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!)

 

 



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!