B is for bus!
We did several bus related activities today. One of the first things we did was "switch up" story time. I have already used the felt board multiple times to tell stories and so today I put up felt board "Wheels on the Bus" kit (www.discountschoolsupply.com) and at story time said, "Today, you tell me a story." Of course, since preschool children are still relatively concrete thinkers and look around, and then make up their story with whatever they see right in front of them...the story was about the bus. :-) 'Twas fun and when they get stuck on what to say next there are always lovely open ended questions to help extend it.
B is for Bubble Wrap!
Who doesn't love bubble wrap? I love it! Found 2 long pieces in my sensory tub clean out last week and thought...hmmm! B is for bubbles! So...one strip we put out in the living room for stomping and running on. The other we added yellow-lemony smelling dish soap and yellow paint for a sensory/art activity.
Adding soap to the paint (even if it is washable) makes it a little more bubbly and easier to smooth over the bubblewrap...it smelled good too! We painted the whole strip and then laid a big piece of paper across. She enjoyed the patting the paper process since it was soft/padded and then you could see the circles that the bubble wrap made on the back of the paper. We then worked together to put it up on the wall to dry. Didn't take long...nice thing about bubble wrap printing. I trimmed around to make a simple bus shape and she added wheels, windows and door! Ta-Da... B is for bubble bus! :-)
Highway Shapes
Cute little shapes made like a road. They also have the alphabet and numbers! I can see these being used frequently in the near future. I know I've often used cars with letters and have them make car noises (letter sounds) as they drove on that particular letter.
School Bus and Students Rhyming
A nice variety of rhyming pairs...some familiar, many not! Usually K. will just randomly pick a picture and randomly try to pick its match from the selection and often keep trying the same picture repeatedly but missing others (which usually ends up being the rhyming pair!) So today we learned how to go about it in an organzied way. Laying out the buses, leaving spaces, laying out the students in a row. She then chose a student and said it's object word, then started from the left top hand bus working her way down the column and then from left to right until she found it's pair. She completed the task a lot quicker that way! Just a little bit of individualization as she has a pretty decent grasp on rhyming and is much more successful in tasks when they are organized. Teaching good organizational habits now will help when a child starts formal education. That's one thing I really like about Montessori. Very much into order and organization!
Paper Shape Exploration
I had cut the shapes in accordance the a directional art activity from
I tend to do these a little differently than most teachers that are doing directional art. I think activities like this do have their place every once in awhile...but I definitely don't consider it 'art'! :-) We always do something in addition to activities like these that are more open-ended. These are great fine motor activities, especially if you have tracers and scissors involved! How I do these is I'll make one together with the children...encouraging them to talk me through it...so it looks relatively like the what the "realistic" end product would be. Then, I put mine away. I do not hang it up or show it to them again. I put it away so they can't see it and then I give them the same shapes I had, usually with extras and let them create with them as they would like. They never end up the same! Love that! With this particular bus...I loved that sop (repeatedly) on the stop sign! Not sure if you can see that in the picture. And there are people in the windows!
Probability!
Yes, we introduced the word but I don't expect preschool children to tell me what it truly is. But we do explore with this kind of thing because then the foundation is being set and brain connections are being made and when they touch on it at school, they'll have an easier time grasping the concept.
Don't you love her expression...obviously she was asking a question!
I had purchased lima beans for an alphabet activity, which unsurprisingly I hadn't gotten to yet. Then I thought...hmmm, why can't I turn them into little people for our bus! So, here is what we ended up with. Six lima beans with a curly haired person on one side and a straight haired person on the other. She first put the numbers 0-6 in a line, numerical order. This is so that she had a visual for writing her numerals. She shook the beans and dumped them out. Then put the curly haired ones in the first windows and the straight haired ones in the last windows. Then she counted them, putting the appropriate number above them and then decided whether they were equal of if she needed to use the alligator mouth to eat the ones with the most (more/less). Then she recorded her information. She did get duplicates! This would be great for working with the number 6 and addition fact family! She wanted to take this activity home so we packed it up. I can make another one pretty easily. The pattern was just a bus I had from a Mailbox publication. Simple enough to create on your own and you can add as many windows as you want!
All for now. The next few weeks will be relatively busy so...blogging might be sporatic. Though on the other hand, it's a stress reliever so...maybe not! LOL
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