Families - A Preschool Review of MTA

We had oodles of fun in school today.  It's a letter review week and our theme was Families.  Each child started the day with puzzles of their own families that they had to put together.  They loved it and many of them kept hold up puzzles pieces and saying "This is my Mommy."  It was so cute! 

We talked about all the shapes that make up bodies and had a little art lesson about using the shapes to draw something.  We drew ovals for heads, rounded rectangles for bodies and arms/legs.  It was fun to go around the room and write down some details about what they were drawing. 

We worked on sounding out letters in words today since we're reviewing all the letters we've learned.  One strategy is to drive a car under the letters and while the car is under a letter we say the sound of the letter.  The car can drive on the street over and over while the word gets faster and faster. 

 We also had an introduction to numerical order today.  We started talking about first, second and third.  This isn't something that many preschoolers will master, but introducing the vocabulary is great at this stage. 

Animal Friends

We had a fantastic day learning about the letter A and animal friends today.  All of the kids loved coming in this morning to find these mini animals, fishing poles with fish, animal hand puppets and stuffed animals galore!  There was plenty of animal noises around the room as they played with all the items. 

 Art was amazingly engaging today.  We first drew with crayons and then water color painted over the top of our drawings.  Many of the kids were focused on their art for upwards of a half hour!

 We also talked about puppets and made sock puppets today.  Last year when we did sock puppets there was a bit of hesitation about them. This year the kids were ready to dive in and put them on themselves.  They even brought me a second one for their other hand so they could have a puppet on each hand.  The puppets played all around our back yard and some are still drying off from a bath in the tub of sandy water in the sandbox.

 We played with our Animal Friends tot pack today.  I loved playing one-on-one with this little man as we sorted where the animals should live - in the barn or in the house.

Preschool Reading - Opposites Day

This week in preschool we're introducing the letter "a", which gives us the first unique opportunity to teach blending letter sounds to read words.  This is a HUGE concept for any reader and is so important for kids to master with just the 3 letters we've now learned (M, T, A).  I utilize the Amazing Action Alphabet materials, and specifically their Beginning Reader set.  These materials are fantastic in helping kids understand what reading is, a very difficult concept of making the sounds of the letters blend together into words, but very simply developed through these beginning readers.  

 We've already learned letters M and T.  Today we spend some time working on letter A.  It's important for children to be responsible for their own learning and utilize what they've learned.  We spend time being detectives with mini magnifying glasses finding the letter of the week around the room.  We look all around on the walls and the floor for the letter.  Then we mark the letter with highlighter tape.  All of the letter A's that we found are now marked with blue tape throughout the room and will stay that way for the duration of the school year.  At home, encourage your little one to find the letter of the week everywhere you go: on signs, in books, even on cereal boxes!

 I love Starfall.com for all of their variety of activities.  The alphabet activities include fun digital books with interactive pages such as this page where we sorted capital and lowercase letter A apples into their correct basket.

 Here is where we get into the most important concept of the day: blending letters.  This is HUGE and shouldn't be skipped over.  In fact, it should be practiced every day until they understand the concept.  We write the letters "a" and "m" on separate dot stickers.  Then we put the stickers on the left hand.  The "a" goes on the left pointer finger, the "m" goes on the left middle finger.  We call this strategy "tapping".  Tap the left thumb to the left pointer finger (where the letter a is) and make the sound /a/.  Then tap the left thumb to the left middle finger (where the m is) and make the sound /m/.  We are reading the word "am".  We do it slowly at first "/a/ /m/, /a/ /m/" over and over.  Then we speed it up and repeat.  Eventually you make the sounds so quickly together that you blend the sounds into the word.  Your thumb moves from pointer finger to middle finger in more of a slide fashion than a tap.

This is where the "What Good Readers Do" page (in the School Tools preschool pack) comes in.  Good readers do 4 things.  They LOOK at the letters, POINT at the letters, MAKE THE SOUND with their mouths, and LISTEN to the sounds to determine the word.  We're looking, pointing and making the sounds.  Now we have to listen to the word we're saying.  What word are you reading?  What sounds are coming out of your mouth?  When you put those sounds together they make the word "am".  We use the word "am" in sentences like "I am happy."

 Practice tapping the sounds of the word 'am' until your preschooler(s) understands the concept.  Then move onto the word 'at' as the second word to practice tapping.

Today also happens to be themed "Opposites".  We do a number of fun opposites activities such as identifying what opposites are and playing with opposites like wet and dry chalk during art time!

Winner!

Congratulations to Shannon Caswell for winning the Craft Supply Box from Lakeshore Learning!  Look for an email Shannon!  

Dentist Office Field Trip

Don't forget to swing by and enter to win the Lakeshore Learning Craft Supply Box!  http://littleadventurespreschool.blogspot.com/2013/09/lakeshore-giveaway.html

We had oodles of fun at the Dentist Office today.  If you happen to live in the Aurora/Centennial area I'd highly suggest Saddle Rock Pediatric Dentistry.  We enjoyed going for rides in their chairs, touring the whole facility, meeting the dentist and even having a lesson about how to brush our teeth. 

 This is where they take pictures of your teeth.  It was such a fun and easygoing exploration of the Dentist Office and I'm certain it will make our next appointment (particularly the x-ray part) much easier!

 The children all gathered around for a lesson on how to brush teeth.  Of course, using a fish with teeth and a giant toothbrush made it super engaging as well!

 The kids loved the toddler room since it was full of great toys to explore!

I believe that going on field trips helps to broaden our children's horizons and I find it sad that there is not time in the school system to make field trips happen often enough.

Dentist - Preschool

We had a great day of learning about the Dentist, letter T and our teeth!  The kids really loved brushing the teeth of the puppets as we got started this morning. 

 As we learn the letters of the alphabet children start to find them in their environment.  It is a great activity to give them a highlighter or colored pencil and an old magazine or junk mail and let them find where the letter of the week is throughout the whole thing.  It's harder than you think!

 We watched a video of Elmo pretending that he had teeth and how he would take care of his special teeth.

 One of our favorite activities is painting the bottom of an egg carton white with a tooth brush.  We talk all about how the grey is a dirty color and when we brush our teeth we make make them white and clean.  If we had them dry before the end of the day we would have also practiced flossing our "teeth" with a piece of string.

Dentist - Tot School

We had so much fun learning the letter T today and talking about teeth and the dentist!  

 I love that the dollar store has packs of 4 toothbrushes.  It makes getting new ones for every class so much nicer on the budget. We enjoyed trying to drop a toothbrush into a wide mouth jar and brushing the "teeth" of our puppets.

Though it has nothing to do with letter T or the Dentist, we worked on throwing soft balls today as well. 

 The kids enjoyed the Dentist Tot Pack and playing the different games like sorting by color, talking about quantities up to 5 and a little Dentist hide and seek.

 One of the activities in the Dentist Tot Pack is lacing teeth.  It was really fun to watch kids pick this up this year when they struggled with it last year.

 For art today we painted the bottom of egg cartons like they were teeth. We used the tooth brush to paint and talked about how when we scrub our teeth with each day it makes them sparkly white.

 The rain finally stopped and we were able to spend the last 20 minutes of our time together outside.  I went to take the cover off the sandbox but the kids had pushed it aside and were playing with the muddy puddle so I let them continue with their game.  We had so much fun!