Play 'n' Learn

Heart Math

2012-02-14T10:11:00.000-08:00

So since it's Valentine's Day...we're a digressing and doing a bit more with hearts. :-) We are also doing most of our activities "together" to encourage sharing and conversation about friendship.

A few of our math activities we did today...

Number Line Addition/Subtraction

I believe I've already posted a similar activity we did recently. There was some changes I wanted to do with it to make it more helpful to the children so we did it again and yes, it was more helpful. One of the changes was to put them on the same side of a number line (instead of having them face each other). Today we shared a number line because we did quite a few "sharing" activities today as it was Valentine's Day.

The sharing led to "closer quarters" and I love this picture! We had done a few addition and subtraction facts together and I had stepped back out of the conversation to see if they really understood what we were doing. Here they were discussing what number they needed to start with. :-)

Odd/Even Number Exploration

I like to provide various ways of looking at concepts. Truthfully, my students have already picked up odd and even number concept by our daily calendar activity using craft sticks.

One child passes out the craft sticks (ie: today is the 14th so they are passing sticks to the rest of us and then add as many as they need to get to 14), we set them out in front of us in a row and then buddy them up. They know that if all their sticks have a buddy than it's even, but if one is left without a buddy it's an odd number. We also take the time to talk about who has more/less or equal number of sticks and K. has been in the habit of counting her sticks by two's when she has quite a few at the end of the month.

Today, we just simply used heart beads and pipe cleaners to show that connection.

A closer up of one of the children's numerals.

The extra fine motor component of putting small beads on small pipe cleaners is a plus also!

Pattern Crowns

:-) I love K.'s expression...she had just dropped her purple play doh on the floor.

Hard to see their actual patterns so...

H. is a young 4 yet and so he was encouraged to an ABAB pattern. I wouldn't say it's mastered completely yet but he did do this ABAB mostly on his own once he got started. I say that it's not mastered yet because he can copy and extend but he doesn't truly recognize a pattern on it's own and usually he needs help in getting a pattern started. K. is 5 yrs. now and I told her she could create any pattern but it could NOT be an ABAB pattern. It's hard to see her's but she did an ABBC pattern!

Our pattern pieces are simply cut from Valentine gift wrap from the dollar store! I love these cheap veggie/dip containers. I have a bunch but use the black one the most because it's more appealing visually. Allows for the children to see all their materials in a somewhat organized fashion. Actually, I find that they use more of a variety when offered like this vs. all sorts of materials mixed together (which, yes, I've seen some teachers do-goes along with my toy box philosophy! :-D).

Hope you all are having a great week. This week looks like it's going to be a short week again. Was hoping to get I and J together in one week but since we had Valentine's day, Friday is a day off of school, and both preschool children have appointments this week. So we'll change up our plans. :-D

I is for Icecream

2012-02-13T12:14:00.000-08:00

Time is short so will share just a couple of activities from today.

Icecream Afternoon Snack

Thanks to Pinterest! They loved this and so quick and easy!

Number Representation Icecream Cones

and a closer up image...

As we were finishing these up I realized that we hadn't done much with TouchDots. This is a helpful technique four counting/addition. That could have been another scoop! We'll be introducing TouchDots in the near future! FYI: We did this in two sessions. She cut out the cones and did numbers 1-5 in the AM and finished 6-10 in the PM. You're going to want to do this in two sessions also if you choose a similar activity...at least for young 5s!

T is for Trees

2012-02-11T06:38:00.000-08:00

We've really enjoyed our week doing so many different activities around trees and seasons!

A new take on a circle collage! Love it! K. was much more into doing a collage with this tree in mind than if I just gave her paper background and the circles for a "free" collage. Been tempted to do this project myself. Really what I want to do is the 4 seasons with circle trees and maybe a black border around them all. But since we still have one 4 seasons project in the works...and I can't find my circle cutter at the moment...we'll do it another time!

Here's a child who has "perimeter" and "magic c formation" engrained in her mind. :-P And another comment...those "tap and glue" caps for glue bottles really do not benefit a child. They don't learn to control liquid glue as a child who uses a normal liquid glue cap. That's all they used in my boys' K class. I wasn't all that impressed. :-D Yes, less mess/waste but really...not as beneficial (and usually more frustration!). Use them on occasion if you must but please use regular caps as much as possible.

Four Seasons of the Year

At calendar time we reviewed the four seasons and are learning a new song. To listen to this Four Seasons song: http://freesongsforkids.com/audios/four-seasons. Simple to remember the two verses and we are beginning to learn it in sign language. So far we have introduced the words: four, seasons, Autumn, Winter, Spring and Fall.

We did use this as a sorting activity also. These trees can be found at...hmmm. Well, the website address at the bottom of the printable says www.ayearoffhe.com. But that address "can't be found" for some odd reason. ??? I thought it was a recent save on my part but perhaps it wasn't. Anyway...can't find this printable on any of the general google searches either. So if someone knows where we can find this...please let me know and I'll continue to search for it also. It's a very nice seasonal sorting activity. My other thought was it was a link from TeachersPayTeachers. But searched through there and didn't find it either. Hmmm.

Back to the topic...we did review the months, as usual, but this time I led them to see that there are, in general, three months to every season. The Months of the Year printable (Montessori for Everyone) has lovely realistic pictures that go right along with seasonal talk. :-D

Word Family Trees

In our course of talking about trees we remembered that fruit grows on trees. :-) So, to help extend their thinking beyond just apple trees...we looked at various fruit trees in a magazine. Then did this very simple activity using pears vs. apples. I chose 5 trees/word family chunks because I wanted to reinforce short vowel sounds. The pears each have a picture of a word that end in the family chunk. She was able to check her work by seeing if the other words in the tree rhymed with the one she was placing there. Good practice for rhyming!

Ten Frame

Apple Tree Recording Sheet: http://www.heidisongs.com/free-downloads/

And why haven't I've used ten frames consistently before? I don't know. But I will from now on! These are often used in the K/1 class here in town. Another way to give children a visual representation of a number. Lately, I've really encouraged K. to "not count" the dice when we are doing an activity that utilizes dice. She's done really good with this...no longer has to take the time to count those itty bitty dots. So today I introduced the 10 Frame to her. And how I did it was through the "Flash" method. Flashed a card, 3 seconds only, and encouraged her to make what she saw on her 10 frame. Then she compared her frame with the flash card and recorded that she did that number. She enjoyed this and, surprisingly, she was able to leave her dots on her frame and just change them to make the new frame, which I didn't expect her to be able to do right away. I expected that she'd have to clear off her board and start new. Awesome! She immediately began to tell me that a number was "1 more than 5" or "almost to 10". I didn't expect her to do that right away either! When I flashed the 10 dots she said, "two five rows" and held up one hand and then the other "5+5=10". Seriously! I was impressed! We will definitely be doing more 10 frame work. Actually- next week I have something planned for that to go along with I is for icecream.

T is for Trees (Chicka Chicka Boom Boom)

2012-02-10T08:12:00.000-08:00

Oh I just LOVE the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom! :-) The kids really get into it and I hear them repeating parts of the book throughout the day.

Some of the activities we did with a palm/coconut tree in mind:

This of course was when the letters all fell out of the tree. :-) Great book to reread! A very simple letter formation activity we did along with our book.

www.makinglearningfun.com has the patterns to many of these paper plate stencils. :-)

I chose to put uppercase alphabet magnets up on our magnet board because my young student was here and he's not developed in letter formation yet. Capital letters are much easier to write.

Chicka Chicka Trees

Another activity I would have loved to do with a large class! They would all be so different.

From left to right, 5 yrs, 2 yrs (he did ANOTHER project-actually two projects today!), and 4 yrs. We added extra fine motor with snipping the edge of the leaves and ripping the paper for the trunk.

I find that ripping paper is difficult for toddler and preschoolers so I have gotten into a habit of snipping the one side of the paper I wish for them to rip. Works nicely.

Beginning Sound and Font Sort

A simple activity I created in Print Shop.

A close up of one of the trees. Sorry about the color...it really was a brown trunk!

This one really didn't have a connection except the letter portion of the Chicka Chicka book. But I was interested in seeing how capable they would be.

The task was to use only the side of their hands to create sticks and curves to spell their name. A little more difficult than I expected. :-) But they seemed to enjoy it. And of course...

FREE EXPLORATION!

And we painted some more!

http://www.makinglearningfun.com/ has a series of easel painting visual "how to's". Nice every once in awhile. Good for following directions. But, of course, there was opportunity for free exploration. We even got a cowboy falling out of the sky! :-D

And look who painted with us! Wow! :-) His paper is a bit lower than what the other two would have had. Theirs would have been up there with the palm tree "how-to" sheet.

T is for Trees (evergreen)

2012-02-09T09:43:00.000-08:00

A couple other projects we did with evergreens in mind...

Theme shapes makes thing more "interesting" for some children...and definitely for the adults. We do understand that their work is important to them and so if are deciding to turn their painting into a shape-after the fact, please ask permission. (That goes along with writing on their work. Other options is to write on the back of their paper or on a seperate piece of paper and attach to their work.) If they say they want to leave it "as is", respect that. From an adult perspective...yes, their work isn't always "pretty" or "eye-catching" but it is the process that matters most. Side note: as often as possible, let them cut out the shape. Just draw the desired shape on the back of their art paper and they will see the lines just fine.

Since we were talking about the evergreens that are found around Ms. Amber's house, we use a small portion of the trees for painting tools. Pine needles and etc make neat prints and designs. If I were in a large classroom, I'd leave this tool out for a few days because they'd explore with it differently each time. K., in the second picture, is snipping needles off of a small portion of a limb. This was her idea that H. took to as well. I hadn't planned it, but it worked out well. If I HAD planned it I would have added a bit of glue to the paint so that the needles would stick better, but as it was, it did okay. :-)

Shape Forest

Originally saw idea at http://preschoollessonplans.info/1464/reviewing-shapes-with-christmas-trees/.

We were going to use shaving cream/glue puffy paint but they decided they wanted glitter so we used a mixture of salt and glitter for "snow". :-) The bottom picture is my son's after he got home from school. His own take on the project. Didn't use the pre cut shapes at all, added mountains, river and other details. They don't have an art teacher at the elementary they go to and the classroom teachers do very little to none "true" art, especially by third grade. :-( So he often wants to do the project that my students have done that morning. Wish I had time to do more in the afternoon/evening with them with art. We usually get to it in the summer but not in the school year...just too much going on.

K is for Kites (All About Me)

2012-02-08T08:51:00.000-08:00

Here is one project that I hadn't posted about yet. Due to various reasons (mainly because we didn't get it done the first day and we usually don't have a lot of time for "make-up"/finish-up" projects)...we just didn't get to the final touches of the project. So, today we did!

Very simple but an excellent activity.

Scissor skills, literacy, art and could be used for various concepts.

We simply cut out the diamond shape from a 12x18 piece of construction paper and because we were taking the "all about me" idea, I put her first letter in the middle of the kite, block style. It definitely worked out that her name began with K and we were doing kites. :-) But it would be no problem at all to put your child's first letter there. She colored in the K with crayon-and then she painted over top with watercolors. Later I had created bows with "all about me" fill in the blank sentences such as "My name is _________." "My family name is _______." I am ______ years old." "My favorite color is _______." She filled in the blanks and we hot glued the bows to her choice of ribbon. Again-simple but one I'd do again.

Other ideas...

Number Kite- have child write numerals on the kite bows.

Consider skip counting.

Alphabet Kite- write alphabet on the kite bows.

Name Kite- use as many bows as letters in child's name.

Great for a whole class or family and comparing name lengths.

Pattern Kite- create a pattern of colors with the bows.

Texture Kite: Use various materials or textured paint for the bows.

5 Senses Kite: Represent a object/material with a drawing/picture on the kite and each bow representing a different sense.

Use your imagination! I'm sure there are more ways to use these simple kites!

T is for Tree (evergreens)

2012-02-07T10:34:00.000-08:00

Seriation Trees

Well, this was a bit of an informal assessment for the children. Typical expectation would be that the children would be able to order three (big, medium, small) shapes. I find that they can normally order six-eight if they experience it on a regular basis through their preschool years. I LOVE the bottom picture. T. actually participated!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Can't tell I'm excited, can you?!) I've made sets of materials for him to use since he stopped taking morning naps but he always refused...just wanted to watch. But today?! He did this one activity. And asked for specific colored markers to use and so I tried to mix it up a bit and give him a different color and he always corrected me. Yes, he knows his basic colors...that's for sure! (So his own little informal assessment-and he thought it was all a game!)

Compound Words Evergreens

I find it very beneficial to slip in compound word explorations in preschool. If a child is having a hard time putting two sounds together (which is necessary for reading) than I go back to compound words because it's easier to slide together two words than it is two sounds which may be still pretty meaningless to them. So since we were focusing on evergreen trees today...it's a great time to slip in some compound word practice. :-) We did the simple tree puzzles first, then pulled each side apart saying one word than the other and sliding them back together to say the compound word. Ex) Pan......Cake = pancake. Having the compound word images available to see help younger students but I've done enough of this type of thing with my students that they are familiar with how this works and did not need the compound word pictures. Then K. sounded out the word "ever" and the word "green" and we slid them together to make "evergreen". Took less than 5 minutes but great review!

Pictures I used came from http://thefirstgradeparade.blogspot.com/2011/03/potpourri.html.

5 Little Kites

2012-02-03T09:27:00.000-08:00

5 Little Kites

One little kite in the sky so blue,

Along came another, then there were two.

Two little kites, flying high above me.

Along came another, then there were three

Three little kites, just watch them soar

Along came another, then there were four.

Four little kites, so high and alive

Along came another, then there were five.

Five little kites dancing across the sky,

What a sight to see, way up so high!

-author unknown-

Another small sewing project for K. :-) She went through my material tub and chose five that she wanted to create kites out of. Great conversation can come out of exploring material! Children can be encouraged to feel different textures, describe what they feel, see, tough, notice patterns and etc.

I had to cut the material with my material scissors but she definitely wanted to "pop" it open and arrange it on the felt background. We used the same approach as we did with her paper kites and hearts...folding in half and cutting half the shape.

She also enjoyed looking at my embroidery thread container. Shades of colors! Our elementary school doesn't have an art teacher :-( and really they don't even start talking about shades of colors until 1st grade and that for descriptive writing purposes...but I find that this interests preschoolers and so I try to slip it in frequently. I see we've used enough that I can go get some of my loose skeins of embroidery thread and refill my container! She used one strand (or two if we needed to cut and start fresh because of an oopsie!) out of the thread with a regular sewing needle for around the kites (her chosen colors) and the rest of that embroidery thread with a yarn needle for the string. I use real yarn needles instead of plastic ones. I teach that these are tools not toys and they tend to show caution when using. She chose her buttons and I did try to teach her how to crochet one line...however her coordination wasn't quite ready for either approach I used (with and without the crochet needle) so she settled for choosing the color of yarn and trying before saying that I could just do it. But A for effort! At one time she wasn't so apt at trying these new skill.

I was going to show her how to sew simple triangle bows but by the time we got to this part she was done with the sewing project and that's fine. If you have an older child...perhaps that's something you'd like to add.

She enjoys sewing in small doses...and that is what I recommend for this age. Simple projects and done in multiple sessions.

Kitchen Tools and Puffy Painting

2012-02-02T09:17:00.000-08:00

Kitchen Tool Painting

I find that some families hesitate to paint with their children because it tends to be messy. Yes, it does. But painting has so many benefits and there are things you can do to help keep the "mess" down.

Plan and Set Up

* An old plastic table cloth that covers the WHOLE table vs. just where they are painting. Paint splatters. :-)

* If your paint doesn't wash up well (even some washable paints don't wash out very well...especially anything with a red pigment)-then add dish soap to the paint.

* Plan that your child may wish to do more than one painting. So have extra paper and paint available within arm's reach. Why? The most mess happens when you walk away to get something from the other room. :-) Better to be over prepared and able to supervise the painting experience.

* In the picture, you can't see paint shirts but you bet that I use them! They were on the back of the chairs as that's our routine, so the children can put them on before climbing up in their chair. I like the plastic heavy duty velcro paint shirts (www.discountschoolsupply.com). I tend to keep a clothespin clipped to the bottom so that I can clip the neck of the shirt so it's snug and covering all their clothes vs. hanging down and leaving their shirt exposed. But an old shirt a couple sizes big or even an old adult shirt works just as well!

Microwave Puffy Paint Explorations

inspired by Pinterest

Recipe

(enough to fill two Styrofoam bowls about halfway)

1/2 C. flour

2 tsp. baking powder

2 tsp. salt

Mix above ingredients together and add water enough to make a paste.

food coloring (added to individual bowls)

Our take:

* Neat! Pancake Puffy Painting! :-) Yes...smells, feels and looks like pancakes!

* Process art- I wouldn't recommend keeping these around for long. Might call some critters!

* Use food coloring liberally to make bold colors.

* The thicker the paint is put on background, the higher it puffs.

* 20 seconds on average in microwave.

* We started with q tips and moved to baby spoons. The baby spoons were just about perfect! Consider adding toothpicks to swirl.

* Will we do again? You bet!

Fizzing Trays

2012-02-01T07:38:00.000-08:00

Pinterest...I just recently joined the many others and what a great way to organize all the lovely ideas/resources that we have on the web! I am not "addicted" (yet) as some seem to be LOL but I do think it's going to be a great time saver for me! Anyway...this was an activity that I saw on Pinterest and it's one of those "why on earth hadn't I thought of that!" projects. The children LOVE volcanoes and the bottle balloons but not once have I ever just put baking soda on a tray for them to explore with. So I remedied that and we did the project within a week of me seeing it on Pinterest. :-P

You need...

vinegar and baking soda

We chose to use primary colored food coloring to reinforce coloring mixing.

Of course I added a letter recognition component reinforcing H and K which are the two we are working with this week. The cool thing is that my main two students have names that start with H and K. Couldn't have planned it better if I had tried too! LOL

There's my observer off to the right. He loved watching the kiddos but was adamant he wasn't going to do this project. Words I heard...it's fizzy, sizzling, sounds hot but it's cold, stinky, blue and yellow makes green (a color mixing song we sing), and etc. Was so fun to watch them! I intentionally set it up this way for these two. K.'s right handed but H. goes back and forth between right and left hand yet. Here he's using his right hand but for the majority of the activity he did switch and use his left hand. K. is using her left hand here instead of her right hand. Both children were encouraged to use their dominant hand after the initial exploration so that they were crossing their midline as they reach across to the bowls. I also wanted them to share...so that they did have to wait a moment or two if they wanted a specific color and the other person was using it.

A closeup of one spot on the tray...is that not cool or what?!

And! T. decided to actually do this project after watching for quite awhile! AWESOME!

Squeeze, release, squeeze!

And he touched it!

Curiosity got the best of him and he started putting fistfuls of baking soda into the bowls of vinegar. They all fuzzed up for a bit and then when they stopped he lost interest. But this is awesome that he explored with this activity!

Highly recommended! Your kiddos will love it!

K is for Kisses. (Hershey Kisses that is!)

2012-01-31T09:46:00.000-08:00

Personalized Hershey Kiss

Awhile back I remembered seeing something similar to this in a search I made in Google Images. If this was your idea...feel free to let me know so I can give you credit! :-)

This was a "cute" project. I turned it in into our scissors skill activity using cardstock. Really I should have used cardboard so they could wrap the kiss in aluminum foil more independently but then they wouldn't have been able to cut out the kiss on their own. Hmm...will have to ponder over this one and see what else we could do!

Hershey Kiss Letter Formation Reinforcement

Reinforcing H and K (Hershey Kiss). Yes, I encourage them to form the letter as we would write it. Last week we had a really short week for H and so I'm slipping in some letter formation activities this week for H as well as this week's focus letter of K.

K. completes her activities before H. most times and so this tray and Hershey Kisses were perfect for her. She went on to create...

patterns and shapes.

She was actually in the the process of making a circle in the above picture but I snapped this picture because it shows that she is creating a circle using the "magic C" formation. This is something I definitely reinforce over and over and over.

Hershey Kiss Number Line

First the children practiced writing their numerals on their "kisses"...with some children you may wish to do hand over hand while singing the numeral formation verse that corresponds. They then glued in order onto their paper strip. Then...

I had created small "flash cards" with simple addition and subtraction signs. This is not "new" material...we've used number lines with addition and subtraction before. Good foundation building for Kindergarten. So they chose one of their "flash cards" and told me what number was first. They put their kiss on that number. Then they looked at their math symbol and then looked at me as I crossed my fingers and said "plus" and took one finger away and said "minus". They then told me what their sign was...we reinforced that plus goes forward and minus goes backward each time. Then they moved their kiss accordingly, said the answer and then wrote it on the back of their flash card. FYI: Somethings I would do differently- for more than one child ... arrange them so they are all sitting with their number line in the same direction. My younger student got confused with the forwards/backwards mainly because he was watching K. and it looks the opposite in that regard. They learn a lot by observation so going back and forth between these two instead of working independently was very benefitial. I'm also considering creating a visual to go along with plus goes forward on the number line and minus goes backwards. Should be relatively easy to do. Typically I use only addition or only subtraction with preschoolers but decided to challenge the children today and help them notice detail by mixing the two together.

A little closer up image...we went up to numeral 10 on the number line.

K is for kite!

2012-01-30T09:25:00.000-08:00

Symmetry Blot Kites

This project required several steps....we started this project first thing and it was completed, for the most part, before lunch. We just did other activities in between each of the steps that required drying.

1st: Mixing white and blue paint together to get the *perfect* shade. Remember when mixing colors that you always start with the lightest color and add a little of the darker colors.

2nd: Painting the background sky color.

3rd: Adding clouds with a sponge, since it is mentioned in the song we sang (see below).

4th: Cutting the diamonds/kites from scrap paper. Great use of scrap paper! Last week we did hearts this same way. It's a skill that will benefit them as they get older. I had a child once who after we had done this folded paper cutting for awhile he started stacking the papers together (other projects) with things I wanted him to cut out that were the same shape. He told me that if he could cut with our folded paper he can cut his other paper quicker by putting them together. Wow! Awesome for a 5 year old!

5th: Painting a design on one side of the kite, we used qtips, and folding over to print it to the other side. FYI: some children-especially younger ones- will paint both sides of the diamond. That works just fine as well.

6th: Gluing onto the background and adding other details to create the final display. We used yarn as a string of the kite. Squeezing glue bottles are great fine motor as is tracking the yarn along the glue and pressing it in. You may wish to have a wipe nearby for those children who have a "glue on my finger" issue. ;-P

Kites Song

Tune: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

See my kites up in the sky

Flying past you, oh so high

With the wind, they move so fast

Watch the clouds, moving past

See my kites up in the sky

Flying past you, oh so high!

---author unknown---

If you know to whom I can give credit for this song, please let me know and I will do so.

Hoping for a week that will go smoothly...after the past three weeks one kind of wonders "what will happen next?" I'm glad to see the snow coming down so beautifully...but a snow day means another missed day and we've already miss so many because of Ms. Amber's situations. Oh well, go with the flow!

Hearts Misc.

2012-01-25T17:35:00.000-08:00

Well, after our family coming down with the flu (nasty virus that was!) and I miscarrying the same week, which ended up being an incomplete miscarriage and took until the next week to complete and now I'm down and out with back trouble. That's three things...now things need to start looking up again. :-) So, by afternoon today I ended up calling my chiro to ask when I should begin worry about the needle pricking sensation going down my leg. So he changed his instructions from minimal walking and staying off my feet and no soft surfaces to laying down. Don't sit much. Well, that's almost impossible with kiddos around this house. So, once again I'm having to cancel. Sure has been an interesting few weeks. K. has been with me since an infant thought and today she proved to be very flexible and helpful. So, instead of Ms. Amber working directly with her and up and down on the floor with her I asked my husband to bring in my hearts tub and I quickly created about 10 independent work trays on my cart. She enjoyed this change of pace, really. But we surely didn't get done what was on my lesson plans as I was not able to stand long enough to gather my materials or finish prepping the materials. So glad for flexible children and for my cart that I purchased this past summer!

This cart is ideal for organizing and I would recommend it to various people...especially homeschoolers. Though I will not be offering a formal preschool/child care program next school year...I do plan to use my cart for my youngest's preschool years. I didn't get pictures of everything she did today and she didn't use all the trays either...we'll save them for another day...might as well turn this into a H is for Hearts week. :-)

Heart door hangers and heart animal foam stickers.

Simple independent craft that encouraged fine motor. Peeling backings of of foam stickers is great for little fingers. Great conversation between the two also. And K. was such the helper!

Heart Design Do a Dot Page

Again, was neat to observe and listen to them working together. T. is really maturing. They had a thing going here where K. would stamp (T. didn't want to...surprise, surprise) and T. would twist the cap back on. :-)

OTC Heart Linkies

Little plastic hearts that linked together. This was our transition into Ms. Amber needing to go lay down and get relief from the "electrical currents" flying through me leg. So we moved to the bedroom with her next to me so that I could continue to interact with her. She created a chain as long as I was. :-)

OTC Heart Scratch Board

Scratch boards are great prewriting experiences!

Heart Match It!

A very simple game I had created. We each took turns rolling the dice and covering the number if we had one left on the board. Was neat to see that she is starting not to automatically count the spots on the dice but knows what they are without counting. Yeah!

Heart Scissors Activity

Just simply had her cut out a heart from cardstock and then showed her how to use the stencils and then let her go.

So an "easy" day in some regards. Not so easy in others. No posting tomorrow as I had to take the day off since I don't know what tomorrow will bring after the ibuprofen wears off.

H is for Hearts!

2012-01-24T10:43:00.000-08:00

I could do days and days with the theme of hearts...I have a separate bin just for that shape. And activity after activity in my heart file on the computer. And books and magazines and... :-) Hmmm...just got my invitation for Pininterest...bet I could find all sorts of activities for hearts I actually haven't even done before. LOL But since I've had about 10-15 years of coming up with activities and "hearts" is a common theme...one could say that I've done plenty with hearts. Usually I do it around Valentine's day, Mother's Day, Father's, Grandparent's Day and so on but these past couple years I've kind of steered away from the holidays and this year I'm doing more of a focus on our focus letter. Here are some of what we did today:

Scissors: Paper Hearts

Our scrap paper drawer was overflowing so today I reminded the children how to make a whole heart by folding the paper in half and cutting a half of heart. Good use for that scrap paper! These hearts were actually cut from previously painted/printed paper. You know those projects that they make many many many prints/paintings because the process is so fun? Yes, those papers. :-) We just hot glued onto their choice of ribbon. They definitely like these!

Who says we can't have fun while "working"?! :-) These two were going to town with their jokes, laughs, and silliness today. Love to see that!

Melted Crayon Cakes

"The Process" pictures really didn't turn out and this one isn't so grand either. Just google recycled crayons or melted crayons and you'll find plenty of pics!

I don't know about you...but I always have a surplus of crayons around here. Usually because the children and I both like to use the nice sharp crayons and instead of taking time to sharpen them...well, they are pretty cheap at the beginning of the school year so I always purchase a bunch. So what do you do with broken crayons? Yes, broken crayons are perfect for beginner writers. Actually, I know many an occupational therapist who will break their crayons to make them stubs for those having some writing difficulties. It forces them to use the correct grasp (they can't fist them) and they can keep more control. But as I'm winding up our preschool, I really have a lot of crayons so decided that I might as well start "using up" materials. I found that there were quite a few school agers that enjoyed the no brainer task of tearing the paper off of broken crayons and breaking them into smaller pieces and then we created crayon cakes. This was actually very calming for many of those children. For preschoolers, this is a great fine motor activity as well. Tearing the paper isn't as easy for the preschoolers but they definitely enjoyed breaking them! Decided maybe we'd try making heart crayons this time around. They didn't turn out all that well...really do need a mold just for hearts to make heart crayons but the only molds I had were heart ice cube trays and those aren't oven safe. :-) I usually don't use liners when doing this. Back in the day I did this more often I had an old muffin tin that was used specifically for this activity. Don't here though, so went ahead and used the liners. They would be smoother without the liners but the process was enjoyed. So tear the paper off the crayons, break the crayons into small pieces, place in muffin tin, place in preheated oven (250 degrees) for about 15 minutes. The kids like to "check on the progress" so every five minutes or so we stopped what we were doing to see what it looked like. :-)

For those of you that read M is for Melt...we did a few more melted crayons explorations with my own boys on Monday (snow day). We found out that you can hold the blow dryer on it long enough to actually make a crayon fall out of it's paper. :-) They thought it was so cool since the wrapper was rock solid because of the melted wax. We also found out that we liked the effect of melting the unwrapped crayons.

Heart Prints

Prints can be made in so many different ways but I love to use heart paper doilies to make prints. It's not the easiest for the kiddos but it does help them understand about the "helping hand"...their support hand since they must hold the doily in place while they are sponge around it.

Heart Candy Probability

http://thefirstgradeparade.blogspot.com/2011/02/candy-heart-math-making-words-activity.html

This particular printable had white hearts but our box had blue so I just whited out the words and changed it to fit our heart colors. In Kindergarten, they do a bunch with "tally marks" so this is good practice for my kiddos going into K. next year.

Will let this be all for now...will share more heart themed activities at a later date. :-)

M is for Melt

2012-01-20T10:24:00.000-08:00

Today we had a play up at the school, that the 2nd-4th graders were putting on, to see so we really only did our calendar/reading activities and this melting experiment which was inspired by http://www.teachpreschool.org/. I thought it was cool when she blogged about it and decided to try it out today. It is pretty cool. Messy...well, a little but nothing a plastic scraper won't take off! LOL Would I do it again, yes, I would. It would make for a neat fireworks project! We "hot glued" the crayons onto the cardboard/cardstock and use the hairdryer on high so it wouldn't take as long to start melting. :-)

Even though I explained that the glue gun was a low temp glue gun and I showed her that I could touch it and get glue on me without it really hurting me...she still didn't want to use it so she picked her crayons and pointed to where she wanted them and I put the glue on the cardstock. But really, a low temp glue gun works fine with kiddos. I've allowed children use them under supervision many a time over the years.

K. really enjoyed this and her smiles were plenty with quite a few squeals of excitement as the crayons began to melt. T. enjoyed watching but didn't wish to participate. My observer. :-P

Misc. M Activities

2012-01-19T09:57:00.000-08:00

Today was definitely a "Miscellaneous M" day. :-) Marbles were a big hit this week and Tuesday H. asked if we could do more marble stuff today and though it wasn't in my plans I tweaked my plans to include marbles. He requested more marbles next week with our H week. Hmmm! :-D Anyway...

More Marbles

Kind of a difficult activity to get any good pictures but here is what we did. I used hula loops to keep the marbles contained. I placed a tape line to give them direction and I showed them how to flick marbles like you do in a real marble game. Good fine motor. After practicing a bit, I then had one child roll dice and flick that many past their line. Then the other children chose a number that was MORE than the rolled number. We went back and forth taking turns rolling the dice or choosing a number that was more while interest lasted.

Marble Balance

This was specifically for H and if you can believe it...I didn't get a single picture of him doing this! He loves this type of thing and it's something he benefits from also...fine motor. Also added scissors with the playdough as that's a favorite (and very beneficial) activity.

M is for Melt!

For our science/sensory today we explored with primary colored powdered paint and melting icecubes. You could use this as an art project but truthfully, I've done this many times and children enjoy it but...it's definitely a process project as the outcomes are all that "pretty" and often there are those children who will explore for a long time and eventually a hole will be made in their paper because of the water from the melting icecubes.

Marshmallow M's and Free Painting (and eating!)

Putting those awful gigantic corn syrup fluffs to a good use. LOL Well, the kids don't really agree with my "awful" description but that sure is a lot of sugar! H. painted his M with lines, K. did marshmallow M prints. Interesting!

Me and Mom

Using markers to draw of course!

I wanted to share these two pictures. Both were done by 4 year olds who are age-eligible to attend Kindergarten this fall. This is just one reason why I respect Kindergarten teachers so much. They are getting such a mixed group of abilities. Yes, exposure and practice makes a difference in a child's ability to do many things but in this case...the main difference is age. Yes, both are 4 year olds but really, the first picture was drawn by a 4 year old that will be five in a few weeks and the second picture is drawn by a child who is only a couple months into year four. Gender does play a part in fine motor development but really this shows that a few months make a BIG difference when it comes to Preschool/Kindergarten aged children.

Monkey Writing Cards

www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com

A "special" movie: Math Circus by LeapFrog

This has been a favorite with all the children right from the get go. But they don't watch it often because it's 30 minutes. I'm not a big "screen time" person and find there are so many more "hands-on" things to do that I don't have time for so really, they usually end up watching a World World Segment, if that, that runs 10-12 minutes while I'm preparing lunch. So this was "special" for them. M is for Math.

We also had muffins and melons for lunch. :-)

Calendar

Our wall is getting a bit full. Time for some rearranging and refreshing but did want to mention a free printable available to do with months. Titled: Months of Year cards. It is a pdf. file that can be found at http://www.montessoriforeveryone.com/Cultural-Materials_ep_61-1.html. We started a month song when we came back from winter break since January is the first month of the year. This makes for a nice visual for the song. You can also see a sentence underneath our calendar. I may have shared that before but will share again because it has really helped K. in so many different ways. She gives me a sentence and I write it on paper and then cut out using the word configuration format. We put the words back together into the sentence. It's so humorous when the sentence gets put together with words out of order, which happens at least once. :-) Humor makes learning fun! Doing a sentence like this allows for us to review that letters make words and words make sentences. We talk about punctuation, spaces between words, what letters are capitalized and how most letters in the words are written in lower case. We talk about tall, short and monkey tail letters, and also slip in word chunking. I've also been mentioning that every chunk has a vowel when we sound out that word. I find that this has helped many a child. Normal development is that they hear and write out the consonants in their kid spelling but sometimes just pointing out that each chunk has a vowel makes them more aware.

And this is just a cute picture I'll share from today :-)

M is for Monkeys (and marbles)

2012-01-17T10:07:00.000-08:00

Upper-Lowercase Letter Monkeys

We did all the letters that we've learned up to this point.

Muddy M's Magnetic Marble Painting w/ Scissors Activity

T. would often look underneath the tray and watch his wand vs. watching his magnetic marble on the tray. :-) But he participated! Normally he stays clear of anything that might get him dirty. LOL Guess he figured the chance was high after watching the other two "paint".

The children snipped apart mice, moose, and monkeys and created their patterns at the top and bottom of their paper. I especially like how many different pattern variations can come out of an activity like this. :-) Snipping isn't all that difficult for most 4+ children but I used very thin lines this time to make it a bit more of a challenge as well as help them concentrate on cutting thin lines vs. bold lines.

Marble Run

They spent quite a bit of time with these marbles. A lot of squeals and giggles :-) Oh the simple things! This is actually a toy we have that "launches" cars down the ramp.

Monkey Seriation

http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/blog/2010/09/letter-m-for-monkey.html

Erica from Confessions of a Homeschooler has such great clipart in the activities she creates. Makes the activities appealing to the children. We thank her for all that she has shared!

Of course we are using quite a bit of music this week. http://www.abctwiggles.com/ has a little online story called Monkeys Make Music so, of course, we slipped that one in there today!

And our Mat Man turned into a Mat Monkey. :-D

Great fiction book to introduce various types of monkeys.

M is for Magnets!

2012-01-16T11:22:00.000-08:00

A fun morning full of magnet-ificent activities! :-)

Using words from our reading lessons....

I printed sight words plus a few others that we've learned in our lessons from the book Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Siegfried Englemann onto paper and cut out using the word configuration concept. K. chose one, read the word (this is a great review because she is seeing the word how it looks in reality vs. having the sound dots and other visuals to give her a clue on how to sound out the word), created it with Magnetix and read it again. We are going to do a couple each afternoon this week. Building things out of manipulatives is not something she naturally chooses during free play and etc so this is very good practice for her.

Magnetic Marble Painting
Well, this was on our plans but we'll do it tomorrow afternoon as we had an hour out of our afternoon due to realtors here and then K.'s ride came about 50 minutes early. So didn't get to the magnetic marble painting. But...marble painting is always a hit around here with all ages. An "oldie" that is always a favorite. So we'll just vary it a little and use our magentic marbles and a magnetic wand to move it around on the tray. :-)

Magnetic Number Memory

This was nice for T. (2.5yrs) also. (Excuse the backwards three...we did notice it and corrected it!) We talked about the magnetic numerals as we put them on the tray. Then I removed one and K. guess which one was missing. We also reviewed our numeral formation verse with each number writing the numeral in our sand tray before moving on and we also manipulated the numerals to make larger numbers 10-20.

Found a Letter!

This was such a simple activity but she told me it was her favorite of the morning activities. :-) Anytime I add a song...it's a point of interest.

I placed magnetic letters inside of our sensory tub and encouraged K. to find them and put them in alphabetical order. I did have the alphabet tray for her to use as a clue when she needed it. The little song that we sang reviewed the letters sound also and went like...
Tune: The Farmer in the Dell

You found the letter (B), you found the letter (B)

/b/ /b/ the letter (B)

You found the letter (B).

Obviously a very simple to remember song that they learn very quickly. I like to reinforce the letter sound in that second verse. After we sang the ABC and ABC sound song and reviewed our vowels.

Magnadoodle:

Another simple way to reinforce number formation and counting.

Magnetic Foam Tower

I've had strips of foam that I purchased quite awhile ago and beyond using them for scissor snipping and collages I really hadn't used them for anything else. Well, they are a perfect size for my magnetic strips so I simple created a set of strips for the children to explore with. (Seriation, counting, patterning, etc)

Another way to make a tower. Those two colors together appealed to her. :-)

We also created a little book out of Mailbox publication, I Can Make It, I Can Read It: Science titled Margie Magnet. Booklets make great scissors activities and a booklet like this helps conversation lead to the workings of the material you are working with...so in this case...magnets!

The little black rectangles are magnet strips so the hands can "attract".

We did a series of "tests" about what attracted and what didn't.

All in all...a profitable morning. :-)

(Sometimes I wonder about this blog...I get it to how I want it and click on post...because I can't preview first for whatever the reason...and pictures and text are moved and spacing and font is different. Weird. Anyone else have this issue?)

Salt Art

2012-01-15T16:46:00.000-08:00

Well, definitely a week I do not want to repeat. I was off until Friday....so had one child on Friday and that was it for the week. So we did various misc. activities. One activity we did on Friday was Salt Art and my own boys wanted to do this over the weekend as well. Very neat process art activity! I definitely recommend this activity.

Simply put, children created a design with liquid glue (great hand strengthener), sprinkled heavily with salt, and used a paint brush with water colors to color their design. I used liquid watercolors and not watercolor cakes. Tip: do not "paint" the water color onto the salt. Just slightly touch one area of of the salt and watch the salt soak it up. This was definitely a point of interest for the children. The pictures don't really do justice for how bold the colors turned out.

N is for Nine Noodles!

2012-01-06T11:25:00.000-08:00

Just enough time for a quick post so only a couple of pictures since that's what takes the longest and those two are self-explanatory!

N is for Nine Noodles!

Adding numbers to our button exploration.

Hope you all had a lovely week! Ours flew by!

Slime

2012-01-05T13:08:00.000-08:00

Ha! Well, guess I'll post about slime...as that's what we ended up doing today.

Maybe I’ll just go on the record to say that I’m pretty “old school” when it comes to some things. One of the things I’m “old school” about is in my thoughts that unless a child practices a skill…uses a skill…they really won’t make positive progress with that skill. Which is why each day I have activities planned for group/calendar, fine motor, sensory/science, art, math/numeracy, phonological awareness, scissors, etc One early childhood philosophy out there is to let the children play and make their own choices all the time and they’ll learn what they need to during the course of their play. So then we try to pull the children to do a certain activity within their center of choice. Well, hmmm. I believe that play is the child’s “work”. I believe they learn best through play. But you know what…if there is a choice of playing in sensory or with dramatic play all day (not necessarily using the materials we put there to encourage a certain type of skill exploration) vs. working at a table with a fine motor activity or doing an art project …there are going to be some children who will choose the sensory/dramatic play and vice versa. So my feeling is there needs to be a good balance. And especially since in Kindergarten children will have to do a center rotation I find it very beneficial for preschoolers to learn how to deal with this scenario also. So yes, we have free play but we also have planned activities that all children participate in, even if only for a few moments. And when I plan those activities, I keep in mind children’s interest but reality is that we do have to do things we don’t want to do…even in Kindergarten and especially in adulthood. So thus my expectation is that each child try each activity and the neat thing is that most children become interested in the activity even if they wouldn’t have necessarily chose it on their own. I very seldom have uninterested students. They truly benefit from the experience. However, about once a month or so I just set various activities out…typically a “sensory day” with the idea that the children can choose what they work with and for how long. Well, today, H. chose to play with the slime for over an hour. K. went ahead and did another sensory activity but was soon back at the slime. J

Incredible Foam

So, obviously slime was a hit. :-) Simple to make...1/2 C of Elmer's glue, 1/2 C liquid starch, food coloring makes a perfect amount for an individual child.

N is for numbers!

2012-01-03T10:19:00.000-08:00

Our first day back after break went smoothly. :-) We ran out of time for some things since they both had a lot to chat about but conversations are important too so that is just fine.

Today I planned to do familiar activities...typical of what I do after a break. Just gets us back into the routine, etc. Much of what we did today are activities I have posted about in the past so will refrain in repeating. Here's a couple "new" activities we did that used familiar materials.

Number/Letter Sort w/ Playdough

First I worked with them to create long snakes to make the numerals 1 through 9. They are coming right along with snake making. :-) Each child had a different color playdough so that allowed for a pattern to be created/reinforced. Then I went through a selection of playdough letter/number stampers. If it was a number they stamped the correct playdough number. This was very much enjoyed. :-) If it was a letter, I stamped where it would go in the number words. We repeated "a number we can count with; a letter we can read/spell with". They really stayed engaged until right up to the end when all the numbers had been stamped but there were a few more letters. So next time I'll make sure that I leave a number stamp until the end! Ha! There was a reach here because we had to put the numbers up high enough on the table so that there was enough space to work right in front of them...so next time...we'll do it on the floor.

Odd/Even Numbers Wok and Roll

Excuse his reach...we did correct the situation. :-D

One can often add a concept to a game you already have. Here I used our Wok and Roll game to add a task about odd and even numbers as well as incorporate a bit of fine motor. I used stickers to label the vegetables with numbers. We talked about the labeled odd/even bowls and on a whim I used M&M's as manipulatives to match up buddies to find out if the number was odd/even. We didn't go through all the numbers...only about half. It would have been very time consuming and I don't think they would have stayed interested much longer so I would rather stop them when their interest is high. :-)

The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson

A "special" we did today that really had nothing to do with numbers but I wanted them to have the opportunity...they love this book and so when I saw it on our library's New DVD shelf I picked it up. We did talk about characters and how many there were in the book vs. in the movie. We also clapped out each of the characters names. Slipping things in like that is always beneficial!

Number Search Sound & Number Cans

Number Hokey Pokey

S is for Sewing a Snowman!

2011-12-21T10:57:00.000-08:00

Just a quick post to share the picture of the final product of K.'s sewing project. :-)

Today is the last day before winter break. May take a break from blogging or may post a few pictures of what my own kiddos are planning on doing over break. Still hoping for snow!

S is for Snowman! Day 5

2011-12-20T10:15:00.000-08:00

A few more activities with a snowman theme...

Marble Painted Snowman

Wish I had a large class for this activity! They'd all be SO different! Today I demonstrated how to draw a snowman filling a paper and encouraged them to use three circles to drawn their own snowman on their paper, freehand. The newly turned 4 year old immediately started fist drawing circles so thus I recommend having two very different colors of crayons so that you can outline around their snowman as a visual of where to cut! Then they cut out their basic snowman drawing, marble painted, glued to background and added details. Simple and turned out lovely!

Ah...some day T. will actually participate instead of preferring to pull up a stool and watch. It's kind of amusing. He's very content just to watch. A little different than my other two boys who were well into doing art, sensory, and other activities by his age but they all grow and develop differently. T.'s an observer...especially with anything that might potentially be messy.

Melted Snowman Silly Putty

They did enjoy this (not T., of course...wouldn't touch it after the initial try! LOL). I purchased these from OTC for A.'s 3rd grade class as a little something for around the holiday times. Since class numbers have dropped since I ordered the class gifts...my kiddos here are "benefiting". It's a neat concept...the outside of the snowman tends to rub off...about a third of them came with paint rubbed off in spots on the containers and thus flakes get in with the silly putty but the kids don't seem to mind. Good sensory activity!

We combined it with having potato flake trays also. So with two sensory experiences...we didn't get to everything planned. Oh well, some other time!

Snowman Colors

Lovely free printable that can be found at http://thekidsplacehomedaycareandpreschool.blogspot.com/2011/11/free-printable-snowman-colors.html.

I did provide tweezers but they chose to use their fingers as the perler beads were really too little to manipulate to their button places with the tweezers. :-) Matching the hat to the snowman was great for color review and I love that they are labeled with the color words with the font I like the best.

Rhyming Snowman

I have a large selection of stamps, a garage sale finding. You could just use magazine pictures or print some as well. So, the other day I had my boys go through the stamps and find as many matching rhyming pairs of stamps they could find. Actually there wasn't very many! I was surprised there weren't more. The picture is pretty self explanatory for how I created it. The children enjoyed this and it was great review!

S is for Snowman! Day 4

2011-12-19T11:04:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend we got a little bit of snow...but only the roads are still white...the grass is back to the lovely greenish brown color of fall. Hoping for snow over break. Since it will be the "first" snow, my boys will spend a lot of time in it! Yes, kind of a selfish thought but really, we are ALL ready for a good snow!

So a couple of snowman activities to share today.

Candle Warmer Snowmen

Inspired by Teach Preschool-who did fall leaves with their candle warmer.

She made more than she wanted on her paper so we just sent the "extras" home. I love that she put earmuffs on some, a scarf, crazy hats..a good variety. Shows that her creativity is starting to develop. At the beginning of the year she would have just used one color and one design on all of them.

K. definitely enjoyed the melting process...and how much smaller and smooth the crayon became. We will definitely do this again...maybe as more of a free exploration...with more colors but today we focused on snowmen as an intro to this type of activity.

The first two steps:

Vowel Snowmen

Vowel Song

Tune: BINGO

The vowels of the alphabet

I know them all by name.

a-e-i-o-u

I know them all by name.

The vowels of the alphabet

I know their short sounds too!

/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/

I know their short sounds too!

You can find the Snowman Vowel Sort Worksheet at http://www.kellyskindergarten.com/Monthly%20Centers/January/JanuaryCenters.htm. The link next to the image of the vowel sort snowflakes. You'll notice that our "worksheet" doesn't look like the original. :-) I'm not a big worksheet fan and just doing the worksheet would not be enough practice for me so I cut the snowmen out, placed at the top of a large construction paper and used our alphabet miniatures to sort (using different objects than the pictures on the worksheet) and then had her sort and glue the pictures onto the snowman as a review.

Snowman Sewing Project

I don't know if I mentioned that we started a small sewing project. I know I posted a picture on facebook. This is K.'s first project that represents something. We've done sewing explorations before but this time we are creating a simple snowman. Obviously we aren't quite done yet...she has some buttons to sew on the belly and she wants a carrot nose then we'll decide how she wants the mouth and if she wants arms or not and other details. Not sure if we are going to leave it as a banner or make it into a small pillow. We are using felt as the felt shapes stick to the felt background and allows for a little easier time in sewing a shape to the background. She's done a great job and my 8 year old son wants to start one...good winter break activity!

S is for Snowman! Day 3

2011-12-15T09:58:00.000-08:00

Well, raining and 50 degrees out this morning on the way to school. LOL If the temperature dropped we would have quite a bit of snow covering the ground. :-P

Counting Technique

I've shared this before but it's something I'm going to share again. Preschoolers sometimes recount or forget objects when they are counting, especially if they aren't in a straight line. Allowing them to place a small bead (or other object) on each item helps out with this, especially with numbers over ten. If the child is counting concrete objects, encourage them to move them (to a specific area-such as the left of a piece of tape) after they have counted it.

Snowman Themed Addition

In our schools, they use linking cubes a lot with their math facts-addition, subtraction, multiplication, division. Since this is the case, for me, it's important to introduce the use of linking cubes so they are a familiar as a "tool" as well as a toy. So today we used them with an addition activity. Each of the snowmen had a number on them. I actually color coded them, but that is not necessary. Works better for young students though. Vocabulary we used: more/less, odd/even, add, take away/subtract, equal/how many in all, math fact. I wrote the math facts on the dry erase board (corresponding colored markers) but you may wish to have your child write the math facts themselves if they are at that level. I had a younger student today so chose to do it myself. Each child turned over a snowman, stated the number on the snowman, and found that linking cube strip. Then we put them together and counted how any in all. And I wrote the addition fact and we continued on. This would make a nice bag center...especially for a kindergartener. They should be able to do this activity on their own, filling in a math sheet with the math facts and answers.

Word Chunk Snowman

Used /s/ sound words and placed as many buttons as chunks in the word on the snowman. These mat could also be used for number snowman, or listening for beginning/middle/ending sounds as well.

And some nice open-ended activities today:

Shaving Cream

We used this for our "snow" paint this week and thus needed (yes, I was told that) to pull it out for free exploration. And since we were going to use the polar set with the "snow" dough...and that didn't work out due to the stickiness I pulled them out with the shaving cream. :-P See T. on the left there in the bottom picture. No way was he going to even get close enough to get any of that stuff on him. LOL Some day...right now he just tells me he's going to watch.

"Easel" Art

When we put our house up for sale, I moved a lot of stuff to storage and our easel was one of them. So, used our sliding glass door as our easel. :-) Great conversation takes place when they are doing things side by side! (And actually, the sliding glass door is a whole lot easier to clean than the easel.)

Music and Movement

Wanted to share that one of items we use for music and movement are holographic icicles. You'll find those right now at the dollar stores...and everywhere else too! I bought three+ years ago during the after xmas clearance sale for .25 a piece. :-P I left them "as is". Cover the staple backs with tape as a safety precaution. They've lasted a long time but we don't have them out all the time either. And so how you use your music and movement materials, the age of your children and their energy level are all going to play a part in how long they last. The children really enjoy these "streamers".

We had a laugh-filled morning and H. asked his dad..."Why did you come so soon?" at pick up time today. :-P Made my day!

S is for Snowmen! Day 2

2011-12-13T10:05:00.000-08:00

No snow yet...actually the forecast is rain! :-( Oh well. 39 degrees out today when we went outdoors. We're having fun with our snowmen days! Here's a few more activities we did with the focus of snow and snowmen.

Snowflake Snowman

Children explored with painting a piece of paper with watercolor/salt mixture. They also explored with cutting paper snowflakes. :-) They made at least one large, medium, and small snowflake to create a snowman on their watercolor background.

Especially fun to watch them open that first snowflake they made!

Salt Snow

Children love to use eyedroppers so after exploring with salt a bit I provided some watercolors and eyedroppers. I've done this before with liquid watercolor. This time I used what I had on hand...and that was the watercolor "spray" bottles that make such a mess! LOL My hands were covered with watercolor just preparing the bowls! Oh well! The children enjoyed the process and yes, they have slightly stained hands...but I thank my families because they understand that the process of an activity is so much important than the outcome and whether or not their child got dirty or not. :-) I try to minimize stains but they do happen, especially with this particular brand of watercolors!

Snowman Seriation/Measurement

Just simply created my own snowman seriation set in Print Shop awhile back. Children order by size then use the linking cubes to explore with nonstandard measurement. Also, I incorporated the concept of estimation or "guesstimation" with this activity. In the first grade classroom I was in they were doing estimation and one thing I noticed was that this was difficult for the children to do. Obviously they had very little experience with it. Most had a really hard time logically thinking about what would be larger (they were working with addition/subtraction facts) and what would be smaller. There were also some that had a difficult time "letting go" and guessing and understanding that it was okay for them to have the incorrect guess. So I told myself that I was definitely going to be doing more "guesstimation" activities here with my kiddos. So we did today. Do you think you will have more or less cubes than the green snowman? Encouraged a guess with each snowman and let them know that whatever they "guessed" was a-okay mainly by just being matter of fact and stating..."Okay...let's fnd out how close we were!"

Snowman Alphabet

http://www.makinglearningfun.com/

Children chose a hat, stated the letter, found the picture to put it on. The only representation I didn't care for was that they used "earth" for the letter E. Hmmm. So I did that one for them but they did the rest. :-)

Oh! I did want to share the book we read today. Repetitive, which allows for more interaction. Humorous in a very simple way! Might want to check it out...was so fitting for us this week because we have some "sneezy" issues going on with this cold going around.

Sneezy the Snowman by Maureen Wright

All for now...maybe I'll take the time to look at some other blogs today and see what others are up to this week!

S is for Snowmen!!!

2011-12-12T10:49:00.000-08:00

So, if I do a week focused around snowmen and we do the snow dance "Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!" will we get any snow? It's sure chilly out but in my opinion, if it's going to be cold...we need snow! Unfortunately, the forecast doesn't look all that promising for snow. Actually, I hear it's suppose to get warmer?!?!?! Oh well. We'll pretend!

Before I get started I'll share one of the pics of K. retelling Silly Sally with her "retelling map". None of the pictures turned out all that grand. Mainly because of the light coloring. But it'll give you an idea of what we did. She wanted to take this home right away. :-)

As you can see, we simply cut a large piece of paper and then drew the "map". We made a curvy "path" from town and then she looked in the book and figured out who Sally met first and what details she needed to draw for each animal's "home". So she drew a mud hole for the pig, a doghouse for the dog, she just placed the loon in the river, and drew a "yellow meadow" for the sheep. Then she retold it. She's really has gotten to be quite the storyteller around here! It has influenced T.-2 years, quite a bit as he now is starting to "tell the story" of a book he looks at. How fun!

So...back to this week. :-) S is a hard letter to learn, for letter formation anyway. Sound is picked up relatively quickly but to learn to write it is a little more difficult so I decided to add an "extra" week and do a whole week on "snowmen". Definitely a personal thing. I couldn't imagine just doing a 1 day theme on snowmen...there is SO much that can be done! And I love the snow/snowmen. :-) We'll use it again before winter is out, I'm sure!

"Snow" Dough

One of the first things K. did when we got back from the school was to cook up a batch of "snow" dough. :-) Just the basic recipe but with a bit of paint/glitter. I had forgotten that when I add paint it's much more sticky. Oh well, the kids enjoyed it anyway and got the extra hand strengthening by kneading in some flour to help with the stickiness! K. used the dough to practice some sight word reading and spelling before playing with the dough on its own. The lowercase letter words but uppercase letter sticks was intentional. :-) This way we were reinforcing upper/lower case letter recognition/matching along with our other goals.

Parts of a Snowman Brace Map

The meaning behind a brace map is to help the children see parts to whole or whole to parts. Young children tend to see only the "whole" so this is a good activity for them! What a great job she did with the "copywork" parts of the snowman words! Those lowercase letters are getting easier and easier! And something that put a smile on my face...we were sounding out the word eyes and I wrote "eye" and she's like..."e doesn't make /i/ sound!" Well, no it doesn't...thanks to the lovely English language. :-D

Oil Pastel Snowmen w/ Snow Paint

Inspired by www.deepspacesparkle.com.

4 yrs 8 yrs

This was an art lesson she did with her Kindergartners without the use of circle tracers. I definitely love how she taught the U head vs. a circle and then put the hat on top. And once again, I can't believe I've never really used oil pastels with the children previously. Though they are a bit more expensive than crayons (but they are holding up well being used by 2-8 year olds) they are so much more bold and easier to work with than crayons! We practiced creating a snowman on scrap paper first because there is a tendency to draw small and that's so hard to cut out. The "sparkle" is a mixture of salt and glitter that I had left over from another project. The "snow paint" is just shaving cream and glue. I really had to encourage her to "use it thick". It's been awhile since we've used this "snowpaint" and she had forgotten that when it dries...it'll dry puffy so the thicker you put it on...the bettter! Sidenote: Please remember that it's definitely a process when creating art. If you do this activity with a large class of preschoolers, I guarantee that you'll get at least one project that will be completely covered in snow, no snowmen to be seen and that's okay! :-P

Family Name Graph

I find that it was much easier to include graphing activities when I was in a large group setting. It was very easy to have a daily graph where the children answered a simple question by putting their name symbol in the appropriate column...then discuss the results. One year we had each child create a snowman using the letters in their name and we compared their names lengths. Well, that's a little more difficult to do with my very small group. :-) So this year, I decided to do a family name "graph" where they used the names of the members in their family. Then we compared size and such. I encouraged K. to use the conventional rule that first names start with a capital letter but the rest is written in lowercase letters. If you have a younger group, either encourage the capital letter writing, since that is what they tend to learn first or don't say a word about it at all and let them write as they wish. If you have a very very young group, write the letters yourself and use it more as a letter recognition activity.

Anyway...a few of our activities today. Hope your day went smoothly and lucky you if you have snow! :-P

S is for Snake!

2011-12-09T06:17:00.000-08:00

Button Snake

Very easy to make. I created this in ten minutes while sitting on the floor with the children during free play. It's something I've seen on the Internet over and over, especially on Montessori homeschool sites, and have wanted to make but never took the time. So it's not the most beautiful job since I was in a hurry but it is a nice little activity...especially for toddlers! I added the possibility of making a pattern for my preschoolers. Simply cut the squares of felt. Sew a button on the end of a ribbon and one of your felt squares on the other end. Cut slits in the felt squares to fit the button size.

Snake Circle Map (Thinking Map)

This is one of the simplest of the eight thinking maps. Simply put your main topic (we chose snake but I've seen them use circle maps with the letters in the alphabet so we could have done the sound /s/). The goal is for the children to "brainstorm" everything they know about that topic. It's very similar to the K in a KWL. I did add simple pictures (excuse them...I'm definitely not an artist!) but one of my goals with activities like this is to help them make the connection that everything we say can be wrote down. It's also a great way to model conventional "rules" with writing/spelling and I can "sound out" a word to reinforce that as well. And the children ALWAYS love to see what they are dictating, written down. It makes them feel important...as it should! The bubble map, which is one of the few I hope to use next week, is great for "prereading" if done just right. They'll be able to "read" sentences and that's awesome. Always are teaching that these are tools as well, not just "decorations". You probably can't see the actual sentences on the map very clearly. One was "Slither by some rocks and get a new body!" She was so excited to tell me that. So that conversation went on for a bit...talking about what has happening there.

Snake Cake by Yukiko Kido

This is a "flip a word" book. Simple way to reinforce word families/rhyming. Very bold illustrations! Several word families in each book.

Alphabet Snake

www.kizclub.com/craft/alphabetsnake1.pdf

This activity turned out really nice! The cutting was a little difficult for the newly turned 4 year old as the lines were narrow and there was a lot of turning but it was relatively easy for the older 4 year old. This pdf. file has both the upper and lower case letters. I used the upper case snake for the younger child and the lower case snake for the older child. If I was just doing this 1:1 with K. I would have had her write the letters on the stickers for practice with those lowercase letters. But since we were "working together" today and needed to be somewhat completed with the activity at around the same time, I went ahead and wrote the letters. I wrote them on the stickers in a left to right-top to bottom pattern to reinforce that for the younger 4. I would definitely do this activity again. Using the stickers was great to add a little more fine motor to the activity!

Pattern Snake

We practiced creating snakes the dry erase board, because they have a tendency to draw small, then we drew a big one on a large paper. The snakes above are the ones they drew. :-) I helped with the patterning...they told me what kind of patterns they wanted. I encouraged them to use markers to section up their snake. We talked about different types of patterns. Polka-dots (K. had on a polka dot shirt, yeah! Worked out to be a lovely introduction to the activity), stripes, etc. Then they were encouraged to use a different pattern in each section of their snake. The outcome wasn't exactly what I expected after they did the one on the dry erase board with me but they were excited and proud about their work so it was a success in my opinion. :-)

Loved T.'s letters. He handed me a marker and I thought he was having a hard time with the cap so I took the cap off and handed it back to him. He shakes his head no and tells me, "write you T here" Then "O" then "G" then "again G" and "again G" and eventually "'nother G" until we wrote all those G's and I distracted him by singing the alphabet song. He started wanting those letters when the kids started writing "snake" on their paper. Interesting, I see in the picture...K. wrote "sMake". She was sounding out the word herself before I wrote it on the board (that's why she knew to put the e at the end since she hasn't mastered the knowledge of silent e.) Today in our reading lesson she was interchangeably using /m/ and /n/ for the letter n. So I know something to work on with her! Really watch and listen when you can to your child when they doing their "own work" and you are just an observer. You'll learn alot about what they have truly grasped and what you may need to spend more time with! Sidenote...the picture on the bottom left has an addition to the end of his body. :-) H. decided to add a rattle!

All Tuckered Out!

Been trying to keep her awake in the afternoons. Today she was doing okay, I could tell she was tired and we weren't going to get much done in the afternoon without it taking a long time and perhaps some frustration taking place so after our reading lesson she occupied herself for a bit. Eventually I went and got her some thick Disney books to look at since she enjoys looking at pictures, especially of stories like Cinderella, Bambi and etc. Well, I went into the other room to take care of a few things on that end and came out to see she had moved all the books to the floor and , well, guess she decided to take a nap. :-) Wishing it was me! But something about licensing rules and sleeping while children are in attendance seems to hold me back from napping during the day. :-)

Hope you have had a lovely week.

S is for Silly Sally!

2011-12-06T10:18:00.000-08:00

I love Silly Sally by Audrey Wood. I still remember the first time I read it...to a group of Kindergartners! That was a long time ago!

A "new" vocabulary word we used today after our story is the word "character". This week I'm introducing characters and settings, mainly for K.'s sake. She's ready to advance into higher thinking regarding a storyline.

So with "characters" in mind, I tried to incorporate an activity that used each of the activities. Silly Sally had a white bow, did you know that? So good to help them notice detail! So for a little fine motor activity, we curly q'd orange hair to represent Sally's hair, hard to see the orange in the picture but these cards are done that way. And then they matched color bow, pencil and word. Pattern was from www.pressomatic.com/ittybittybookworm/upload/Web.pdf .

Silly Sally first met a dog, who played leapfrog.

I wanted to reinforce all the "magic C" motion letters we've learned (C, O, Q, G, and S) so pulled out the HWT dough and mats. Then when they were finished with those letters they were welcome to play with the playdough. I added a dog that when they put playdough inside and pressed down onto the tool, he "grows hair". They always love this cause/effect activity...though it's not all that easy for them...really makes them use their hand and arm muscles! Today H. was cutting the dog's hair and telling me "He's not like Silly Sally anymore! He's going to be bald!" :-D

Started out like this ... Ended like this!

Silly Sally met a pig, they danced a jig.

This morning I grabbed a bucket and large spoon as we were heading to the school. Of course, my kiddos wanted to know what what it was for. K. rides along with us and was listening to the conversation. I just mentioned that I was going to stop at the dirt pile and grab some dirt to make mud with the kids today. So A.-8 yrs says, "Hey, K.?! What ingredients do you need to make mud?" :-) So, she had a head start and wanted to do this activity first.

Started out like this ... Ended like this!

And she was back at it this afternoon with a fresh tray.

Have I ever mentioned that I LOVE trays? ;-P They make life so much easier!

Silly Sally met a loon, they sang a tune.

This was a free exploration activity. I wanted to reinforce/introduce the "oo" makes a /oo/ sound and so I used the loons to spell the word during the intro activity (along with creating a pattern). Lately I've been trying to include materials that require them to think about what they can do with on their own and this was one. Simply printed a sheet of loons, laminated, and added a magnet. The things you can do with them are endless!

Silly Sally met a sheep, they fell asleep.

I was going to just do a simple cotton ball transfer activity but decided at the last minute (actually at 3:30A this morning) to just make math mat sheets. Then I remembered that www.makinglearningfun.com had a pattern for sheep so printed off, added a bit of color, laminated and voila! A game the children could play together. Typically they use these mats individually but been trying to do more "together" activities since there are such lovely qualities that can be learned about sportsmanship and taking turns. They simply rolled the dice, told us what number they rolled, transferred that many pieces of cotton (cut a small cotton ball into quarters...you can use pom poms also, probably will myself next time). The goal was to see who could fill their mat first. I do encourage left to right but with toddlers you might allow for them to place them anywhere on their mat.

A little closer up version of the math mat.

Silly Sally met Neddy Buttercup, walking forwardsm right side up. Actually, I had a block for Neddy Buttercup. I couldn't really think of anything to do with him in particular. So we had a little fun with tickling-me tickling them so that it didn't get out of control...some kids just don't know how to tickle and it hurts! So if you have any ideas for Neddy, please share!

A few other activities we did that were connected to Silly Sally...

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Flower Arranging: They always do enjoy this and since there were a lot of flowers in the story (buttercups and in the flower boxes in the town) I decided to make it available again. I have posted about this activity again. Remember that repetition is a good thing!

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Retelling Map : Well, K. and I hadn't gotten to the map before I was done with the blog :-) So I'll post a picture of that when it's completed. It's very beneficial to provide something that allows for them to retell the story on their own time! With this little "map" we'll also be talking about settings as well as the characters.

We had a lovely morning...hope you all did as well!

G is for Goats!

2011-12-01T09:22:00.000-08:00

www.pabook.libraries.psu.edu

There are so many versions of classic stories! I sent my husband on a search for the book The Three Billy Goats Gruff and the books that we could find at the library...well, I didn't really care for the version or I didn't care for the illustrations. So today I decided to once again "listen" to the story vs. reading a book. A very simple, "pleasant", version of The Three Billy Goats Gruff can be found at www.thestoryhome.com. I did add this site to my favorites as it sees to have a good selection of stories! With the The Gingerbread Man I added my sequencing cards. Today, we just listened (while I "acted it out" a little...brought a few giggles) and at the end of the story I asked, "What do YOU think the troll looked like?". Tee hee! I'd love to do that with a whole class. I'm sure there would be some great variations of a troll! Would make a great display or class book. Here is K.'s troll!

Retelling the story!

Very simple-wooden blocks, felt, stick puppets of the goats and a troll.

Another picture to show it's simplicity.

Sink and Float

She knew right off what we were doing today, even though we hadn't truly done a sink and float activity this year yet. :-) Then, of course, there was time for free exploration. Water is always a favorite. There is just something about it that no child tires of it. And you can vary it by adding color, bubbles, temperature and the tools can definitely vary. Great sensory/science experience. I was going to do a science booklet to go along with this book but there was already enough coloring and cutting planned today so decided to skip it. So, instead, just simple drew two pictures- sink and float- water line on both. Boat on one and an object down in the water on the other. She predicted whether they would sink or float, tested, and then "recorded" by placing object in the correct column.

Rhyming with Goat and Troll

Mailbox Publication

Always trying to slip in rhyming as frequently as possible. We slipped in the use of the sight word "the" since that word seems tricky for her yet. Also used this time to label with "kid spelling". Note that she wrote each sound she actually heard. PERFECT!

G is for Goat by Patricia Polacco

Alphabet book regarding goats. We read this book and used it along with the goats tree map.

Goats Tree Map

This is one of the eight thinking maps that are being used frequently in our schools. When they begin a "new" tool, I like to introduce it at the preschool level as then it's familiar (the brain connections are already starting to be created) and more easily to learn about and take the tool to the next level when they enter Kindergarten. This particular thinking map I used to help create a visual on how to write a simple sentence. Note the colors used. Green at the top (where we start the sentence), red at the bottom (the end of the sentence). I actually had a box for her to write the sentence in at the bottom of the sentence and then we cut apart the words and glued them to the paper she'd do her illustration on. This reinforces spacing between words. Side note about a tree map: they work great with science/informational books, use to see what information they have retained!

When I think Kindergarten writing I think...

* Able to print in a way that's readable/legible.

* Using beginning and ending sounds and some middle sounds when sounding out and spelling a word (some children may already be using more conventional spellings).

* Correct use of sight words in their sentence(s).

* Basic punctuation.

* Spaces between words.

* Illustration goes along with the sentence. May or may not have much detail in either sentence or picture at the kindergarten level (our school's writing program is doing a lot with details in illustrations and sentences).

As a preschool teacher...my goal is to work toward the above goals. I usually save the sounding out/spelling for activities where they are doing "free writing", such as journals, or labeling pictures and so on. With an activity like this tree map, I like to do it "copywork" style because then I can point out conventional rules. With K., we've been doing quite a bit with learning that letters together make words (CVC practice), words together make sentences and there are spaces separating each word in a sentence. She's doing great!

G is for Gingerbread!

2011-11-28T16:21:00.000-08:00

Gingerbread Playdough

1 C. flour

1/2 C. salt

2 tsp. cream of tarter

spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves are what we had on hand so used.)

1 C. water

1 tsp. vegetable oil

Mix dry ingredients in saucepan. Add water and oil. Mix and cook until a dough forms.

Sure smelled good in this house today! We made the above "gingerbread" playdough recipe after we got back from the school and as it cooled a bit (in plastic wrap to help keep some of the warmth) we did our calendar, focus letter G work, and heard the story about the gingerbread man. If you can believe it, I don't have that book! And when I was at the library they only had Gingerbread Girl and Gingerbread Friends and I really wanted the classic story. So decided we'd find one online to listen to. Well, that was a good thought but do you think I could find one that was similar to the sequencing cards I had and had our favorite repetitive verse of "run run as fast as you can..."? No way, no how. :-P So, K. had to deal with me telling the story vs. hearing from a true story teller.

Telling stories without a book isn't my strong point. But it seemed to work out. After I told the story, K. retold it as I wrote it down. Always interesting...those retellings. This time though she got it right down. :-D I'll be leaving the sequencing cards out for future retellings! The playdough mats were from SparkleBox and the sequencing cards were from www.homeschoolshare.com

Gingerbread Family

I showed them how they could use the different size circle sponges to make a head and then add paintbrush rectangle body, arms and legs to make a simply gingerbread man. Then I encouraged them to make a family. When dry they will add oil pastel details.

Gingerbread Fine Motor Cards*

Wasn't going to add these to the blog but after seeing T. using them I decided to. T. is just shy of 2.5 years old. Typically he is given these cards and he does exactly what he is doing on the tray. But today, for the first time, we can see the two that he did before he went back to his typical use. I was impressed! 2.5 years of age is about when I start to see preschool tendencies. He's right on schedule. :-)

Gingerbread Sequencing and Measurement*

I like to add the extra nonstandard measurement task with sequencing cards. Remember to talk about 1st and last, even odd, smallest-largest/shortest-tallest, etc.

Gingerbread Man Puzzle*

Adding a little "copy work" to her scissors work today. :-)

Gingerbread Man Patterning*

She cut all the pieces out and created her own pattern using them all. It ended up being an ABC pattern and fit across the bottom of a 12"x18" piece of construction paper so I mentioned a crown and she was very excited about it so voila! The extra step to make a pattern crown. :-)

Gingerbread Stamp and Roll

www.prekinders.com

You can easily find (or make your own theme related) sheets such as these. Typically what happens is the child rolls a dice and stamps from left to right until they get until the end. This time I traced a few more gingerbread at the bottom and wrote the numbers 1-12 randomly onto the gingerbread. The reason being is that if there is anything K. needs to work on is numeral recognition...for some odd reason! LOL So using two dice allow for a little more challenge in numeral recognition but also allows us to practice what "addition" means. I was also slipping in there that if we know what number the dice is representing, counting doesn't take as long. :-) She knows 1, 2, and usually three and four on a dice since we use dice often so today we worked on what 5 looks like on a dice. Good practice! By the way, she was giving the gingerbread "belly buttons!" Love it!

10 Little Gingerbread Men and Sorting/Descriptive Language

http://www.kidssoup.com/

This activity had multiple goals. I really should have made sure this got done in the morning since K. is tired by afternoon and thinking about same and differences was a bit more difficult than it could have been. Keep that in mind when you are working with your child. The children are usually more capable of "academic" type tasks moreso in the morning than in the afternoon. :-) First off she sorted the 10 gingerbread into pairs/"sets of 2". She then told me why she put the two together. Then I challenged her with "what's different" in each pair. Great for noticing details and verbal descriptions. Then she put them into two lines, each with a "set of 5". She told me that 5+5=10. :-D Then after placing the tactile numbers in order from 1-10, she then used a dry erase marker to write the numerals up on the magnet board. Then we sang the song that went with this activity. 1 little 2 little 3 little gingerbread... the second vs. went along with whatever action word was used at the end of the first verse. For example...

Run, run, run 10 little gingerbread.

Run until the morning. (Clap, twirl, sleep, stomp were some of the action words we used.)

K. is getting more of a "homeschool" experience vs. a preschool experience since my numbers are so low and I'm not filling the spaces. That has pros and cons. Academically she is really progressing. Socially, she'll be fine, I'm not worried but it is something to keep in mind when you are deciding what is the best experience for your child would be.

* www.homeschoolcreations.com- Gingerbread Baby printables packet.

G is for Gobble, Gobble, Gobble!

2011-11-22T09:55:00.000-08:00

We didn't get to everything I wanted today but that's how it goes. We made cookies (see below) and well, they took a bit of time for making and baking and cleaning up. Ha! Yep, the clean up probably took the longest! But it was a fun-filled morning with lots of learning going on...starting with the well received book...

The Gobble Gobble MOOOOOO Tractor Book
by Jez Alborough
www.amazon.com
Check this book out if you haven't seen it before!

A cute little song that we were singing all morning!

http://www.2teachingmommies.com/search?q=gobble

Tune: Pop Goes the Weasel

The turkey is a silly bird.

His head goes wobble, wobble.

He only knows one funny word.

Gobble, gobble, gobble!

The Gobble Gobble game that this blogger posted was a hit here too! They spun the paperclip on the spinner and put the corresponding colored feather on the turkey. If they landed on "gobble gobble" they had to put all the feathers back on the tray. They continued until they got all the feathers on the turkey.

Another crafty item we did this week. I've seen it here and there on the Internet. Tissue paper, modge podge, dollar store candle holders and battery operated tea lights, wooden knob and hot glue. The tissue paper/modge podge process was great for fine motor with a bit of sensory added in there. :-P

Turkey cookies the children made from scratch today. I didn't care for this particular sugar cookie recipe so I won't share it but if anyone knows of an excellent sugar cookie recipe I'd love it if you'd share it!

Shape Review

http://www.2teachingmommies.com/2011/11/turkeys-expanded.html

Simple little book in the Turkey Tot Pack that allowed for review of basic shapes and also the literacy concept of letters making words and words making sentences. Sight word reading for K. also! After they finished their booklet they started exploring with creating shapes on the Cordz LapBoard. Actually I've had this Cordz product since they clearanced them out a LONG time ago. Been in my "gift" tub and I thought, why not? Let's use them ourselves. What a hit! Simple to use!

Number Order Puzzle

http://www.2teachingmommies.com/2011/11/thanksgiving-expanded.html

Not sure why blogger is rotating my picture. It isn't this position originally. ??? Anyway, it gives you the idea. I like these number order puzzles! Helps them self-correct. This is one of Madonna and Amber's free printables in their Thanksgiving packs. They also have 11-20 as well.

Sight Word Turkey
Excuse that we didn't reallly think ahead about how the words would actually look on the feathers. :-P Next time we'll take that into consideration. These were words that she remembered and wanted to write. Kind of a neat (very simple-great way to use scrap paper)way to review!

Since our 3 day week turned into a 2 day week, we'll be exploring with the letter G again next week as it's more unfamiliar than some of the others. Future themes...Gingerbread Man, Gumballs, Three Billy Goats!

Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving!

G is for Goldilocks!

2011-11-21T11:50:00.000-08:00

Been a little while since I've done any "educating" so maybe will take that route today. I find that some people really do not understand what goes into teaching. There is more to it than searching the Internet to find an activity that will slip into a certain category. :-) We think (or maybe I should say "I think") much more deeply than that when we create our lesson plans and implement our lessons. So today's thought is about asking questions to extend a child's thinking. There are pictures below to show other activities we did today.

Goldilocks and the Three Bears are one of K.'s favorite book so wanted to incorporate it this week. One of my goals with K. was to do an activity to help extend her thinking process. I'd really like to see a bit of growth in creative thinking. :-) And so this time we spent a lot of time talking about the book and characters, asking questions, that also included "what if" questions. For those with a bit of education background...we know there are many theories about how learning takes place. Most theorists agree that children usually have to master one skill before they can truly move onto the next. And as teachers...yes, we see and agree with that. It's not that we don't allow for the children to be exposed to the other skills...we do...but when we evaluate and individualize, we understand that if a child has not shown mastery of one skill then we need to work on that skill before we can expect the child to move on. One theory is called "Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning Domains". Maybe just put a little note of reminder in here that there is not just one "theory" that I go with. I find that over the course of 15 years of working with children, I've created my own smorgasbord batch of theories. I take a little from one theory and a little from another. Very typical for most teachers. So, in a nutshell, Bloom felt there were three learning domains. Cognitive-knowledge/mental skills; affective-attitude/emotional development; psychomotor-skills/physical development. Most theories that have more learning domains usually are just breaking these three categories into more specific areas. It's very good to familiarize yourself, whether you are a parent or a teacher (or both) with the various ways people learn so that you can best provide for your child. So today, I decided to take Bloom's thought on cognitive development. His team came up with 7 levels of difficulty. So, with the thought in mind...one must master the first before being able to master the second...I went through a series of questions with K. that would go along with these levels of difficulty. Was interesting! I highly recommend that you think about the questions you ask your child and be conscious of providing your child with experience in creative thinking! This with highly benefit them in life. :-) Until you become a natural at question asking, remember it is definitely okay to right a list down of questions you want to ask and keep it near you after reading a book. :-) Eventually, you'll begin asking the different levels of questions naturally, all throughout the day, not just after reading a book.

Level 1: Knowledge/Recalling information

What was the little girl's name?

Goldilocks. (An extension to that question...why do you think her name is Goldilocks? This was something K. could not answer. Past experience plays a big part in how children answer questions. K. really didn't understand that "locks" could mean strands of curly hair. She also did not connect the word "gold" to the color of her hair because in all the books we have, Goldilocks hair is "yellow" not gold. It was neat to see her expression when we began to talk about the name!)

Level 2: Comprehension

Why were there three bowls on the table?

K. first retold the section of the book about the three bowls and papa's being too hot and etc. So I acknowledged what she said and asked the question again. She then told me "the bears left to take a walk so the porridge would cool."

Level 3: Application

What do you do when your cereal is too hot?

This took K. a little bit longer ask she was a bit tired this morning and had a hard time getting past the whole story retelling. So after hearing a bit about the story I asked the question again emphasizing your cereal/food/soup. We do eat oatmeal once a week for breakfast but it's never "too hot" for her. So changing it to soup worked. And she responded with "You wait for it to cool." So, I asked, what do you do while you wait for it to cool. She said, "eat something yummy". :-) Well, knowing this child...she definitely prefers bread over any other type of food and thus...that's yummy and what she normally eats first, while the rest is cooling. Anyway, eventually, she did say, "Sometimes I blow on my food." Yes! That is definitely an answer that would go along with the application question.

Level 4: Analysis

List three differences between Papa Bear's cereal and Baby Bear's cereal.

So, I expected a little difficulty here. Why I expected it was because verbally stating reasons for sorting materials past one obvious difference has been a challenge. Pretty typical for this age group but something I'm working on. She did state two differences. Papa's was too hot and Baby's was just right. After a bit of time I finally said, "Tell me about the bowls." and she came up with another difference. Papa bear’s bowl- was big baby bear’s bowl- teeny teeny bit small. So 2 out of 3...pretty typical for 4 years old. By the end of the school year she'll be able to think more analytically because that is one of my goals for her.

Level 5: Synthesis

How would it have changed the story if the Three Bears had been home?

This was a very hard question for her. Again, she was retelling parts of the story. So I made it more personal and I said, "If you peeked in the door and saw a family of bears...what would you do?" This isn't the exact same type of question but I wanted her to think more creatively. She said she'd be scared and run away. Oh! Of course I led that back to what Goldilocks might have done if she saw the bears. And K. added, "She has to go away and be a little scared."

Level 6: Evaluation

Was Goldilocks smart to go into the Bears' house?

No. Because her mommy said no. (So, as you can see level 4, 5 and 6 are not yet mastered yet). But we did extend that question a bit more talking a little about strangers and going into people's houses without them inviting us and not letting people in Ms. Amber's house, even if we know them, unless Ms. Amber has seen who it is and have given permission. We had that situation recently. She was really just trying to help but that's a big "uh-oh" here. Safety comes first. So, good to reiterated that safety rule!

Another creative thinking activity we did today was remembering that there were three bowls of porridge on the table and "what if there were 3 cups and 3 plates?" I asked her to draw what the bears might be eating for breakfast along with their porridge. This was difficult so I switched it too, what would you like to eat at breakfast time. She colored the cup pink for strawberry milk, added pink applesauce (huh? I can't get her to eat applesauce lately!), a brown pancake, and black sausage on the plate. Sounds yummy to me! :-D

Here's a retelling activity I quickly created out of construction paper. Excuse the folds in the roof. :-) I was trying it one way but it just wasn't working so ended up just stapling another 12x18 piece of construction paper on the top and cutting it in half so we could open up the house. The door is only glued on half of the house so it can open. It took a little while since I created the simple pieces as she was retelling so we could use the colors she wanted. :-) She thought about what she'd see on the outside of the house and together we added details. Then she added a table with 3 bowls of porridge, 3 chairs (big, medium, small), 3 beds (big, medium, small) in the "rooms" of the house. She then colored a Goldilocks and the three bears. Then to add a little more creativity and thus made it a little more difficult for her today was to think about and add details. What else could they have in the kitchen? What else would be in the livingroom/bedroom? She eventually added drawings of pictures (there was a page in the book with the bears' pictures on the wall), lights in every room. I loved how she started to draw the ceiling fan in the bedroom. Stripes on the wall in the kitchen. And then she retold the story from the beginning to the end with the different voices (papa-big, loud, mama-medium size voice, baby-high voice). T.-2 years, LOVED it! And that activity is going home today. No way was she going to let us keep it here so we could retell the story to the other kids. LOL

www.makinglearningfun.com

Goldilocks and the Three Bears Calendar Numbers

So, what do you do with flash cards? We don't use them much for "memorizing flashcard style" but they do work nicely for many activities. Today I hid these "calendar numbers" throughout the living room and K. and T. went on a hunt. When they thought they had them all I encouraged K. to put them in order from 1-15 (there was a pattern there also). Well, she soon found out that she didn't have them all so off she'd go looking for another one. :-D Loved hearing the squeal when she found one. Anyway, she really has down odd/even from our daily calendar activity using the counting(craft) sticks. And recently we have been doing more "skip counting". Today, she had passed the 21 counting sticks around and as normal she laid hers out to find out how many she has and whether it was even or odd. For the first time, she pointed to her three pairs of sticks and counted 2, 4, 6, and added 7 for her last stick!!!! WOW! So to reinforced that skip counting I decided to have her pull down the even numbers after she had the numbers 1-15 in order. Exciting stuff...at least for this lady!

Simple patterning activity that I created a long time ago to use with our counting bears. Simply placed corresponding colored pairs in a pattern on a strip and laminated them. This was a good 'no brainer' activity for her this afternoon since she had a sleepy brain. :-D Just reviewing how to extend a pattern. She usually makes her own patterns and so extending them tend to get set aside so wanted to review it and glad I did since she was copying the pattern vs. extending it onto the next strip. So I'll be sure to add some more patterning extension activities in to our plans for awhile until I'm sure she understands what "extends" is. When we learn to pattern the first step is to copy the pattern but typically I have them copy underneath the first pattern to keep the confusion down and then they move to extending the pattern (next to the initial strip) then they move to creating their own. Always good to review to keep those brain connections working!

Yes, we do some "crafts". I'm not a big craft person, mainly because at the preschool and younger stage...it ends up being the adult's work vs. the child's so I like to keep crafts for school-agers. But crafts do have a place. Here, sewing is excellent to help with eye-hand coordination and help strengthen those muscles in their hands.

5 Senses Bear

We actually did not create this one today. This bear is a couple years old and was my son's. But I did pull it out today because we went on a "nature walk" just like the 3 bears. As we went on our walk we talked about what we saw, hear, smelled, touched, and couple possibly taste. Great conversation! The picture isn't all that clear so here are the words.

Tune: BINGO

We use five senses every day to help us learn and play.

See, hear, sell, taste, touch.

We use them every day!

When we created this simple 5 Senses Bear we used sand paper for the bear (touch), added google eyes (see) and a bell (hear), scratched cinnamon sticks on the sand paper (smell) and drank cinnamon spiced apple cider (taste).

We again made use of www.makinglearningfun.com magnet sheets to reinforce our focus letter and for T. the number three. Three is his favorite number right now. He has to have 3 night-nights, 3 candy corn, 3 everything and he knows if you don't give him three! LOL Anyway...after using the magnetic chips we explored with the rest of the set of magnets.

So, that's some of what we did. Was a busy day with those activities and the normal ones also. K.'s doing great with her reading. Not sure if I mentioned that we went back to the book Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Siegrfried Engelmann. This book is popular amongst the homeschooling group. I've used it with two of my children and now coming back to with with K. It can be considered "dry" but if you use it as a guide they will definitely be reading at a 1st grade level by the time your finish it. So if you are looking for a resource for teaching a child how to read...here's a relatively cheap one! :-)

Q is for... (and a few turkeys)

2011-11-18T10:36:00.000-08:00

This week we worked with the letter Qq. Sharing just a few highlighted activities.

One of the cutest projects we did this week...

Handprint Queens

For whatever the reason, I went searching for the image I initially saw (the site isn't on the image I saved) and I can't find it. ??? Not sure why. So if anyone knows of the site, please inform me so I can give credit. Thanks. Gold metallic paint on the four fingers for the crown, and skin colored paint for the palm. Do not paint thumb. After dry add details. We used glitter glue and tiny beads (that I purchased thinking they were much bigger than they are) as "jewels". FYI: I do not purchase skin tone paints due to expense. I make mine by mixing white, brown and yellow. We also looked at the book Children Just Like Me: Celebrations by Barnabas and Anabel Kindersley prior to printing our handprints so that we could note various skin colors.

With K...we took the letter Q a step further and did quite a bit with the concept that Q and u are together in almost every word. And the sound is /qu/ vs. /k/. We did a King/Queen word sort and learned the little song

Q-U Are Friends

Tune: Twinkle Twinkle

Q-u, Q-u friends are they; and together they will stay.

U will always follow q, as most good friends often do.

Q-u, as in queen and quit, like a hand in glove they fit.

Q-u, Q-u friends are they; and together they will stay.

Color Crowns

Scissor activity combined with patterning and color review. Loved that K. began to sing our little color mixing song as she was placing the small squares on the big ones.

Red and blue make purple.

Heigh-ho the Derry-o.

Red and blue make purple.

Painted Quilt

Just googled quilt block template and found one that would work and printed nine. Placed a variety of colors on a tray, each with their own paint brush. K. painted the blocks. When dry, we trimmed and glued to construction paper. Hole-punched around the end, tied with yarn and voila! A quilt!

Sight Word Quilt

She really enjoyed this! I created a simple quilt in Print Shop with the review sight words and new ones. To add a little more fine motor, I printed two copies and cut one set of sight words apart and placed them in "purses". She would open the "purse", take the sight word square out, read it, match it to the word on the quilt and then trace the word herself. She used a roller stamp around the edge to make a border and stamps in the blank "blocks" to finish off her "quilt".

"5" Little Ducks Went Out To Play

After reading the book, I pulled out the laminated mother duck and ducklings. We sang the song again (and again and again! :-D) as H. chose a different set of ducklings to follow mama duck and matched the tactile number to the set. Something I was excited to see this time, for the first time, was that H. did not have to put his finger on the ducklings to count them up to a set of 3. Definitely a milestone!

Q is for QUACK!

A quickie activity that combined scissor skills, reinforced the letter Q, and touched on the concept that some letters together make words.

School-agers were here once this week. We didn't do Q activities but we did do some turkey stuff. :-)

Parachute Turkeys

Ha! Just stuck 4 feathers into orange styrofoam balls. They did enjoy this. Prior to playing with the turkeys and parachute, the children each had two turkeys and we went around telling something we were thankful for before tossing the turkeys into middle of the parachute.

Turkey Lunch

Foam Cup Turkeys

Very simple and they enjoyed the process and playing with them later. In the morning we marble painted the paper to use for feathers. They also painted the foam cups. In the afternoon they cut out the feathers and "hot" glued it all together. :-)

Non-Turkey Activities that were enjoyed...

Goop!

This cornstarch/water mixture is ALWAYS a favorite. It's something I consider a "clean mess". It's messy, yes, but does clean up relatively easy as it will "melt" with warm water or can be swept up.

Body Doodlers

Pretty self-explanatory. :-) They fade after a few hours and washes off completely, eventually. :-P

Hope you all had a good week. Mine went relatively okay until I typed up the blog and went view it after I posted to see that somehow all the activities but one had "disappeared". ??? My goal to do highlighted activities of the week on Friday was to save time. Well, I wonder how much time was saved this week! :-D

O is for...

2011-11-10T10:16:00.000-08:00

O is for Ovals and Octopus!

Well, didn't have time to post yesterday. 'Twas quite a day. Anyway, I'll just include two of our oval activities along with some of our octopus activities that we did today.

Quick...change the circle to an oval!

This was a very simple activity that they really got a kick out of. I added a number component by putting a different number of beads on each pipe cleaner circle. First we started with talking about the pipe cleaner circles and singing our circle song..."This is a circle, this is a circle, how can you tell, how can you tell?..." And then I took one circle and quickly pulled it into an oval. They know what an oval is so it was just reinforcement but that's needed also.

Oval Song

Tune: Up On the Housetop

I am round, this is true.

But I just might fool you.

One way I'm thin, one way I'm tall.

If you stand me up, I'm sure to fall.

I am an oval, this is true.

I am an oval, did I fool you?

One way I'm thin, one way I'm tall.

If you stand me up, I'm sure to fall.

Gayle Bittinger

End result, these pipecleaner ovals/circles are perfect for counting. I will definitely use the bead/pipe cleaner task again because they can move each bead as they are counting. Perfect! Love this picture. The number ten oval is the only one that I created a pattern with. I'm always trying to slip things like that in to encourage them to look for details.

Oval Frame

Before exploring with circle/oval sponges with painting, I reinforced the shape oval by providing an oval piece of paper to lightly tape on a large rectangle. She sponge painted around the oval edge and then covered the rest of the paper with paint in order to create a "picture frame". When dry, K. drew a picture of her "family" inside (which ended up being Grandma, herself, a "new" brother, and a toy octopus :-D).

Okay, now to Octopus.

5 Little Octopuses

http://www.kidssoup.com/

We started out by watching this animated story from www.abctwiggles.com. I like their animated stories, most of the time. They do highlight the words as they are reading them. They are often repetitive which is good also. Simple stories. So I printed off the booklet from their sister site (Kids Soup) for the children to cut apart for a scissors task today.

Orange Octopus Playdough Mat

www.sparklebox.uk.co

Great for rolling out those "snakes"! Reinforce the 8 legs fact. They thought the fact that an octopus can grow back another leg if they lost one was pretty neat. Of course, they had free exploration with playdough after this task.

Sensory: Water Play

Well, I forgot to get my octopus from the garage this morning. Oops. It was neat to see them use their imagination though. They turned a globe shaped container into an octopus and a sponge as well. So turned out well. Love to see their creative thinking. Another child used both hands together to be an octopus and wiggled their fingers in the water to make waves. I think this came from the fact we created a handprint octopus today. Love to watch them explore!

Handprint Octopus

http://mindfull-meanderings.blogspot.com/2010/01/handprint-octopus.html

This is how ours turned out. I provided oil pastels for them to use for seaweed. Stickers for the fish. We had used a sponge to add the blue...oops, it was purple LOL..."texture" to represent water on the paper. O is for orange so we chose orange paint to print with. They wanted googly eyes, which they ask for whenever they get a chance. :-P Cute.

We did free exploration on colored fingerpaint paper today as our true art project. :-) Actually, I usually use black fingerpaint with this paper because it has more of an effect than other colors. But! This was exciting for me...H. is working with the black fingerpaint and said, "Ink! Look this octopus sprayed ink!" :-D I hadn't even thought of that! Yeah! And of course I wore cream today. Why, why, why? Obviously I don't plan my wardrobe around our activities because I could safely say that everytime the kids use black fingerpaint I'm wearing cream or white. Blah! LOL

The giant orange octopus.

What's Different Strips

These are so easy to create yourself with clip art. I love them because it's an easy way to reinforce first/last in a line as well as encourage descriptive language. I find that many times the children can point out which item is different but when I asked them to tell me why...they have a hard time describing/telling me the reason. It comes with practice. Last year K. couldn't tell me the reasons but after a few "what's different strips" this year, she is quick to tell me why they are different. Making you own allows you to be progressive in the difficulty. Not sure if you can see it here but the first strip I did had a completely different (including color) octopus. The second strip was a different octopus but still orange. The third strip was an upside down octopus. The fourth strip was a smaller octopus and the fifth strip was a flipped octopus and that one was hard for them. It was just a very small change...they had to notice the bubbles or the eyes.

Perhaps I'll stop here for now. Hope you all have/had a lovely day! We enjoyed watching the short lived snow! Half day for the boys today...they were bummed that the snow was done by the time they left the school. But I see more clouds rolling in, they may be in luck.

O is for...

2011-11-08T11:36:00.000-08:00

O is for Ocean!

Ocean Preschool Pack

www.homeschoolcreations.com

This individual has really put quite a bit of work into these little packets and they are free. We so appreciate individuals like Jolanthe who are so willing to share their work. If you are one of these people...THANK YOU! We used a few of the activities that were in this pack today. I'll place and asterisk (*) next to the activities that were from this particular pack.

Line Tracing*

I was bummin' that this picture is blurry. She was proud of her work (and should be!) and held it up to me to see. Unfortunately, digital cameras tend to be a little slower in some regards and I couldn't really "recapture" this picture again. These lines go beyond the basic that many sites offer. Takes a bit more "pencil" control. She did these lines where the younger child was only expected (though he could have chose differently) to do the basic lines due to the amount of effort it would have taken him. Lines like this are perfect for beginner writers. Helps to teach left to right, eye-hand coordination and helps them become comfortable with the various types of lines that we will be using as we explore with handwriting. I laminated this set but to save money you can put the pages inside of sheet protectors and use dry erase markers. You can use washable markers but they smear much easier, to the frustration of the children and the adults (who have to do the laundry).

O is for Ocean Letter Formation*

I encourage children to do "rainbow writing" vs. coloring of sheets like this. Why? Number one, coloring isn't something I push. Actually, many of our activities go home uncolored because I give the option of coloring or not coloring. Some programs do a lot of coloring sheets saying that it is "necessary for their fine motor development". Yes, that is what they told me and I'm sure you could figure out what my response was. Perhaps it does help to a certain extent but I've worked with too many children who find coloring frustrating/boring/tiring and there are so many other ways to strengthen and develop muscles in their hands that we do very little coloring. With an activity like this, if they colored it, they are missing out on some lovely letter formation reinforcement. I often place a green dot and add an arrow so they know where to start and which direction to go in. Then I ask them to use colored writing tools to create a rainbow inside of the letter. They must use at least three colors but they can use more if they wish.

Tunnel Letter Formation

An activity that led into our letter O formation activity was our tunnel.

Like this picture :-)

Actually, I pulled out the tunnel for the letter C last week and though we played with the tunnel, we never used it for letter formation, for whatever reason, just ran out of time I guess. C is for crawl, ya know! :-) So, with Handwriting Without Tears, the materials all have a smiley face where the children start many of the letters. However, with the magic C motion, it starts on the opposite corner. We showed that on the HWT tools last week. So to reinforce that idea, I created a simple paper plate smiley face for our C and O tunnel formation. Tunnel moves a bit but it was in the right spot when we started. :-D We created a letter C and crawled through it and on O we started in the same spot but I "closed it up" for them to get a sense that they go right back to the beginning. They enjoyed this, especially with me closing it up!

Water Transfer With Sponge

I was talking about the various ways to strengthen hands besides coloring. Here's one. I'm sure I've mentioned this in a blog before. I wasn't planning this activity but came across a whale sponge (you can create any shape out of a sponge) when I was looking for a different sponge this morning so quickly added it to our things to do. :-) They put the sponge in the bowl and squeezed the water into the measuring cup. I added blue coloring to allow for a bit of self-correction. If they spilled the water, they'd see it more clearly. And as you can see below, we got a little pouring practice in as well. If you have never done an activity like this before...try it! The children always love this type of thing and it has many benefits one being...it's very easy to set up and clean up!

Eye Dropper Ocean

Another water transfer activity that uses eye droppers. To reinforce our focus letter I just cut out the center of a coffee filter. They used blue, green, and purple watercolors to drip the colors on their O to make their ocean. When dry (I microwaved for 15 seconds and it was dry enough to glue) it was glued onto a paper plate and they added ocean themed creature stickers. I also provided a container so they could explore with various colors on a regular coffee filter as well. They always do enjoy this!

Art: Stenciling

Check your dollar stores for these type of stencils.

Sensory: Gel

Just a little free exploration. I used the blue gel since we were doing ocean. Added a couple tools and ship counters but my main goal was them to explore it with their fingers. One "wondering" they had was if "this is what a jellyfish felt like?" :-D

Oean Life Graphing*

I ended up cutting apart the dice and putting the pictures in our large dice since I can never seem to make the cardstock dice work for me. Next time I'll plan ahead and use larger pictures and add the picture labels on it as well. The children took turns rolling the dice and we created a graph and went until one animal reached ten and then discussed it.

How Many Fish in the Ocean?*

I decided to print this on cardstock and let them make their own and take it home to work with instead of laminating a set here. Nice even lines perfect for scissor practice. They are narrow and a light gray so you may wish to reinforce them with marker or crayon if your child needs that.

Phonological Awareness: Rhyming*

Just simply laminated this time since time was short. Typically I'd cut the pictures apart and make an activity like this into a velcro board. Always good to get some rhyming practice in there. Don't just assume they "know it" after they get a few answers right. On more than one occaision I've known children who could match familiar rhyming pairs (cat/hat, tree/bee, truck/duck) but give them pairs of words that are not typically used in rhyming activities (whale/pail, ocean/lotion) and they were unable to match them, thus they really hadn't mastered rhyming yet. :-) So slip rhyming in frequently and use unfamilar rhyming pairs also!

Word Chunks/Letter Recognition*

The vocabulary cards are from the preschool pack. How we used them today was to find the o's in the words ("highlighted" them), if there were any and if not to reinforce that "none" is the number zero. Then sort the cards onto the word chunk mat. Can't see it all that clearly but the top of the columns are hand clapping clipart.

Hope you all had a lovely day.