Tot School - Zoo Animals

The last few days we've had some crazy wind in Denver.  This crazy wind took out two fence posts in my backyard.  I couldn't get them fixed before tot school today so we needed to stay inside for the day.  We did a slight swap of tot school themes and ended up doing Zoo Animals today.  I LOVE doing zoo animals.  We have some fun blow up zoo animals and some finger puppets.  We have puzzles and books galore.  It was so much fun!  

We made a zoo out of Lego Duplos, read "Goodnight, Gorilla" about a zillion times, and pretended to be animals ourselves.  I made some tear-free bubbles and put the bubble blower up high.  I LOVED the bubble solution, but it's residue was crazy.  Homemade tear free bubbles: 3/4 c water, 1/4 c tear free baby wash, 3 TBSP corn syrup.  The bubbles work amazingly well and there wasn't a single incident where it got in eyes and made anyone upset.  It did, however, leave an interesting sticky residue on hair, toys, and the carpet.  I'll definitely use it again, but outside for sure.  Those of you that have kids that played here today you may find this crazy residue on their little clothes and in their hair.  It should wash out easy peasy. 

Zoo and Guided Reading

This morning we had so much fun learning the letter Z with our Zoo theme.  We had the blow up zoo animals and the animal masks out for some run play.  We read a book called ZooBorns that was super cute, and there were plenty of words that we could read.  Our Amazing Action Alphabet mini book for the letter Z was a fun one to read about a monkey named Liz.

 We practiced our handwriting in our Amazing Action Alphabet handwriting book and even did stamps of zoo animals for art time.  Today we learned the numeral 9 and worked on all the numerals by having our zoo animals jump on the mats the correct number of times.

This afternoon we had an AMAZING guided reading lesson with the whole group based on a book about zoo animals.  We talked about more reading strategies and what we can do when the words are tricky.  We discussed punctuation and practiced using periods, question marks and exclamation marks.  Then we read our books to ourselves utilizing the strategies as we got stuck.  We also worked on a decodable reader and our Ready2Read phonics and sight words sets.  All the kids were super on task and so much fun to read with today that we didn't get to math.  We did, however get writing and art into our reading lessons, so I call it a win!  Great work kiddos!

Zoo Animals - Day 2

On our second day of learning the letter Z and all about Zoo animals we had another fantastic reading lesson.  This time everyone got a copy of a zoo book called I Love You, Zoo Borns.  This is a fantastic reader for this group because it contains many of the sight words (the, to) and simple words (is, in) that we already know how to read.  We used highlighter tape to mark all the words that we could read on our own on each page.  This is a FANTASTIC activity to do at home with your young reader.  Give them the opportunity to search young reader books for words they know.  It will help them to identify sight words and take charge of their reading.  Plus, they have so much fun with it!

We also did handprint animals to celebrate zoo animals today.  We painted our hands to represent lions, monkeys, zebras and peacocks.  The kids got to pick which animals they wanted to do and then I supplied the appropriate colors of paint and paint brushes.  It was so much fun!

Zoo Animals - Day 1

We had a fantastic day of school learning all about the letter Z and Zoo animals.  We read books of all sorts.  Our favorite is Dear Zoo.  If you haven't seen it you should check it out.  We had a lot of fun with our reading lesson today using the letter Z book from the Amazing Action Alphabet.  Watch the blog for a giveaway of these decodable readers soon!

 We also did Z art, learned numeral 8 and played with all sorts of zoo animals just like we were zoo keepers.  It was a great day. 

Zoo Animals - Tot School Thursday

Yes, I love what I do.  But, honestly... how could you not love this?

 We finally got to play outside again today for Tot School.  I'm hoping we're outside every day for the rest of the school year, but I make no promises.  Mother nature can be mean in Colorado.

 We played with zoo animals and learned the letter z.  We had so much fun!

 5 little monkeys jumping on a bed!

 This picture makes me giggle :) He was eating grass and each time I asked him to stop he would respond that he was a grasshopper (I guess grasshoppers eat grass now).

 A little snack time fun with songs.

 What do you mean don't ride the animals?  They are the perfect size for these toddlers to "ride", so cute!

 CJ got to take pictures of us during our art project time.  We made different zoo animal hand prints and the turned out super adorably.

 Story time.

 Everyone was so happy to be outside enjoying the sunshine and exploring life.

 We'll keep working on using scissors with play dough for the rest of the year.  They love this activity.

 Building with the really big wood blocks.

 In case you haven't heard, next week is Mud and Worms week here at Little Adventures Preschool.  Here is a sneak peak of what you may expect to find....

Wednesday Preschool - Zoo Animals

We had so much fun today learning more about the letter Z and zoo animals.  I didn't put the blow up zoo animals out on Monday hoping that they'd be more engaging after they'd played with the other zoo items we had around.  They turned out to be a hit!  

 We also had the little finger puppets out still and due to a dump truck toy being left out by my boys the night before a new game appeared... feeding the blow up animals the finger puppet animals.  The tiger finger puppets were the big blow up tigers food, the elephants were the elephant food, and so on.  The truck became the transport and sorting center.  (and no, I would have never thought to leave out a truck on purpose, what creative kids!)

 We have been working on shared reading throughout the year.  A shared reading is when everyone has a copy of the text and is responsible for following along and I read out loud.  On Monday we paused before reading the text on every page and did a word/letter hunt in the text for words/letters that we know.  I love doing shared readings because there are so many skills that simply need a repetitive practice to master.  Some of these skills we're working on include: holding the book the correct way (upright and forward), turning one page at a time, following directions and staying on the same page as a group.  Today's shared reading was a great success as kids were monitoring themselves and offering to assist their neighbors if they got lost.  It is so heartwarming to watch how they interact at this time of the year.  They've grown together as a school family.

 VB decided to put a stool right next to my rocking chair and wanted to be my helper all day.  It was so cute.

 During our music time all of the blow up animals were invited to sing along with us.  I can't believe how great our class is at our program songs already.  They picked them up so quickly.  Be sure that you've marked your calendar for our end of year BUG celebration to watch their cute performance.

 Drawing our favorite zoo animals.

 We've been working on recognizing the numerals 0-10 and got to play on Starfall.com today on the SMARTBoard.  Every child got to take a turn picking a number and completing the activities that went along with it.

 Working on our puzzles.

 These two boys were so creative.  One was a tiger (ZR) and one was a bear (CJ).  They were piling up the blow up animals on this bench and then they "Needed to eat meat!" so they'd rambunctiously pretend to eat all the animals.  Okay, now that I type it it sounds gruesome  but when they were playing it I thought it was quite ingenious.

 Afternoon preschool moved on to reading a level C book called "Sherman Sure Is Shy" from ReadingA-Z.com after playing outside for the first 15 minutes of the day (it was so warm and we couldn't resist!).

 We talked about the definition of a character and described Sherman's thoughts, feelings, and actions.

 I thought today's math activity was going to be incredibly awesome and engaging.  I was wrong. :( They weren't very interested in matching the numerals to the images of the numbers and the puzzles (being only 6 pieces) weren't difficult to put together without paying attention to the numbers.  It also turned out to be not such a great printable due to the images of the numerals.  I didn't notice before we started playing with it that the base ten blocks weren't separated in the ones category, they were rods just like the tens.  I think it ended up more confusing than anything.  Oh well.  We'll try a different activity next week.

 We did more studying about worms, their body parts and habitats since we'll be doing our mud and worms day on Monday.  Be sure to watch your email for details about that, it's sure to be a messy day!

Tuesday Tot School - Zoo Animals

We had such a blast in tot school today.  We had some of our regular Tuesday kids and a couple of kids that joined us from our Thursday class.  It was so fun to set up the classroom.  I have two each of 6 different zoo animals and I set them up in pairs around the classroom like it was a zoo.  They all wanted to ride on the blow up animals when they first arrived, but learned quickly that that wouldn't work :)

 Our animals were dancing and talking with each other.

 We also had all of the animal finger puppets out. It was interesting how kids sorted and played with them.  Some only wanted all of the same type of animal, others only wanted one of each animal.

 The animal masks weren't as big of a hit in tot school as they were in preschool yesterday, but they did get some use :)

 We sang 5 little monkeys over and over.  They thought it was so funny that I'd put 5 monkeys on my hand and then take one off each time one jumped off the bed.

 We also sang Leo the Lion with the lion puppets.

 We have been pulling out the play-dough and scissors every day for the last little bit and will most likely continue doing this activity every day since it is so great for their motor skill development.

 Art was fun and interesting.  We made 3 different hand print animals.  A zebra...

 A lion... and a peacock (I didn't get a picture of that - it was very messy by that point!)

 They loved reading the books about the zoo animals that I pulled out.  I think this one was their favorite ("Dear Zoo").

 We also read "Curious George goes to the Zoo", every child will get a copy of this book to keep, so if you didn't get one today it will go home the next time I see you.  Happy Reading!