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!)

 

 



Froggy, froggy, green and brown...

Another post with some accumulated activities we did with the frog theme. 

The title of the post is from the song Frogs in School by Julie Austin and it's a favorite around here.  It's on her Fandagumbo CD.  You can find the lyrics at http://julieaustin.com/frogs-in-the-school. 

Bubble Wrap Sensory

Bubble wrap is used quite frequently around here.  They love it and so do I.  I can sit and pop those bubbles and I will definitely have a bit of bubble wrap around for my school-agers next year.  One activity we love and have done multiple times is dish soap and paint on bubble wrap.  This makes some cool prints.  I chose to use just blues and greens this time to make a "pond" to go with the 5 Green and Speckled Frogs song and manipulatives so we can keep the foam here for other uses. 

Froggy Sensory With Hair Gel

During our bug week they really enjoyed finding the bugs in a different spot/to be used with different materials each day so I've done the same with our frogs.  In this picture I put them with hair gel and mancala beads.

Frog and Flies Addition

The Mailbox Preschool/Kindergarten Magazines have centerfold games that can be laminated and used.  This is one of them.  Each child rolled a dice and placed that any flies on the mat.  Very simple addition...great for 3's and 4's!

Sight Word Booklet

These are nice little sight word booklets.  With H. here were found the word "see" on every page.  With K., she was able to read it all on her own.  This booklet is one of several printable booklets from the Mailbox Publication High Frequency Word Booklets.

Bulletin Board Strips

Did another more "formal" activity with our frog bulletin board strips.  This time we played an I Spy where the children guess the number I was thinking about.  I used number formation phrases such as "curve around and slide to the right".  I also chose a number and covered up the number before and the number afterward and the children took turns telling me what those numbers word.  Simple, beneficial!

Frogs on Logs 

Another Mailbox publication activity.  I used their estimation sheet but chose to make logs out of simple construction paper and use our frog manipulatives.  They suggested using green pom poms.  Something similar can easily be made on your own.  I love that picture on the left.  Her estimation was the same as the actual measurement and she let out a huge "whoop!"  LOL  

Frog on a Log Vowels

(Picture isn't grand, sorry!  Sent home both children's work before noticing that none of the quick snapshots turned out.)

Initially I planned to have them use these order by size frogs from to match frog rhyming pictures but chose at the last minute to reinforce those short vowel sounds.  For the toddler I simply used numbers and number dots but focused putting the frogs on the log from biggest to smallest, which he did without a problem.  :-)

Shades of Green Froggies

All the children had such a look of concentration when they were doing this activity.  :-)

This was right up the alley for T. and his sense of order.  :-)

The end product wasn't what I'd call beautiful but the process was great and they did enjoy it.  My goal was to have a project that would dry and go home the same day since it was the last day of school.  If I just let them have free for all with the sponge applicators like I would normally do, they wouldn't dry before noon.  :-)

It incorporated art (shades of color-mix with the children), fine motor and eye-hand coordination activity. 

Lily Pad Number Word Match
www.makinglearningfun.com

This was a great way to see which number words K. actually recognized.  Though I made two "trays", one with larger numbers and one with smaller numbers, only K. really knows a good portion of number words, as she's a bit older so I was watching for decoding practices for H. but K. actually sounded the words out for him.  Simple, easy, and they seemed to enjoy this, especially after T. gave them a frog after they completed each lily pad.  :-)  Metal trays from a dollar store and magnets on the back of the flowers.

Watch Me Grow: Frog

 This is a lovely book! Very informative, great illustrations! Better yet, the frogs I purchased from Dollar Tree matched closely to the frogs in the book!

Also want to remind you to check out the following sites for frog themed activities.  We've done several from them that I didn't post about.

* Frog Frolics Activity Kit from Homeschool Share

(The word find from this kit.  This is one way we complete word finds.  :-)  Colored chips vs. dry-erase markers)

* Frog themed activities from Making Learning Fun

(I had only printed the background frog for the toddler to match the pieces but I ended up going back and printing the background for the other two as well, this puzzle was harder than we thought it was going to be!)

* Frog themed activities from Kidssoup (membership fee required...well worth it!)

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Non-themed activity:  these last few days I've been asking for suggestions of activities they would like to do again.  This was one of the suggestions they gave me.  :-)

And a lovely gift from one of my families!