  All the letters we know (a dozen total now) got to join the party.

 Very fun!

 We also practiced tracing the letter J and some basic prewriting tracing sheets.  These ones here are from my winter pack.

 For snack, the obvious choice was Jellyfish!  Or, Jell-o.  It was a hit!  I don't think I've ever served Jell-o for snack before, and each child ate 3 of them!  I put the Jell-o in cupcake pans and then popped them upside down onto their plates as their jellyfish.  The idea I followed suggested putting gummy worms as tentacles around it, but honestly I didn't have enough time to go buy any.  I don't think the kids noticed anyway :)

 Our art for the day came from the Amazing Action Alphabet.  We used markers and chalk to color a jellyfish and then glued some tentacles on them.  I started encouraging the kids to write their names at the top of their papers, and the reactions to that were as varied as being upset about it to completing it and moving on before I even knew it.  We'll keep practicing that and I'm sure by the end of the year we will get it right!

 M is making her jellyfish jiggle.

 We worked a little on our TouchMath work mats and we're ready to move on tomorrow!

 We also had a fish themed "Go Fish" game going on.  Steven was home and asked to sit in on preschool and I was thrilled when I split the kids into two groups that he stayed with the Go Fish group and helped them play.  I heard later that every mom heard about playing Go Fish with Mr. Steven.  I think that was the highlight of their day.  We used the Ocean Montessori Match up game from 1+1+1=1 and made it a go fish game.  All the pieces were upside down in the middle and each person playing got a game board.  Players picked up 3 cards and put any of the matches they had in their hand on their boards.  Then we took turns asking each other for cards that would match our boards.  If the other player didn't have it they said, "Go Fish!" and you picked up an extra card from the middle.  So much fun!

 The boys worked on their one-to-one correspondence work mats from TouchMath.  I'm so thrilled that I can do them on the SMARTBoard, think of all that paper we're saving!

 We, of course, had to have some crab walk races as well.  It is still pretty difficult for the kids to do this, but they were trying as hard as they could!

 To wind down a bit at the end of preschool we got out the manipulative boards and got to work.  It's amazing how at the beginning of the year all of these skills were difficult, but now everyone is getting so much better at them!  If you don't have manipulative boards like this they simply have buttons, zippers, snaps, laces, ties and buckles and you can easily find most of those things in your closet!

I'm still in overdrive trying to get things accomplished.  I just finished planning for preschool tomorrow (more ocean animals) and still need to accomplish some lesson plans for our new afternoon class.  A friend and I are starting a Spanish and ASL (and English) trilingual class tomorrow afternoon with our playgroup.  It's intended for moms with infants through school age kids.  Unfortunately my Spanish curriculum didn't ship when I was told it would, so it isn't here yet.  Bummer.  It just means I have to make some stuff up for tomorrow.  I'm off to work on that.  I'm sure you'll see in a post or two how it worked out!