Preschool Learning

Working with some project that have green in it. :-)  St. Patty's Day?  Well, really, just because it's one of his favorite colors.  I've had paint bags out for him off and on.  Not once is he really ever been interested.  Goes along with his sensory hesitations.  Even though it's not making his fingers dirty since the paint is in the bag...but it was cool and squishy.  He didn't spend much time on it.  Still a great activity for most toddlers and preschoolers.  :-)

 

Don't forget the good ol' marble painting!  Always a favorite! Then I quickly drew three hearts and a stem on the back of the dried painted paper for him to cut.  He cut them out and we arranged it onto a piece of paper.  And, of course, we MUST write the word on top.  :-D

 
 

Green "C is for Cat".  He's taken an interest in making letters into animals so we are working through the alphabet and using this craft as our scissors task each day.

Simple but he definitely enjoys them. 

 

 

Salt trays are great for practicing writing letters, numbers, or drawing shapes. I gathered tactile letters with similar curving motions for this task.  After he went through the cards he had time to free draw.  No, he won't use his finger in the salt.  :-)  TeachPreschool had the idea of putting colored paper underneath the salt.  I've yet to try it, not sure why, but neat!

  

Ha!  Yes, here's a snapshot...not a very becoming one...but one that shows his disgust at getting it on his hands.  :-)  But he did enjoy the general concept of this addition.  I just gave him an eyedropper, some GREEN colored water paste spreaders (so he didn't have to use his fingers.)

 

 

More green.  Water is something that does not bother him.  And yes, he had green hands when he was done transferring the water via a sponge from one container to the next and pouring it back into the other container...and repeating. :-)  Definitely an activity toddler and preschoolers love.  And there is a control aspect.  If they spill it, they can see it clearly.  T.'s got it down pretty good. Very few spills anymore.

 

Okay, some not so green things.  One day he was looking in the cupboards and saw the stamps.  It HAD been awhile since we had them out.  He told me he wanted to stamp his name.  So we did (on the back of the paper).  But I decided I wanted to see where he was for extending patterns so I created patterns for him to extend.  AB, ABC, ABB, and AABB.  Success!  He extended them all correctly!

 

A nice simple activity here.  I wrote the numbers at the tip of the craft stick, 1-15.  I also included the word because he's starting to understand that everything you say can be spelled.  (Anyone want to join me in our trips around town and help me spell all the words he asks?  :-D)  He was able to put them in numerical order.  Poor kiddo can't say th"IR"teen for the life of him and it gets him mixed up with 14...since they sound so similar. 

 

Then we took it a step further.  After noticing the AB pattern of the craft sticks, we took all the brown ones out...leaving the even numbers.  :-D We'll do more with that over the next few days.  It was just an introduction.  I can see this being right up his ally...odd and even numbers.

I was trying to get him to mix the colors...but that requires him to get messy with playdough.  His compromise was to make balls of playdough.  This is the longest he has worked with playdough.  Yes, I know he's not all that typical.  LOL  But I was happy to see him make balls.  Great fine motor!

 

We do thank Wirt Library (Bay County Library System) for their many file folder games.  Not sure if they created them for our use or if they were donated (I'm guessing the latter), but we get a lot of use out of them.  This particular one was matching letter to beginning sounds of the pictures on the toaster. 

 

This was a fun art project that I saw as I was browsing through Pinterest. 

I have quite a bit of acrylic paints from my school-ager child care days.  Obviously they are getting old. So thought I'd start having the kids use them up. 

Some of the other kiddos wanted to do this project after watching him so they did...

 

Isn't that cool?  Frame worthy for sure! 

Not exactly sure how the original poster did her project and I can't even tell you what the site was so you can see.  Sorry!  I tried to find it again but couldn't...it wasn't something I pinned.  If you know, please pass it on so I can include the website address.

 

Well, I better stop for now.  We've had a busy couple of weeks, these are a few of the "highlights".  I've had someone ask me again how I plan for my preschooler.  Maybe I'll take a couple moments to share that again.

We have 6 children in the house ranging from 3-10.  T. is my preschooler.  Hard to believe he's just 3 months shy of 4 years old!  I do not follow a theme with him (as you can tell).  We are flying by the seat of our pants lately.  Seems odd if you know me at all, I know.  :-)  I have an idea of what I want to do each day and I try to include him in on the planning.

He does our group lesson with us if he can. That's about 30 minutes.  Then we move onto his cart.

 

File folder game (usually Language Arts)

Book on tape/CD

Scissors (letter craft)

Number/math concept

art

sensory

writing

and "extras"

That is usually what he does from 8-9:30A.  We take a snack/outdoor break and he comes in to watch a 20-30 minutes educational DVD while I wrap up some 1:1 with other kids.  Then it's free play time for him until lunch.  A nice little routine!  Pinterest is my buddy!  A lot of ideas come from what I've seen on Pinterest.  I have a lot of preschool resources but I still come back to Pinterest because I love pictures!  I can quickly decide if I can tweak an activity for what I need just by the picture vs. going to the site and following it exactly as they said.  Ah!  Technology is making teacher's lives easier!  (USUALLY!)

 

 



Preschool fun!

One Schooling at Home struggle, is that my very academic preschooler really doesn't get the 1:1 I like to provide at this age...especially with reading.  But, really, he's probably more advanced than either of my other two were...mainly because preschoolers are like sponges and he is just absorbing so much that happens around the kitchen table!  But I do thank our 3rd grader who takes him under her wing often and does things like read a book to him!  :-)  So sweet! 

 

  Oh yeah!  Lite Brite.  We were so excited to get some new patterns for our very old Lite Brite.  He took his time sorting out pegs (this helped reinforced which color when with each letter) and then painstakingly put each peg where it needs to be only to find out there wasn't enough whites!  Ugh!  I so don't like it when things like that happen.  And do you think we can just purchase pegs by themselves?  No, I can only find small packs with the new cube Lite Brite patterns.  :-(  So, anyone have any Lite Brite pegs they want to get rid of?!!  :-D

 

3rd grader brought in a craft she created at home with T. in mind.  How sweet!  He enjoyed the alphabet board and matched foamie letters to it.  He's starting in with sounds of the letters now...how fun! 

 

File Folder Games...an ol' time favorite.  Unfortunately I do not have time to make them...but glad that our local library has a few we can check out!  T. loves them!  Rhyming, goes together, letter sounds, size, shapes, colors, etc. 

 

T.  loves to do things similar to what the other kiddos do.  (One day I gave him a few "worksheets" to do...I'm not big on them but he loves them.  When he finished them I said, "You can put them in the basket now."  Oh, it was hilarious!  "Really?!  Put it in the kids' basket?"   Yes, T.  :-)  That made his day!  Anyway, 1st grader is working on counting money so T. was sorting coins on a mat. :-)

 

This is what T. often chooses to do during our minute test in the mornings.  I like to see how his drawings change over the course of time. :-)

 

He cut the lion out all by himself! 

 

Then he added a pattern mane, flipped it over and wrote his name.  :-)  Then he wanted to write the word lion.  :-)  Love those little moments.  When I asked him to spell it he told me "lion, /l/, L".  Today I overheard him talking to someone about how to spell his name.  Then he said, dad, a in the middle and 2 D's.  Fun!

 

Child Care Land idea called "scrunch and glue".  All it is a page with random dots.  He uses liquid glue (perfect for glue control!) on the dots and then scrunches a piece of tissue paper and sticks it on top of the glue dot.  GREAT fine motor!  Good for reinforcing colors as well.  He enjoyed this very simple activity.  Side note, this is the first year I actually purchased precut tissue paper squares....in like 15 years.  I always was that penny pincher and just cut my own tissue paper.  How silly.  I recommend you just spend the few extra pennies and buy the precut ones.  LOL

 

There's that 3rd grader with T. again.  :-)  She has such mothering tendencies.  A sweetheart.  They organized the pool for water play.  :-)

 

 

This is always a favorite!  A bit messy, but so fun for the kids.  Practice blowing in the straw first!  Soapy water is a little gross!  :-)  I used liquid watercolors and dish soap.  And of course the other kids in the kitchen didn't get anything else done during that time.  :-P  We ended up doing it as a whole group activity during our Free Friday activities.  They had such fun!

 

And, a weekend activity.  T. LOVES to help in the kitchen.  He does quite a bit with me.  Please allow your preschoolers to help as much as possible...great for learning responsibility, helping with their self-confidence, and is awesome for fine motor development!  Here he is making us some sugar cookies.  :-)  He felt very important using the hand mixer!

Make a Word Preschool Tray

Just a quick post about a tray that was enjoyed by 3 year old and may just end up being a new favorite of his mom's.  :-D 

First we layed the cards out to spell his name.  This could be done for other family member's names or sight words!  I like these cards because they show both upper and lowercase one under the other vs. next to each other.

 

Then he sorted out the letter beads (Discount School Supply) onto the cards.

Finally he used pipe cleaners to put the letters on to spell his name.  This was great for color reinforcement and fine motor activity also. 

 

Fun stuff!  Right up his alley :-D

 

Flutter Flutter Butterfly!

This week we will be doing a lot of butterfly themed activities, along with our other non-themed activities.  Especially exciting since we are starting to see some butterflies around! 

A favorite song/chant...

Lovely pics...can you sense some sarcasm there.  :-P  Sorry. 

These were actually the best ones out of the bunch I snapped quickly to give you an idea of how I did it.

I do not know where I got the clip art from so will pass on sharing this document.  It's relatively easy to make though!  I used stickers on the one side of the cards and the chant on the other side.  We chant the alphabet part and then flip the card over.

Alphabet Butterfly Rap

ABCDE

I found a butterfly on me!

FGHIJ

She started out in a very small way.

KLMNO

An egg smaller than my toe!

PQRST

Next a caterpillar she would be.

UVWXY

In a chrysalis is where she'd lie.

Z

That's how my butterfly came to be!

Author Unknown 

If you know who the author of this chant is please make a comment so I can give credit where it is due.  Thanks!

With the older child we spent a lot of time with this thought of butterflies being symmetrical.  She really caught on this year!  Often I do introduce the idea of symmetry with butterflies but I don't often see children exploring with that concept during their play and activities.  But I did today!

We started off by checking out some butterflies in books,

and on some window clings (great toddler fine motor!).

Then we moved to our butterflies made out of foam shapes (which we had sorted earlier in the morning...love the conversation between the two kiddos about the shapes as they were sorting!)

Foamie Butterflies

Simply tape a basic butterfly pattern to the wall (this one was Mailbox Preschool, April/May 2002), and then tape contact paper over top, sticky side out.  This is a lovely activity for both toddlers and preschoolers and I expect my school-age boys will be at it this afternoon.

After K. was ready to move on we moved to a dry erase board where I demonstrated filling the whole board with a simple butterfly shape.  This "filling the page" is a bit more of a struggle for toddlers/preschoolers, thus I demonstrate on a larger surface when I'd like to see the larger drawings.  She caught on and so we erased mine and she drew her's and we took turn adding shapes and lines on both sides of the butterfly (somewhat symmetrical!).  Then she moved on to a large piece of white construction paper and did the same thing.

Water Color Resist Butterfly

She really took the time to add a lot of color to her work today.  I'm pretty sure this is because of our daily journals that we've been doing since we came back from Spring Break.  (Typical of her would be all one color unless I encouraged otherwise.)  For her journals, she brainstorms, draws, colors (at least 5), labels (at least 3).  This visual can be found on the Journals: Draw and Label post, feel free to use it with your own kiddos. We'll do the same this week and then I think we'll move onto adding a sentence.  She LOVES the labeling!

Oil pastels are awesome to use with toddlers.  So much more rewarding than crayons!  Small enough that they don't break easy, small enough to encourage proper hand grip, easy to mark and bold colors! 

Seriated Heart Butterfly

A lovely paper craft to work on tracing a pattern, scissor skills and reinforce that thought of symmetry.  Today, we also worked with the concept of a hamburger and a hot dog fold.  I'll have to admit that I couldn't figure out what they were talking about in my son's kindergarten class.  They used those terms often...hamburger and hot dog folds.  (Granted, I was only hearing the words not seeing the demonstration.) LOL   One day I was folding a piece of paper and it clicked!  Been using those terms since then.  So a hamburger fold is bottom to top fold of a piece of portrait orientated paper and a hot dog fold is bottom to top of a piece of landscape orientated paper.   Picture a hamburger bun vs. a hot dog bun.

Hearts pattern to fit on a 9x12 piece of construction paper can be download here.  Print and cut out of cardstock or trace and cut from a file folder or cereal box cardboard to make tracers for the children.

Anyway, she chose 4 colors for her wings.  Folded each paper hamburger style, chose a heart to trace (supporting with left hand, tracing with right), and then cut out starting at the fold so that she ended up with two exact heart cut outs.  Then she glue them with points touching, largest to smallest.  Later added a body and attenae and got a relatively symmetrical butterfly.

Coffee Filter Butterflies

An oldie but a good one!

I normally always provide eye droppers with coffee filter work but today I chose to provide paint brushes.  Well, after the first coffee filter K. asked for the eye droppers.  :-)  The children used them both interchangeably.  We are actually going to do this again tomorrow but with washable markers and only water with paintbrush. Color mixing and fine motor.

A few pics from today.  It's going to be a busy week!  Hope it stays as beautiful as it was today!  We went outside and was out there almost an hour.  K. said to me as we came in..."But we only stayed out for 10 minutes."  :-D  Yes, that beautiful.  And part of it could have been that Donnie got the teeter totter and the roller coaster out over the weekend.  They played with those for quite awhile before getting to their normal routine activities.  They are so funny... they do the exact same things in the exact order almost everyday outside.  Always throws them for a loop when I slip something "new" in there.   Have a lovely week!