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.

Tuesday the 25th

This is C (2 yrs) yesterday.

 This is C today.  Notice anything similar?  I don't think I'll be able to pry his bob the builder costume off of him.  He loves it!  And the best part?  They are actual clothes that he can wear any time he wants!  Not just some thin jumpsuit that has a printed design on it.  Yay for a great costume!

 A few weeks ago when we were learning the letter B I printed out these cards and didn't have enough time to do the activity with our preschool class.  We finally got around to it today.  I had the boys cut out each letter and then use the bears to build words.  It was a different way to explore how letters have a purpose and was much more fun than rereading our beginning readers.

 Today we also had some fun with some color matching jack-o-lanterns and a pumpkin/jack-o-lantern sort.  They are great printables from 1+1+1=1.

 This is another of my favorite activities, and as soon as I started doing this the boys have been finding letters all over the real world.  I've written a few key sentences that go with our alphabet program (The Amazing Action Alphabet) and then I've had the boys find certain letters throughout all of the sentences and mark them with highlighter tape.

 We've done six letters so far.  C was so happy to pose for the picture after completing all of the S's (see them in blue?).

 Here's a little teaser for all my preschool kids for tomorrow.  Look forward to talking about Bats and Monsters and doing some cute counting!

 We'll be rolling dice and putting the correct number of Halloween sticks into our Frankenstein tubes.  I used the foam sheets cut in half, some tacky glue to make them into a tube and then foam stickers (thanks Oma!) on Popsicle sticks for our counters.  Look forward to these coming home (it'll also be the homework game for Wednesday).