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

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.

O is for...

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.

C is for ...

C is for Crocodiles!

Crocodile Trace and Race

The other day K and I had a few extra moments so I had created alphabet strips just for this type of occasion and we were going to do the Trace and Race game.  This is where we roll the dice and trace that many parts of a letter starting at A.  For example, if she rolled a 6, she could trace A (3 parts /\-) and B (3 parts).  But if I rolled a 4 I could only trace A and the stick of B.  Then the "race" was on to see who could get to the last letter first.  Well, I get the strips all out and see that we are both missing a J.  ???  LOL  Whatever, can't (well you could but I won't) do it without the whole alphabet and it would have taken too long to print another one so we set it aside.  I decided to do it today with a crocodile. The letters are a lot smaller than my initial strips and if you have a younger child who is not ready for small letters, please use the strips so you can create the size you want.  K. has great penmanship for a four year old and is choosing to write smaller on her own so the smaller letters worked just fine for her.  Great way to reinforce sticks/curves and letter formation.

Crocodile or Alligator?

We learned that crocodiles have more of a triangular look and alligators are more boxy/rectangular (actually, if you want to get specific, the difference is more like V and U.  I'm thinking I'll bring that back up when we learn the difference between the letters U and V).  So she snipped a few crocodiles and sorted into their own "lake".  Also, though they are both from the crocodylidae family, crocodiles' glands on their tongue work better than alligators (to excrete excess salt) so you'll find them more in saltwater lakes and alligators in fresh water.  We didn't really get into the color differences but if you are doing a complete study of the two, crocodiles are more olive green and alligators are so dark of a green they almost look black.  Of course, adding a little more to the activity, she wrote the words "crocodiles" and "alligators".  Also counted and wrote the numbers and added whether it was more or less.

  

www.amazon.com

Speaking about more or less.  The book we read was called Counting Crocodiles.  All ages seem to enjoy this book!  It's a rhyming and counting book about a monkey who lives on an island with only a lemon tree but he sees a banana tree across the Sillabobble Sea and then decides to be clever and get those bananas by counting crocodiles.  So we incorporated Monkey Math into our work today, prior to doing the crocodiles and alligators sort.  The crocodile more/less sign is from http://www.sparklebox.co.uk/.  K. has a good grasp of more or less but the balance is a great visual to teach or reinforce this concept.  Any balance will do!

And, of course, if we are going to read a book about monkeys and crocodiles we MUST do the rhyme...5 Little Monkeys Sitting In a Tree!  When K. saw my monkeys and crocodile she jumped up and down and said "I LOVE that song!" and started singing a version of it.  :-D  I added magnets to the back of my monkeys and alligator and drew a little scene on the magnetic-dry/erase board so we could "act" out the song.  I couldn't find my container of dry-erase markers so used washable markers instead, which work in a pinch but smears easier than dry-erase markers. 

For art today we talked about filling a paper and how some people sketch out a drawing first before painting.  Cute!  She saw the fuzzy blue yarn we were using for our croc/alligator sort and wanted that for her waves.  That brought a big smile to my face...using her imagination and adding to a project!  So, OF COURSE, after the paint dried we added yarn waves to her sea.  :-D  I also love how she tells me she is done with her work.  She'll look at it, with hands on either side and cock her head and say "It's perfect!". 

Oh yes, Croc Teeth! 

www.sparklebox.co.uk has many playdough mats if you are interested!  This is one of them. (Ha!  In this picture I said, "give me a crocodile smile!")  The words on the top say, "Roll a dice and give the crocodile some teeth!"  So that's what she did.  Another little tidbit of information regarding alligators and crocodiles...a crocodile's 4 tooth on either side shows when their mouth is closed but if an alligator's mouth is closed you can't see any of the their teeth.  This was the planned activity prior to exploring with play-doh without Ms. Amber's "interference".  :-D

And because of illness on both children and my parts...we got way behind in our letter crafts.  So K. did three of them today to catch up.  :-)  Amongst other things since we have PM activities with her also for learning how to read.  Needless to say, K and I are very busy most days and when she told me my computer room was "a mess, AGAIN!"  I had to remind her that the reason why it's a mess is because she and I do so much and I have no time to put it away!  LOL

B is for Butterfly.

R is for Raccoon.

C is for Caterpillar

(We ran out of time yesterday since it was taking us so much longer to do the other activities as we had a very tired lad here.)  I can tell here that we need to work more on writing the letter C.  I actually did not do the exact Handwriting Without Tears routine this week with letter formation.  Hmmmm...this is the first letter that she really has not mastered by the end of the week.  Interesting!  Anyway...by the time we are done with O, Q, G and S she will definitely have that magic c motion down! 

Another activity we did this afternoon that I'd like to share with you as it might be useful for some of you and that is sorting letters by whether they are chicken, giraffe, or monkey.  Some handwriting theories use this thought and the thought of the penmanship lines as a road.  So the chicken are those letters that are small and do not cross the road.  The giraffe are the letters that are tall and go from one side of the road to the other and the monkey tail letters are the ones with "monkey tails" below the line.  Nice little visual for children.  K. is ready to advance to writing on lines so our first activity was to really look at those letters and decide if they were chicken, giraffe, or monkey tail letters.  This was relatively easy for her as I've used the "monkey tail" phrase before and we've done a lot with sorting by sticks and curves.  The printable is at

http://thesmartiezone.com/writing.html.  I just cut the chicken, giraffe and monkey out and placed at the top of the paper to make columns and she sorted our tactile lowercase letters.

Another quick activity we did this afternoon was listening for beginning and ending sounds.  I'm always on a search of how I can use vocabulary cards (http://www.abctwiggles.com/) differently.  Typically we clap out the words (word chunks) or use them with our read, build, write mat.  But today, K. put the /c/ sound words up on the wall and told me what the beginning sound was (soft or hard /c/) and the ending sound.  I thought that would be a little more difficult but it came easier than I thought.  I think I'll incorporate more of that type of activity- beginning, middle, ending sounds.  I also think I'm going to try to include the word "end" with "last" when we talk about what's first and last in a line of objects because that is still difficult for her to figure out.  She seemed to understand what "end" meant so maybe that'll be the key to help her understand what last means.  :-D  

Oh, so much we do in a day but not enough time to share it all.  I'm sure this child really sleeps well at night.  :-D  I'm always looking for signs of her being tired or not interested but she's almost always seeking more and soaks it up like a sponge and I'm so enjoying myself!    I've actually went back to the Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons this last week because she is so interested in the actual reading of books and I see her "reading" to T. frequently.  So, we'll slip that in our PM activities along with sight word, vocabulary word, writing activities and whatever else gets planned for the afternoons.  :-D  Yep, now you know why I have a disaster of a computer room every single day.  I get it all put away and then the next day's stuff is set inside the door to be put away.  Never ending task...like laundry! 

F is for...

F is for Fish!

A listening activity we did today...

After exploring with the instruments (these are very familiar with the children enrolled now, we do quite a bit of rhythm instrument play) each child gets a school of fish that has a picture of an instrument.  I ran out of time so we didn't use the blue felt we normally do to make a sea for the fish.  :-)  I gather the instruments that are shown in the pictures and we go through each one talking about them and their sound (a lot of opportunities for vocabulary building).  Then I choose one of instruments, and without showing them the instrument I play the instrument and they guess which instrument it is.  This sounds like a really easy activity but I find it's more of a challenge for the preschool children then one would think! 

 Upper-Lowercase Letters

Three times a year I do an assessment.  The first two weeks we matched shapes- upper to upper and lower to lower case letters. I was able to see which letters they remembered from last year, if they knew their sound and if they could give me a word that began with that sound.  I had planned to use the shapes again, doing the upper-lower case but they had lost interest so I decided to wait until today and pull out this activity I printed from www.childcareland.com.  Simply, they took the lower case letter square and placed it next to the capital letter on the fish.  I had never gotten around to using velcro with this activity, though that is what was the directions, I just used sticky tack.  However, I will say that using velcro adds a component of interest, especially when it comes to taking the letters off for the next child.  I've not met a student once that doesn't like to work with velcro!

Handwriting Without Tears

We'll be using this tool each week to reinforce the letters we have learned or are learning.  I also try to incorporate a little simple sign language because it's great for developing those small muscles in their hands. Can be quite a challenge as we can see in the second picture...but that's just fine.  It's where he is at.  Though they'll attend Kindergarten the same year...there are months between them as well as varied experiences and gender plays a role also.   One thing I will say though, with the 15 years I've been in this field, I would definitely be an advocate for our State's Kindergarten cut off date to be moved to Sept 1.  Or even a bit earlier in the summer.  Those few months make a BIG difference in a child's school readiness.  There are some exceptions, I agree, but in general, children that are well into year 5 have a much better success rate then those just turning or will turn during the fall.  A lot of it boils down to social emotional and fine motor readiness.  Again, my opinion.  Take it or leave it!  :-)

Fine Motor

I made this fish last year and they were very excited to see it out again.  And, for those who notice, T. has the bowl on the right side of the tray for a reason.  :-P  He's left handed and I really wanted to encourage crossing the midline.  The other children had their bowl on the left.  FYI:  a 1/4 teaspoon is perfect for transferring a marble. 

ABC Twiggles

As I mentioned last week with our L is for Llama, we are creating an alphabet book that uses the patterns from Kidssoup/ABC Twiggles.  Children cut the sticks/curves and glue onto the paper to create an object that starts with that particular letter.  I also encourage them to write the letter in our simple ____ is for ______. sentence and find all the letters in that sentence.  You'll see a lot with capital letters, I do use lower case letters also, but for letter formation I'm following the Handwriting Without Tears  program and their research shows that children can create the capital letters easier (and I agree or I wouldn't be following the program).  However, with reading, the majority of the letters are lowercase so that's where we do our lowercase work...with reading/letter recognition activities.

Hope your week went well!

F is for...

F is for Feet!

We focused on the 'leapfrog letter' F today.  I really wanted to share K's journal page today.  We read The Foot Book by Dr. Seuss and the sentence on the page read, "There are _____ feet in my family."  Couple things to note in the picture.  1) She drew them like Mat Man.  See how she started out with a rectangle body on mom?  And the feet on all but her sister are sticks.  Interesting!  She never used to draw ears but note the curves on either side of the head on mom and dad.  2) They are holding hands.  First it was mom/dad because they were married.  Then brother L. because he was part of the family.  And then she was holding hands with her last drawing of a person who has "really long legs because she's my BIG sister.  She stated that she was holding hands with her sister because she loved her.  I love it when they are drawing and talking at the same time!  I also observed that only her self portrait has hair.  She made a point to say it was short hair also.  FYI:  She got her hair cut just before school started.  Guess it made a big impression on her!  :-) 

Sensory today was a little different.  We first started out by reviewing that F is made out of 1 long stick and 2 short sticks and that this was a leapfrog letter where we do a line down and jump back up to the top to draw the short sticks.  So I helped them create a foot print F by having them do a heel to toe walk and then helping them "jump" back up to do the sticks.  Then, of course, we got a fresh paper to explore with!  This is always a favorite.  I suggest 1:1 or 1:2 children only at a time as it does get slippery!  Having a tub of soapy water and a towel nearby helps with quick cleanup and having a chair near where they are getting fresh paint is very helpful with their balance.  This time I just put the paint on paper plates and let them paint. 

Our scissors today came from the Kumon scissors work book.  Added a little literacy by having them come up with a name that starts with F (which is really hard for them so I started naming a few and let them choose) and I wrote the sentence "Francis Fox has four fine feet!" and encouraged F finding.  I do not use the Kumon Cutting work book in order as it's meant to be but if you are looking for a simple work book that is progressive...this is a nice book.  You can get it at Meijer, Target, Wal-Mart, Barnes and Noble and others similar places.  http://www.amazon.com/First-Book-Cutting-Kumon-Workbooks/dp/4774307084/ref=cm_cmu_pg__header#_

I'm not sure about you all, but I find that most of my students will not choose puzzles on their own and there are quite a few benefits to puzzles so I try to slip them in when I can.  I chose this puzzle today, obviously it was theme related, but also to reinforce number recognition and numerical order.

We also did a Jumping Graph.  I placed a piece of felt in the middle of the room and she decided what she was going to jump to and we counted the jumps.  Then together we transferred the information to a graph and talked about which took more jumps and which were equal and so on.

Oh, and last week we marble painted leaves and I said I'd show a picture of the completed mobile.  Sorry, the picture isn't all that great but here is the one I snapped.

A little different approach then just cutting and gluing to paper.

Have a great week!

L is for...

L is for Lizard!   

http://www.amazon.com/

A nice book that I've mention this past summer I think, is called Lizard's Song by George Shannon.  The summer kiddos as well as the ones today can be heard humming "Zoli, zoli, zoli...".  One daily activity we do is a journal in response to the book we read. 

Eventually the children will begin writing their own responses.  At this point in the year I start out with a fill in the blank sentence related to the book and they answer it, I write their answer, and they draw the picture.  Sometimes the answers are the same, like today, but other times they are quite different.  After we accumulate a few journal pages I'll bind them together and send them home.  Each journal page will have the book and author at the bottom so I'm hoping the parents will read this book with their child.  Children are so excited when we read a book they are familiar with at home and vice versa.  And repetitive readings of a book has so much value!

We also started into our focus letter.  Last week we worked with Mat Man and discussing sticks, curves, horizontal/vertical/diagonal lines and this week we used some of our Handwriting Without Tears tools to create the letter L. 

Sticks and Curves Set with Captial Letter Cards

(I really did not get very good pictures at all this morning so I'll use their thumbnails from www.hwtears.com.

We first used the capital L card to talk about whether we use sticks, curves, or both to make the letter.  Then they created the letter L with their own sticks in front of them.

Stamp and See Screen

Now picture it with the letter L.  :-P  We used the magnet sticks to create the L, then we used the magnet to trace over L.  This tool is going to get a lot of use I think. 

Roll a Dough Letters

Again, imagine a L and a lizard in the upper right hand corner.

I love that all of their items have the smiley face at the top left hand corner.  I used to use green smiley stickers and then moved to green dots long before I know about Handwriting Without Tears.  It's just a great way to create a visual of where to start when writing.

Slate Boards

Children used a small sponge chunk to write the letter L, then traced over with a chalk piece, then erased with the sponge again...all whiles saying L says /l/.  This repetition really pays off! 

We also did some Math Explorations with lizards.  My goal today was to see what they remembered from last year.  So I set some items out and said, "See what you can do here at this desk".  

Concepts that we introduced last year that I was looking for...

* creating a more/less set using the symbol correctly. 

* oral counting and counting with meaning.

* 1:1 correspondence with counting as well as placing one lizard on one branch

* if they remembered what a plus, minus, equal sign meant

* if they could sort by one characteristic and also verbalize their sorting technique.

* patterning-though this is a little more difficult to get with a set of so many different colors.  This works best when you provide just 2 colors.  We did a little patterning last week during journal time so I saw where they were at and so I wasn't watching as closely for this skill.

* measurement language

L is for  Longer.

This past Mailbox Preschool Publication had a simple "Longer/Shorter" book that fit very well into our morning this morning since we were talking a bit measuring with the lizards.  We used this as our scissors activity. 

No time to share everything so will let this be all until tomorrow. 

Have a lovely week!