April Showers Bring May Flowers

This morning in preschool we talked about April Showers.  We talked all about the water cycle and used our recent experience of being wet on Monday and drying in the sun to talk about evaporation.  We acted out the water going up to the sky, making a cloud, and then raining down on us.  We reviewed the letters we've already learned and talked about numerals up to 6.

 This afternoon we worked on our constructing numbers game and started a couple kids on the numerals 50-100.  I did one-on-one assessments to determine which kids were ready for more in reading and math.  Math will keep us on the 100 chart for the next few weeks at least.  Many kids are ready to attack non-decodable texts now in their guided reading groups so we'll be able to move forward and have guided reading groups more similar to what they'll experience in Kindergarten classrooms.  Great learning today!

Fruits

Preschool A had a fun morning learning all about fruit.  We sorted fruit by color, picked our favorites and added them to our journals.  We practiced our letter V and the funny lip vibration sound it makes.  We had fruit for snack time and many kids tried kiwi fruit for the first time.  Yum!

 We had a great time learning the numeral 4 and practicing counting the TouchPoints on the TouchMath app.  It's an easy way to visually and physically count representations to remember the numeral.  We also spent the last 15 minutes playing outside in the lovely weather, I love this time of year!

 This afternoon we started outside but it got too chilly and we came in to continue our work in comfort.  We read some of "Pippi Longstocking" and had fun conversations about all the silly things she does.  We drew and wrote about our favorite parts of the story in our journals.

 We also continued our work on our Constructing Numbers game.  It went home as homework - PLEASE play it at home AND RETURN it on WEDNESDAY (mud and worms Monday, so keep it a couple extra days to practice).  We'll add numbers 51-99 for kids who are ready for it on Wednesday.  We also worked on our guided reading groups and Ready2Read lessons.

Planting Seeds, Constructing Numbers and Enjoying Spring

I LOVE when the Planting Seeds theme falls on a warm spring day.  It makes it so much nicer for me to clean up.  We spent the morning cutting out pictures from seed catalogs and gluing them in our notebooks.  We also used liquid glue to make seed pictures and we practiced our letters on the big outdoor chalkboards.

 We got VERY muddy when we got to work planting our very own pea plants.  We had to squish the soil with the water and then fill our little pots with it.  Then we planted our peas and enjoyed playing in the yard.

 This afternoon we spent a chunk of time learning about our "Constructing Numbers" game.  It's a download from differentiatedkindergarten.blogspot.com and I LOVE using it with my 4 year old class.  There are cards with the numerals on it and hidden pictures of the blocks.  The kids make their representation of the numerals in the tens and ones boxes and then can self check to see if they made it correctly by lifting the flap.

 We then were able to go outside and do our group reading lesson of "Biscuit in the Garden".  We love reading Biscuit books and I'm so proud of these kids for being able to read the majority of the book by themselves.  We had a little time at the end and the kids created "Rainbow Power" where they got power by putting chalk on their skin.  I had stepped inside to put books in folders and came back to colorful children.  What fun!

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!

Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day!  A few kids pointed out that today was in fact not Valentine's day.  However, since we don't have school on Saturday we celebrated it today!  This morning was a blast learning about the letter U.  We used a big balloon with a capital U and a small balloon with a lower case u to practice the /u/ sound.  We made the balloon go /u/ /u/ /u/ - UP! and then tossed it to another student to repeat the action.  We also talked about all the words in the mini U book from the Amazing Action Alphabet.  We talked about the family of frogs in the book and acted out all the actions that they do throughout the book.  After snack time each child got a box of heart candies to sort and graph.  We practiced one-to-one counting and determining which color and the most and the least. 

 After math we handed out Valentines to our friends with our decorated Valentine bags and then did a letter review game with balloons.  Each balloon had a letter on it.  The idea of the game was to look at the letter on the balloon and then sing the song about the letter name and sound ("N says /n/, N says /n/, every letter makes a sound, N says /n/").

 This afternoon we read a fun story called "The Day it Rained Hearts".  It's a simple and sweet story about a little girl making Valentine cards out of hearts that rained from the sky. Each child then drew their favorite part and added words to their drawing.  We then took turns sharing our work with the whole class.

 We did our regular guided reading groups today so everyone has 2 new baggy books to be reading.   For math we repeated our lesson from last Wednesday about units and sticks of 10.  Then we got out our math cards and paired up to play the matching game.  PLEASE play this game LOTS at home!

We had a great time playing outside for a bit.  Cheering for kids who completed Ready2Read units, coloring Valentine bags and handing out our Valentines.  It was a great day!

Hearts and a Day of Math

This morning in preschool we talked all about hearts as we get ready for Valentine's to be upon us next week.  We split into groups and played with some heart shaped boxes and toys and read.  We worked on reading about a snow zoo, which was really fun, and we drilled the importance of pointing at what you are reading.  We giggled about the different mistakes that I made when reading to the kids.  I'd point at the /a/ and say /z/ or at the /I/ and say /pickles/.  It was quite silly but it started to click!  Yay!  Point at the letters and make the correct sound at the same time.  Keep working on this at home!

 We also got to make tissue paper hearts in art time today.  The sticky contact paper proved to be a challenge at first but then they got the hang of it.  After art we played with pink play dough for a bit and then played with the shape blocks while I did a quick assessment to see what 2D shapes we were struggling with as a class.  It seems the rectangle and hexagon were the hardest.  Honestly, the hexagon doesn't really count in preschool.  It's an advanced shape for those ready to learn another shape.

 This afternoon, believe it or not, we spent 2 hours and 45 minutes on math.  I know.  I can hardly believe it and I taught it!  It was engaging and fun and lots of "I love this game" though we weren't playing what I would categorize as a "game".  We played with the foam TouchMath numbers while I did a quick check to determine who knew the numbers 0-9 and which numbers were still a struggle.  It turned out that the majority of the class knew 0-9 and were ready to work on numbers 11-20.  We spent time doing a lesson very similar to MathUSee with their concept of "Decimal Street".  I love how MathUSee is taught (at least the primer level) and was happy to have a more concrete example of place value to work with my preschoolers on.

 We worked mainly on the concept of a maximum of 9 units can live in the units house and when another unit wants to move in they form a stick of 10 to move to the tens house.  We will play with this concept with unifix cubes next week so they can stick the actual cubes together and move them into the next house (that's the downfall of base10 blocks, you have to trade them in).

We then cut out and played a numeral and picture matching game.  I would link the download but I didn't make it and it's now longer available :(.  Work on matching them at home every day and send the cards back on Wednesday next week so I can assess how they are doing.  This is an exciting time where we get to explore more about number sense and bigger numerals, yay!

Giggles and Gumdrops

What a fun day of preschool!  This morning we talked about the letter G with Giggles and Gumdrops.  G is a tricky sound to make.  I encourage kids to tip their head back and feel their throat to make the /g/ in the back of their throat rather than in the front of their mouth like /j/.  We read some very silly stories that really made us giggle!  Art and math were combined twice today.  We made fun gumdrop graphs and then made shapes out of gumdrops and toothpicks.  The gumdrops and toothpicks went home and you're welcome to decide their fate (they are technically spice drops, which aren't as commonly liked among preschoolers).  Then we  headed downstairs for math.  We talked about the four main shapes (circles, squares, triangles, rectangles).  One of the activities we did was to make lists of all the things around us that were each shape (clocks, beds, pizza, windows, etc.).  Please continue this conversation at home by pointing out different shapes in the environment. 

This afternoon we started our day with a number recognition activity.  Each child was given a pirate number graph and a die.  They rolled the die and colored in a square that matched the same numeral (dotted die and numeral sheet).  I was mostly watching to see if everyone knew their numbers 1-6.  This was a great activity to start recognizing groups of dots in specific patterns.  Every time you think of 4 you can easily picture the 4 dots on a die, right?  That's what I want our preschoolers to be able to do.  Know immediately the number represented on all of the sides of a d6.  (My husband told me I should just use d6 because I complained that writing the singular version of  dice over and over in a preschool blog was making me feel a little uncomfortable.  But he also warned me I'll sound like a Dungeons and Dragons player, which I'm not.  Anyway, I digress...)  We also worked hard on learning the letter Y.  Every student that is working on the Amazing Action Alphabet mini books said the /y/ sound as a /w/.  We worked on making our mouth ready to say the letter name "E" to say the /y/ correctly.  We then made great headway in our Ready2Read packets.  Every group should be finishing their current unit or even starting a new one on Wednesday.  Yay!

We read "Where the Wild Things Are" and drew our favorite parts and added words.  Each child took a turn sharing their book report with the rest of the class.  I was impressed with some new confidence in this exercise as a few students are finding their public speaking voice.  I'm really loving this simple activity and how we're really growing into it.

Have a great day of learning!

Preschool Fruit Theme

What a fantastic day of school!  We've been learning so much lately in school.  Our theme today was "Fruit" (makes sense with the theme "Vegetables" on Tuesday).  We started with puzzles, a repeated activity we'll do for the rest of the year.  We read a few books about fruit including "End of the Rainbow Fruit Salad" a fantastic book that you'll find a post about (and a giveaway!) later today. We continued with our guided reading lesson working on level A pre-reader texts.  Wonder why we're working on these texts since we've been using decodable texts all year?  Check out V is for Vegetable for more clarity. 

Another super fun aspect of our day today was that on our property we have about 10 different fruit trees and plants.  We were able to go on a nature walk just in our little area and talk about each of the different plants.  We searched for flowers that were starting to pop out and talked about if we don't bother them the bees will pollinate the flowers and fruits will grow.  We talked about the different shapes and colors of the different leaves and flowers. 

After returning inside we talked about numeral 4.  There is a great little series of books I read from Scholastic called "Number Stories".  There is a number chant at the end of each book and the kids love it!  They get to clap and stomp and jump and turn all for the number of the day.  It's so much fun.  Check out our full lesson plans for the Preschool Fruit Theme here. 

TouchMath Pre-K - Learning Our Numerals

We've finally reached the point in our school year where we start talking about numerals.  I believe it is important that other skills such as number sense, sorting, classifying, graphing and patterning are developed before we talk about the written symbol of numbers.  I'm so glad that the TouchMath  Pre-K curriculum follows this same development of skills. 

Our preschoolers are LOVING learning about the numerals.  The TouchMath Pre-K curriculum covers them very well and it adds so much fun when we utilize a few extra tools as well.  One of these extra sets we utilize are called Numeral Texture Cards.  They are so awesome!  They have a large printed numeral with different textures on the touch points (the circles that help us count).  The opposite side is a printed black numeral with the standard touch point(s).  My preschoolers (and toddlers) have loved sorting through these cards, feeling the different textures, tracing the shape of the numeral with their fingers, counting the touch points, and saying the numeral.

Another set we use is called TouchNumerals with Base 10.  These are great 6 inch foam numerals with foam TouchPoints to put on the numerals.  We count, place TouchPoints, mix them up and do it again.  I don't let my toddlers play with this set as they could easily be ruined by biting, but it's such a versatile set that I use it with my Kindergartner doing addition and subtraction and will easily use it up through multiplication and division.

We also utilize the TouchMath Adventures Touching/Counting app for the iPad.  It is a very simple app designed to teach a very basic (but sometimes not so simple) concept.  It simply teaches each numeral name and how to count the TouchPoints on each numeral.  We spend one day focused on each numeral 0-9 and this app is fantastic reinforcement of what we're learning.  It's not rocket science, but it is perfect for preschoolers learning the numerals.

We have been having so much fun learning this year and look forward to finishing out the year strong with a sense of representing quantities and numbers with the written form: Numerals.

*Please note, I was not paid for this review and I have purchased all of these products myself.  They are simply items I love!