Emotions: How We Express Ourselves

This week in preschool we started our new inquiry block "How We Express Ourselves".  With preschoolers this starts of with discussing emotions and actions/reactions.  We read tons of stories like "The Way I Feel" and "Today I Feel Silly" to discuss the wide variety of emotions.  I love that "Inside Out" has been seen by many kids in the past year.  They have more vocabulary to describe the different emotions because of it.  We identified emotions all day long on Tuesday and then on Thursday we talked about what emotions look like on your body.  If you're happy you smile, if you're sad you may be quiet, if you're excited you may be jumping up and down.  We also talked about the possibility of changing a negative reaction (hitting, snatching, wailing, sulking) into a helpful reaction.  The idea that we have control over how we react is still being worked out within preschoolers.  I hope that our conversations this week have opened them up to a possibility of choosing a different reaction, though as an adult it is still hard for me personally to change a reaction. One small step at a time, I suppose.

The first couple of weeks of December will also be spent reviewing the 4 basic coins, their value and their identifying characteristics.  On Tuesday we talked about pennies and shined our pennies in a salt and vinegar solution.  That's why my house was stinky when you picked up your kids :).  On Thursday we talked about the nickel.  We're also dilligently working through the Moffatt Girls Ready2Read program and reading our interest led reading books.

Thursday we pulled out the puppets and let the kids play with the puppets and the emotion bean bags together.  It turned into a silly game of very emotional puppets :).

Healthy Bodies and Preschool B

We had a very active morning this morning in preschool A.  We were moving and shaking, jumping and balancing.  We were working on the letter K and learning all about healthy bodies.  We played with 3D shapes that had silly pictures of germs on them.  We read all about the different parts of our bodies (brain, heart, skin, bones, muscles) and how they are important for us to keep healthy.  We read all about germs and about how they live on the ground, in the air and everywhere!  We learned the importance of cleaning and washing our hands with warm water and soap.

 We read stories and drew pictures of how to keep ourselves healthy.  The art below says "This is how I wash my hands".  We also played with blocks and would randomly have everyone hold up a cube.  By the time they were done building their city they all knew what a cube was!

 This afternoon we worked oh so hard on our Ready2Read lessons. I was super impressed with one kiddo who was struggling a bit a few weeks back and has reached amazing new heights of understanding in the past couple weeks.  It's so fun to see it click and become fun to read.  We read a fun story called "Tom" by Tommie dePaula.  It's such a cute story about Tommie and his grandpa Tom.  They have some fun with chicken feet so it seemed appropriate for today since we just got new baby chickens.  They all drew pictures and wrote about their favorite parts in their journals and were (once again) so disappointed that we didn't have enough time to share our work with the class.

 We moved into exploring the 100 chart for the first time today.  We did some coloring of it looking for patterns, such as columns that has the numbers 1-9 in order or the same number (like 1) in the units place in the whole column.  We pointed to the numbers and counted out loud to 100 as a group.  Practice counting your 100 chart out loud at home.

Race Cars and the Zoo

What a great time in school this morning.  Even with all the snow everyone was able to make it safely and we learned a ton!  I'm so glad we didn't have to cancel school but I was nervous for those of you on the roads.  This morning we were talking about letter R and race cars all day. Everyone LOVED the Usborne Race Cars book.  It has tracks for wind up race cars to go on.  It was a hit!  We also made a couple of cardboard cars and ran around saying /r/!  Each child got an eraser (cars, airplanes, boats or trains) and we raced them them in the air saying /r/!

 We had great reading lessons today.  I'm so proud of this class!  They are doing fantastic!  The letter R book introduced the sight word "to".  We practiced reading "to" with the sight word watch from the Moffatt Girls.  I was super proud of my second reading group who made great leaps in blending sounds together, they're getting it!

 For art today we played with a sensory bin of water beads.  It was used last week for our homeschool Bloodmobile lesson and since water beads tend to hang around forever we decided to play with them in preschool as well. After the sensory bin we had a fun math lesson about shapes.  We talked about all the shapes around us: the white board is a rectangle, the clock is an oval, there are triangles on the borders, etc.  Then each child got their writing notebook and went on a treasure shape hunt throughout the room.  They found lots of different shapes and drew what they found.  It was the cutest thing ever!  They were so busy with their "work".  Walking around and finding comfortable places like the stairs to sit and draw.  It was so cute and so fun!

 This afternoon we continued our Ready2Read lessons.  We started the Level 2 word wall with a few of the kids and began introducing consonant blends and digraphs.  We also got to read a new book "I Love You, Zooborns!"

 We also got to play with the water bead sensory bin after snack and I was quite impressed with the kids that were a part of the homeschool blood lesson.  They were telling everyone else about what the parts of the sensory bin represented.  I was happy to see that lesson stuck!

 After art we headed downstairs for math.  We're making our own books for math right now.  Each page has a number and a decimal street drawing to match.  We're working on labeling the houses ("tens" and "units") and drawing them appropriately.  We're working on making sure that 6 is represented with 6 units instead of 6 sticks of ten.  We'll work more on this the next couple of days before moving on to counting to 100.  Please continue to play the matching card game at home!

Wheels in Preschool

This morning in preschool we had a letter review.  We got to play with wheels and talk more about the different shapes around us.  We played with all the vehicle toys and cut out pictures of wheels and trucks.

 We had a fantastic time in art today.  We cut out pictures of vehicles and glued them onto our pages according to if they were facing right or left.  Then we painted using toy vehicles to spread the paint all around.  We continued our discussion about shapes and talked about what shapes would roll the best.

 This afternoon we dove right into our Ready2Read and guided reading lessons.  We talked about letter X and had a great time reading the book "Max" by the Amazing Action Alphabet.

 We also spent time discussing the numbers 9-15.  We made a tape version of the tens and units homes.  We used unifix cubes and our big number mats.  We're still working on understanding that a stick of 10 is 1 stick of 10 units.  I'm hoping to really get a hang of what the numbers up to 20 mean so we can start working on counting to 100 next.  And not just the counting of it, the UNDERSTANDING of it!

Review Day 1-14-2015

We had so much fun this morning in Preschool A.  We continued practice on our name writing pages and they are looking so fantastic!  Once we had practiced our names a few times we also worked in the Amazing Action Alphabet Handwriting 1 book and did a trace and cut assessment page.  We had tons of fun working on our letter N book at the SmartBoard and learning that an exclamation point means that the sentence is yelled (I apologize in advance for them yelling "NO!" at the end of each page, I was trying to make a point :) ). 

 We also continued our work on ABAB patterns.  Our tool of choice today was colored chips.  We made long snakes in our patterns and then mixed them up and did it again.  We utilized VirtualPiano.net to practice the piano on the SmartBoard because it gave me the ability to circle sets of 2 black keys and 3 black keys and write on the page "A" and "B" above certain notes to practice making musical patterns.

 This afternoon we worked hard in our Ready2Read program.  What you can't tell from the pictures is that my house, and the children, were all covered in glitter by the end of reading.  Glitter certainly makes learning sight words that much more fun!  Four kids passed off their units and moved on to more sight words and word families.  They really like when the whole class cheers for them, it's so cute.  Writing today was tons of fun.  I read "Alice the Fairy" by David Shannon aloud to the class.  Then we did a 5 finger retell as a group.  We each shared our favorite part of the story and then we went to work drawing and writing about that part in the book.

 The kids really enjoyed math today because it involved playdough.  We made the playdough together and then worked on making our 3D shapes with it.  Today was the last day of 3D shapes since we'll be working on coins for the rest of the month.  Please point out spheres, cubes, pyramids, cones and cylinders to your kids as often as possible.  This is important vocabulary.

What a great day of learning!  Enjoy Monday off for MLK Day!  See everyone Wednesday!

Manners and what was supposed to be Karate...

Yesterday in preschool we had a fantastic time talking about manners, though manners may not be the appropriate word to describe it.  We talked about what good behavior should look like and practiced making the "/n/ /n/ /n/" sound at "David" the book character from "No, David!".  The kids loved it!  Our sight word for the week is "no".  Please read them the book "No, David!", you'll find it in their binders.  While you are reading PLEASE let them read the word "NO" every time you come to it.  You'll also find the word "I" and the word "the" (I think) that they can read as well.  We'll work on the letter N Amazing Action Alphabet book tomorrow in class.

We also spent a great deal of time talking about how to write our names.  It's our goal to have the 3 year old class writing their names by Valentine's.  That's just a month away!  Be sure to practice EVERY day!  Sometimes it works better to use a wet erase marker on the lamination because they have such a fine tip, if you need one please let me know - I have a stash and would happily share.  One of the things we spent a lot of time on was the shape and size of each letter in our name.  Trying to see the shapes of the letters in order to draw them.  There is a great app called iWriteWords (no I'm not paid by them or anything, but if they want to contact me I'd happily give away a copy of their awesome app to a reader on my blog).  Anyway, if you have a device that you let your kids play on, consider installing the app and improving their handwriting skills at the same time.

Wow.  Certainly a lot happened in school yesterday.  We also had the great opportunity to paint with nail polish yesterday.  It's a super fun activity for the kids to practice painting and putting lids on and taking them off.  We only had one bottle drop and explode, phew!  I've already cleaned up with nail polish remover and I'm happy to have all the nail polish given away to preschool families so I can move past this activity in my house. Once again ... phew!

 This afternoon was a whirlwind of reading.  It was the type of day where we never got to our theme (Karate) and only got the bare bones done.  We are doing a little rearranging and with everyone's help (ahem...homework) we'll get into a better spot where I don't have to do 6 different lessons for 8 kids.  We practiced the letter K and worked on reading our Amazing Action Alphabet K book, we began Ready2Read Level 1, we continued work in Ready2Read, we ran around the house like crazies for a few minutes after snack and we drew pictures in our journals while I chatted with adults after class.  There is so much learning going on at this stage of these awesomely absorbent brains that I simply can't fit it all into our short time together each week.  Thanks for enabling your kids to reach great potential by supporting their learning explorations at home!

I Am Special

First off, THANK YOU to all the wonderful families of Little Adventures Preschool.  Yesterday was a busy day learning about the program that CJ gets to attend on Monday's and I appreciate the willingness to allow the one time change to school being on Tuesday.

Today we had a blast learning the letter M.  We talked, sang, danced, and traced letter M.  We learned all about M the Moose and how he just loves his Meatballs!  Be sure to grab the flip chart and review letter M at home with your preschooler.  Also, take out the alphabet cards (they were in the binder, PLEASE take them out) and display letter M somewhere.  I added magnets to the back and stuck them on a whiteboard.  Do what works for you!

 We also made fun phonics headbands from the Moffatt Girls.  The kids loved wearing the headband/crown all day.  For art we traced over our names with a paintbrush and glue and added glitter to them.  It was a fun and sparkly activity!  We spent lots of time talking about our "Star Student" posters.  We talked about how everyone is unique and special.  We had fun finding out favorite colors and how many people are in each family.  We hung the posters up in our classroom and will return them in a few weeks.

 We practiced the sign language for letter M and had an introduction to hand bells lesson.  Boy were those loved!  Check out our facebook page for a fun video.

This afternoon we got closer to being settled in to a groove.  I'm still sorting out the details of what each child needs, but we're really close!  We had a fantastic time listening as each child shared about themselves on their posters.  They talked about the photos and the pictures they drew and it was fun to compare favorite colors.  We read our new book "The Day the Sheep Came" and worked on highlighting letters and words we could recognize in the book.  It's a fun story about how the sheep is a different animal, but they are all barnyard animals and like to play together.  It tied in nicely with our conversation about how each of us is special.  We worked in our reading teams today for small group lessons.  Please check your child's binder for the homework.  There aren't any worksheets, but there are reading books.  You should be reading each book 3 times a night.  Please focus on the letters we've already talked about in class (M, T, A, and possibly S, B).  Help your child remember their names and sounds by reading the flip chart story and supplementing with anything else you have at home. PLEASE take the flip charts out of the binders and keep them at home.  We don't need them here and they are in the way in the binder.

We had an AWESOME lesson in math today.  It simply didn't get photographed :(.  We talked about the word "SAME" in relation to quantities.  It took a theatrical teacher, but I think they finally got to the point that we all agreed that 1 is the same as 1, 2 is the same as 2, 3 is the same as 3, and so forth.  Then our new vocabulary word "EQUAL" came into play.  We patted our legs as we chanted, "Equal means the same" over and over.  Ideally, tomorrow we can build off that concept and talk about more and less.  It's a fun lesson to do with the kids, they always love it.
We also got to do glitter for art today.  I wrote the kids names on word strips and they traced the letters with glue and added glitter.  Music was quite interesting today as they were allowed to play with all the musical toys we have and they formed their own band.  It was fun to watch as they organized themselves to "play" and "be quite" at the same time.  What smart kids!