April Showers Bring May Flowers II

Well, today started a little differently but it all worked out.  :-)  Here are some of the activities we did today.  Maybe there will be something that can be used as a jumping board for your own kiddos!

First off, I had someone ask me whether I did the weather with the children.  I had in the past but this year we mainly talked about it informally.  But as I went through the weather tub I found what we used before and so decided to pop it up with our calendar and see how it went.  There was so much excitement from the children who were here previously.  :-)  We're doing it differently as space/time doesn't allow for us to get into it too much but we'll play it by ear.

Hmmm...it looks like my days of the week pockets are crooked :-) Didn't notice it until I took the picture.  That'll need to change!  LOL  Not that the kids care.  Anyway...it's getting cluttered here.  I won't be able to add too much more. I had a lot larger place for my calendar wall before we remodeled the kitchen and took the wall/cupboards out.  We use to have all this and a weekly nursery rhyme and it never looked too cluttered to me.  Oh well, we do what we can.  Changed the alphabet display to flowers and butterflies.  http://www.childcareland.com/ is where I got this printable. I have it so that we can remove the lower case letters.  The typical progression of themes seems to go rain...flowers...bees/bugs/insects.  So I'll be keeping this display up for a bit instead of changing it out...I think!  Below is a closer up of the weather section.  All laminated for durability and also so we can write and rewrite on the page.

Excuse the smeary look of our weather helper page.  We found out that the dry erase marker we used yesterday does NOT erase easily with even the Expo spray.  I find that the easiest way to get that smear off is to keep writing over top of it with a different brand and eventually it will come clean.  We sing a weather helper song and that child goes to the window and tells us about the weather and clips the clothespin on the weather wheel.  We put the symbol in the "actual" column and the child predicts what tomorrow is going to be like. (Must be a MI boy...he told me he thinks it's going to snow tomorrow!)  We place that symbol in the "prediction" column.  Then they give a weather message.  Since it's the end of the school year I do talk about punctuation briefly with each dictation.  Previously we did a weather graph book where we took the actual pictures and glued them onto a page for the month and then we could compare from month to month.

Rain!

We had a perfect start of our week.  Goes right along with the theme!

Here is a little language activity we also did today.  I like to include these simple activities for each theme.  It makes them think!  And of course they are getting print concept reinforcement.  I use a different color for each child when I'm writing their thought.  Here's what I got to my statement, "Tell me about rain."

* It makes it muddy out.

* Flowers grow!

*  It makes leaves wet.

* It goes to ice.

* Rainbow!

*  It dropped down and get super, super wet!

*  It make plants grow.

* It gets my hair wet!

*  Kenzie had a umbrella and I get dirty on my feet.

Note:  I repeat their thought back exactly how they said it and get confirmation that I understood correctly and then I write it down exactly as they said, saying each word as I write it.

April showers bring May Flowers!

I saw this at the school yesterday.  :-)  Well, something similar.  Their's all looked the same and had no writing on it.  We turned it into a math and fine motor activity.  Children cut out their clouds and wrote the words "April" and "May" (hand over hand for the younger one).  The far left on is actually mine.  I don't normally display my work but this time I did because I wanted the additional math problem. Things we talked about

* primary colors

*  number sentence

* adding/addition

* more/less

* long/short

* couple means 2.

K. is cutting out her 9 piece rainbow puzzle.  www.kidssparkz.com

These make great scissor activities.  All the puzzle printables from this site are so bold and some are realistic pictures, which I like.  This one had a sun in the upper left hand corner and rain in the lower right hand corner with a rainbow in the center.

Hunt and Write

This was a Mailbox idea.  Well, I'll give them credit.  I've been doing things like this for a long time but I was reminded of it in a Mailbox magazine.  :-P  I placed rainbow rice in a tub and hid large magnetic letters, A-Z.  Provided a metal pan for them to put their letters on. The found a letter, put it on the pan, and wrote it on their paper.  At this point, he had already filled one side of the pan and flipped it over (nice thing about metal pans!). Since he's my oldest student I had folded his paper into rectangles to help him make his letters a wee bit smaller and more organized.  He also found all (or almost all) the letters.  The younger children had no folds and they only did it as interest kept them.  They stayed interested for quite a while though!  Consider putting shape and numbers in sensory tubs also.  If you have an older child you can do sight words or CVC words.  I did the CVC words with my own children.  Had small picture of the words in the sensory tub and they wrote the word down on their paper.

Well, that's a few of the things we did.  Enjoy! 

April Showers Bring May Flowers

These next two weeks will be with that thought in mind..."April showers bring may flowers".  We've already done "weather" but we'll focus more on rain and finish up our rainbow projects we didn't get done previously.  And then next week we'll start into flowers.  I love "flowers" theme.  There is SO much that can be done! 

Going through the tubs and here's a few past projects/activities we've done.

Five Umbrellas.  I went ahead and popped them on the fridge since the children love magnets at the fridge.  In the picture, Trent is pointing to the words in the song (posted for my benefit) and saying "e, e, e!"  :-P  Reminder that little fingerplays and songs like these are great for beginning subtraction, counting and, in this case, color recognition and naming.

Five Umbrellas

Five umbrellas stood by the door,

The red one went outside, then there were four.

Four umbrellas, pretty as could be,

The blue one went outside, then there were three.

Three umbrellas with nothing to do,

The green one went outside, then there were two.

Two umbrellas, not having much fun,

The yellow one went outside, then there was one.

Just one umbrella alone in the hall.

The purple one went outside and that was all!

Side note:  It really doesn't matter what order the colors are said in.  And we don't really want to teach it in a specific order, so mix it up when you are saying it with them.  That way they will be much more comfortable "retelling" the story on their own and that is the goal, at least for my older ones! When I see them working with this type of display on their own, I can see exactly what they have learned.  These umbrellas were made out of craft foam and pipe cleaners with self-adhesive magnet strip on the back.

If All The Raindrops...

Remember that song?  If all the raindrops were lemon drops and gum drops...oh what a rain it would be.  I'd stand outside with my mouth opened wide, singing "ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah".  The year we did this the kids were so into that 'ah-ah-ah' so I decided to incorporate a little literacy lesson. I only suggest this if you are doing it for your own children or for a small group.  It was simple but a little time consuming on my part.  The children did color mixing in an ice cube tray and the dropped the colored water onto a coffee filter semicircle.  Then they chose their pipe cleaner color for the handle.  The bottom part was a little book and I used each letter of their name with corresponding beginning sound food items.  So Aaron's first page stated,

"If all the raindrops were apples and apricots, oh what a rain it would be..." and instead of "ah-ah-ah..." we changed it to the upper and lower case letter (Aa) we focused on that page and said the sound of that letter.  Caleb's first page was

"If all the raindrops were candy and cantaloupe, oh what a rain it would be..." and then "Cc, Cc, Cc, Cc..."  Then I went through each letter in their name.

Tall Tulips

This was probably a Mailbox idea.  Simple activity, great for fine motor.  The children chose their colors of precut triangles, as many as they wanted, to fold into tulips and glue at the top of the paper.  Then they drew tall stems and wrote Ws at the bottom for leaves. 

Violets in a Vase

Again, most likely an idea from The Mailbox.  The one on the left is obviously an adult made one.  Do I show examples to children? Not usually-especially not with art projects, but in this regard, they needed an idea of what I meant.  So I did and then I put it away.  This is a fine motor/scissors activity.  First they ripped lavender and violet paper, done in a previous session.  Then they cut out the vase and decorated it with Vs.  They showed me where they wanted their violets and how many and I traced a circle for them to help them to keep the paper in one area (in order to actually make a violet).  Then they glued their vase and ripped paper on.  Finally, to complete the project, they took a green crayon and made a stem from the flower to the vase, hard to see that in the right picture.

Here the child sorted the foam circles onto their flower pots.  For a younger child, have only one pot and provide only the colors they need.  For an older child, sort with more colors and then we compare the two pots. 

We talked about

*  similarities/differences

*  how many of each color. 

*  If the colors are in two sections (like the 2 pink centers and 4 pink circles on the flower pot) then we added them together. 

*  They also use prediction.  For example, if the blue flower pot had 5 blue foamies across the top.  How many orange foamies do you think there are on the orange flower pot?  Then, of course, we use the term "equal". 

*  We also talked about odd and even and set the foamies out in a line and counted by twos to see if there was an "odd one out".  There's a lot to do with something that looks so simple! 

Note: I'm not sure where I printed these from.  It's unusual for the website not to be on the pages somewhere!  If anyone knows what site these came from, please let me know so I can provide the link and give it proper ownership.  Thanks!

April Calendar

This is what our calendar wall will look like to begin the month of April.  There is room for additional items if I so desire.  We moved the number display to another wall.  This month I'll have the tactile numbers nearby since the older ones are getting really good at telling me what the calendar number looks like.  So we'll use the tactile numbers with the little guy to help reinforce the numeral recognition and formation.  Also, Trent is not taking a morning nap all the time so it will give him something to feel and "play" with while we are doing calendar. 

The bird and birdhouse alphabet display was a free printable from www.childcareland.com.  I often reduce the size of her printables as we don't have much space and we also have a small group...so it works out fine.  The birds are removeable so we can work with upper/lower case letter matching.

The calendar is also from www.childcareland.com.  She has tracing and blank calendars.  We are moving onto an ABC pattern, as you can notice, I have 3 colors of markers in the cup along with the craft sticks.  I really do need to find a "spring" themed cup.  At least not a snowman!!!    The craft sticks and pointer worked out very well, so we will continue that.

Above the calendar is something "new".  Not new to all of them but definitely new to the youngest.  His interest and attention span is growing so wanted to work this back in to our calendar.  Time is a concept that is difficult to understand and they really don't grasp it until Kindergarten/first grade.  At the preschool stage, I'm looking for understanding of time by their vocabulary (yesterday, last year, today, tomorrow, in a few minutes, when I'm done, after nap, after centers, etc...even if used incorrectly.)  We'll sing our days of the week song (working from left to right and other print concepts) and move the birds accordingly.  Not sure if you can see it but yesterday's is pointing to the left, tomorrow's pointing to the right, and today is a penguin that is facing forward (kind of...it was hard to find a bird pointing forward!).  Side note:  I typed the words in primary colors and used secondary colored craft sticks.  Reinforce concepts whereever possible!!!

Left the opposite cards out because they did enjoy the song and cards.  And with Trent probably going to be joining us...best to have something for him!

Adding a beginning sound bag.  Inside of the bag are items that start with the /b/ sound.  (B is for bird).  We'll do other sounds other days (f is for feather, n is for nest, etc).  On the back of the bag I wrote the song, for my own reference.  It was from The Mailbox publication: Almost Ready To Read.   
Tune:  London Bridge
Pass the bag from friend to friend,
Friend to friend, friend to friend.
When the song stops, reach right in.
What do you have? 

We have a blue jay word wheel.  We've been introducing word families without getting into too much detail.  They love things like this and it's a great foundation builder!  It's from another Mailbox publication titled Word Family Helpers.  Cute reproducibles in that book.

I'm missing the kids and it's only Wednesday!  We'll all be ready to "get back to work" by Monday!