M is for Magnets!

A fun morning full of magnet-ificent activities!   :-)

Using words from our reading lessons....

I printed sight words plus a few others that we've learned in our lessons from the book Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Siegfried Englemann onto paper and cut out using the word configuration concept.  K. chose one, read the word (this is a great review because she is seeing the word how it looks in reality vs. having the sound dots and other visuals to give her a clue on how to sound out the word), created it with Magnetix and read it again.  We are going to do a couple each afternoon this week.  Building things out of manipulatives is not something she naturally chooses during free play and etc so this is very good practice for her. 

Magnetic Marble Painting
Well, this was on our plans but we'll do it tomorrow afternoon as we had an hour out of our afternoon due to realtors here and then K.'s ride came about 50 minutes early.  So didn't get to the magnetic marble painting.  But...marble painting is always a hit around here with all ages.  An "oldie" that is always a favorite.  So we'll just vary it a little and use our magentic marbles and a magnetic wand to move it around on the tray.  :-)

Magnetic Number Memory

This was nice for T. (2.5yrs) also.  (Excuse the backwards three...we did notice it and corrected it!)  We talked about the magnetic numerals as we put them on the tray.  Then I removed one and K. guess which one was missing.  We also reviewed our numeral formation verse with each number writing the numeral in our sand tray before moving on and we also manipulated the numerals to make larger numbers 10-20. 

Found a Letter!

This was such a simple activity but she told me it was her favorite of the morning activities.  :-)  Anytime I add a song...it's a point of interest.

I placed magnetic letters inside of our sensory tub and encouraged K. to find them and put them in alphabetical order.  I did have the alphabet tray for her to use as a clue when she needed it.  The little song that we sang reviewed the letters sound also and went like...
Tune:  The Farmer in the Dell

You found the letter (B), you found the letter (B)

/b/ /b/ the letter (B)

You found the letter (B).

Obviously a very simple to remember song that they learn very quickly.  I like to reinforce the letter sound in that second verse.  After we sang the ABC and ABC sound song and reviewed our vowels. 

Magnadoodle:

Another simple way to reinforce number formation and counting.

Magnetic Foam Tower

I've had strips of foam that I purchased quite awhile ago and beyond using them for scissor snipping and collages I really hadn't used them for anything else.  Well, they are a perfect size for my magnetic strips so I simple created a set of strips for the children to explore with.  (Seriation, counting, patterning, etc)

Another way to make a tower.  Those two colors together appealed to her.  :-)

We also created a little book out of Mailbox publication, I Can Make It, I Can Read It: Science titled Margie Magnet.  Booklets make great scissors activities and a booklet like this helps conversation lead to the workings of the material you are working with...so in this case...magnets!

The little black rectangles are magnet strips so the hands can "attract".

We did a series of "tests" about what attracted and what didn't.

All in all...a profitable morning.  :-)

(Sometimes I wonder about this blog...I get it to how I want it and click on post...because I can't preview first for whatever the reason...and pictures and text are moved and spacing and font is different.  Weird.  Anyone else have this issue?)

R is for...

R is for rockets!

But before I get into that maybe I'll mention we had so many bouts of laughter today.  Such a joy!  We kind of switched things up and went with the the flow.  I feel there needs to be a pretty good routine in place but I also believe that, especially at the preschool level, we need to just let some things go in order to enjoy the process of things a little more.  It also teaches them to be flexible.  But I only suggest doing this after you have a good routine in place so that you can get right back into the routine because really, without the routine, we wouldn't get half as much done!  And the children's behavior wouldn't be all that becoming.  :-)   But anyway...had two great trainings last week.  One was an online training regarding children's imagination and the other was about laughter being the greatest medicine.  I find that most trainings that are offered, ones that I can afford and are nearby anyway, are usually just reviews and it use to "get to me".  I'm taking time out of my busy schedule to do training only to really not learn anything.  But...on the plus side...they are usually are great reviews.  I think we need that too.  And, though I really didn't learn anything new at the last two trainings, they did make me do some self-evaluation and realized that I'm getting too stuffy in my old age.  :-)  Letting personal stuff get in the way of my teaching and my ability to laugh.  So...excellent trainings!  When we can smile/laugh...it's such a stress reliever, child and adult alike!  We were in the middle of one of our biggest laughs today and we pretty much had tears coming to our eyes and one say, "Ms. Amber...I so love you."   Then the other pipes up..."I DO TOO!"  Aw, made my heart melt.  Almost brought real tears!  LOL  But the point is...we must laugh!  One thought passed on at the training was that laughter is JUST as important as fresh air and good food.  Wow!  There some food for thought!

Anyway....

R is for Rockets!

Our book for the day. 

Art:  Rocket In Universe

We definitely enjoyed the process of this project.  Often we are doing our activities separately.  The main reasons are because then I can provide more individualization and do more activities in a smaller space.  But working together has such benefits and so I try to slip that in as often as possible.  Conversations are great when they are sitting next to each other doing something similar.  Actually, today, I set up the kitchen like I normally do and as we got close to that time I decided...hmmm, let's do this all together today.  And we did most of our work on the floor!  A lot more space there. 

You can see the corner of the computer in the picture.  CMU Child Development Lab have computers available for their preschoolers but...they are used for research vs. any games the children might play.  I use mine for both.  I actually have a "children's" computer for games.  Can't get the Internet to work on that one so end up using the lap top for research.  Screen time is kept to a minimum here though.  I figure they get more than enough at home and even at school.  So today, we used our computer as a research tool.  Google images (be careful what you google and I strongly suggest that you google it first so you know what's going to pop up-even with "kid" things and if you are doing an impromptu search with them, if possible keep the screen toward you and only show it to the children when you have previewed it.   Can you tell I'm talking from experience?!)  Anyway, we searched "planets and kids".  I had already searched "universe" and wasn't pleased with the outcome so switched to something more specific.  One child pointed to Earth right away to say, "Hey, that's where we live...it looks like our globe."  We have a globe on the end table that we refer to quite a bit.  So, yeah!  That was exciting.  We talked about how they all looked like circles/spheres but were different in color and size.  Talked about stars, meteor showers and other simple thoughts about the universe.  Then I gave them oil pastels to create their planets (and Diego, for one child LOL).  They then painted over with watered down black paint.  Added their rocket.  Interesting that they put the rocket in practically the same place.  That happens more often when doing art side by side then when they are doing art on their own.  Then added stars if they wanted.  They were "gummed" stars but it didn't work well.  So we ended up gluing and in my opinion, that didn't work well either since the edges curled up for whatever the reason but they didn't mind so I kept my mouth shut.  :-D  

 

We are doing a similar project this afternoon with the school-agers.  Will try it on cardboard since the paper seems so thin.  We'll be making our rockets out of cardstock shapes also.  I'll share them when we complete the projects.  It'll be at least a 2 day project, I imagine.

Fine motor and Phonological Awareness Activities

http://homeschoolcreations.com/astronautpreschoolpack.html

Cute little packet.  The next few activities are from HomeSchool Creations.  Quite a few things in it that we didn't use...so check it out. Might be perfect for your kiddos or might be able to be used as a jumping board.

They put the "starburst" on the correct beginning sound of the vocabulary cards.  And I had laminated the writing cards...Rocket to the moon!...so dry erase marker works great for that.  Great prewriting skill activities!  I'm glad to see more and more of these available.  At one time I created them myself but now its a more commonplace to see/find. I wish that they used hollow lines though instead of dotted lines to trace, but that's a personal opinion!  Beggars can't be choosers and their printables make my busy life easier.  :-)

10, 9, 8, 7 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 BLAST OFF!

  

The number and rocket cards were from the Astronaut Preschool Pack, mentioned above.  Her suggestion was to punch a hole at the bottom of the number cards and add links.  That's an idea.  :-)  I didn't know where my links were and really wanted to do the rocket below it (Mailbox) for a scissors skill activity.  So I used the cards this way.  First, we put them in order from 10-1.  That's hard for a lot of preschool children.  It also gave me a good idea of where they were at with number recognition.  No, this isn't the font I use but I strongly believe in using multiple fonts for various activities so that the children can recognize them interchangeably.  So after we put them in order, I had the children start cutting out their rocket and adding their astronaut.  One child drew a picture of the other child and said she was mad because "it ran out of gas".  Oooh!  That WOULD be a problem!  LOL  Then he added himself in there later.  Anyway, since they are at different skill levels for scissors, this worked out perfectly.  I put one square of paper under each number (actually wrote our number 10 and 9 on the cards so they could see how we write them) and encouraged them to write each number on their square.  This was to help me see where they were regarding numeral formation, so no help from me-unless they specifically asked for it.  Great little scissors and math activity combined!  If it looks familiar, I believe I did this during our summer program.  I had put their actual picture in the window then.

 

Math: Rocket to the Moon

Seriation/Ordering by size.  This was also in that Astronaut Preschool Pack.

This was not a scissors activity so I cut them out ahead of time.  See their moons?  We had talked about them having craters so that is why both of them chose to have spots in their circles.  :-)  One chose to do theirs from smallest to biggest and the other from biggest to smallest.  This is a skill that requires practice.   Typical preschool standards expect ordering a set of three-big, medium, small.   With practice they can't get way beyond a set of three.  Just a little FYI there.  :-P  It just requires practice.  To save paper and such you could just laminate one set and use them over and over.  But since I have a small group, I like to do it this way so the parents know what we are doing.  We counted them, talked about the biggest/smallest, first/last, even/odd and so on.

Just for Fun!

Okay, well, this was an adult made rocket.  We do very few of these.  But I just knew that they would be a hit and I was right!  They flew all over creation!  I gave them the choice of colors and they decorated it but that was about it.  But dramatic play was at a high point when they were done with them! 

Instructions were from Enchanted Learning.  Not my favorite site (and no, I will never purchase a membership there) but this one was worthwhile.  :-)   It was raining and I knew we wouldn't get outside and they were flying their rockets through the universe so I opened up the doors to the "rest" of the house and they "flew" around (which they love to do...I don't do that often so it's always "special".)  Anyway...one child has had an issue with a lingering cold and after so much physical activity she was really starting to cough and getting red in the face so I encouraged her to find something calm to do for a little while and this is what happened....

Isn't that sweet?!  She has really taken to "reading to Trent".  I love it, he loves it, she loves it! 

Lovely day!  Hope yours was too!

We Like Kites

Kites are such a fun theme to do with the kids.  There are so many different things to do.  If it's a nice day/week...going outside and flying kites (even as simple as plastic grocery bags with a yarn string) is such a fun way to get the kids moving. 

I decided to have C. read the book for the other children today.  This can be a great benefit for the younger children because then they realize it's not that far away when they'll be reading too!  Anyway, my only issue was that C. tends to talk talk talk and it tends to interfere with the flow of the book for the other children.  So I don't have him read aloud too many times for the other kids.  :-)

 I chose this book as we've been introducing/reviewing the silent e and of course kite was a good example.  For our "moveable letters activity"...we seem to be moving beyond just moving alphabet manipulatives lately but this type of activity can be done with "adding e" manipulative...we used some silent e word cards that I came across. 

http://3readers.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/silent-e-long-vowel-sound-cards/

I chose a few to use, being sure to include a, i, o, and u vowels and that the words actually were common enough that the children would understand.  Great CVC sounding out practice initially and then adding the e to reinforce the long vowel sound.  These would be relatively easy to make on your own with your own words and font, if you desired.

For a bit of movement today, one of the children asked if we could do the parachute again.  Together, before the final child arrived, we put alphabet kites up on the wall in alphabetical order. FYI: I often encourage the children to start near the end of their sequence to figure out the next letter instead of all the way at the beginning.  By the end of preschool/beginning of Kindergarten they should be able to do this and it's a time saver!  I do the same with counting.  Start at 10 to get to 15 instead of starting at 1 each time. 

 So we got the parachute out and I placed on several kite bows that had pictures on them.  This printable came from www.makinglearningfun.com.  They tried to keep them on the parachute as long as they could.  Then I instructed them to choose a certain amount of bows from the floor.  (We did 3 bows a piece at first-I had created bundles of bows to make the activity go smoothly).  Then they told me what letter the picture/word started with and placed it on the corresponding kite string.  After they got the idea we did two bundles and they picked six a piece.  Had a little fun with the tape.  :-)

For our numeral formation activity, we did the Kite Graphing Book found at www.confessionsofahomeschooler.blogspot.com.  I actually purchased the Letter of the Week "curriculum" from her as it took so long to download the items individually and she has some very nice printables to share.  Just want to take a moment to reiterate that one must be careful of the term "curriculum".  Many of the printable available should be labeled as curriculum support vs. leading people to believe that it's an actual curriculum.  My opinion, of course!  Her Letter of the Week Curriculum is really just the printables she used for her lesson planning for the specific letter they were focusing on. 

 I provided pointers because it makes counting a little more interesting and the bows were small enough that the pointers made it easier to count also.  I encouraged the children to x out the boxes...mainly to save time but also because the two younger ones needed practice forming x's.  That's not an easy letter to write...though it looks easy.  That crossing midline and backwards diagonal.

Art:  We talked about the different kites we have seen and the fact that not all are diamonds.  So, they made a kite collage, including white oil pastel clouds and washed with blue water color. 

 

Scissor/Word Family Activity. 

 Again, from www.makinglearningfun.com

I printed a set for each child and on cardstock with the hope that they'll read and sort the cards at home for further practice.  However, you may wish to make one set and laminate.  You can do something similar as we did with the parachute.  Or you can hide the bows around the room.  Or put a paperclip on the bow and create a dowel/magnet "fishing" pole.  If you were planning on making/laminating one set, I would suggest you take the time to cut the bows out as well.  It would be more appealing to the eyes.  However, I knew that my students wouldn't have the time or the interest in cutting out all those bows!  So rectangles it was.  FYI:  on the website, they have many word families available for this activity.

Phonological Awareness: Beginning, middle, ending sounds

This went well and there are multiple things you could do with this simple kite mat.  As you can see in the picture, I used picture/word cards and a chip.  I purchased the cards awhile ago in the school section at Target.  I love them!  Now, they've gotten used quite a bit that a few of them are all coming apart at the perforated edges so we'll soon need to find a new use (maybe use them with our moveable letters!).  But they can fold to just show the picture and then open to check their work when we leave them all together.   Also, for younger students, consider using the mat to practice with sets of 3.  They can place a manipulative on each bow and count them, then set them aside.  You may wish to have small picture cards and do "which is different?" activity.  So maybe a banana on the first bow, a pear on the second and a dog on the third.  Encourage your child to tell you why the one they chose is different.  How about reinforcing rhyming?  Which picture doesn't rhyme?  Or which picture doesn't start with the same beginning/ending sound?  You can add bows to your string and do sequencing or patterning.  If you have time...have the children decorate their own kite.  Use your imagination...feel free to share other activities you can think of to use with this simple kite mat.

Here's one of the products I purchased from Discount School Supply this fall.  Already I love it!

Relatively durable/stable...which I could not say for others I looked at at the stores.  This one came with 10 trays.  The trays are not as durable as the previous ones I purchased but they'll do.  I decided to use it last night by arranging the materials for each activity on a separate tray from top to bottom.  That way I just took the stuff off the tray instead of it being piled on the floor or on the table/counter and so on.  And by the time we got to art we had emptied a few of the trays so I used it as a drying rack so no wet art on my counters as I'm trying to get ready for lunch.  Then instead of making umpteen trips to pile it all up to put away later...I just rolled the cart into the computer room.  :-)  I can see that it would be lovely for a homeschooling mom...especially if their child did well with a visual of when they they will be "all done". 

Today was a great start of the week....my only issue now is the doctor's office has been busy for over an hour (which this is NOT unusual...drives me bananas).  Need to make an appointment so I can get my child care renewal paperwork in.  Have a lovely week! 

If You Give a Moose a Muffin

By Laura Numeroff

www.amazon.com

Side note:  I was looking for some moose clip art and I find the best way to find what I want is to search "coloring sheets".  I'm not big on coloring sheets at the preschool level but I do like them to make activities out of.  Here's a nice website I found recently in regards to coloring sheets that can be used for so much more then coloring.  http://www.animaljr.com/

Large Motor

Moose Antlers

 Children created moose head bands and we checked out a couple of you tube videos about how they moved, what they looked liked when they moved.  Then children moved through our home similar to a moose and as they passed me each time I told them a moose fact.  Most enjoyed wearing their antlers throughout the morning.

 

Numeral Formation

How Many Muffins?

Excuse the horrible picture. 

A simple sheet I created to allow for children to practice 1:1 with their counting and number writing.  Each child stated their favorite type of muffin and chose a pencil accordingly.  They then placed a mark on the top of the muffins as they counted it, writing the numeral at the end of the line. I find placing the space for the number at the end of the line naturally encourages them to count from left to right.  C. here chose to put a blueberry at the top of each of his muffins.

Letter Formation

Ww

 

One fact we learned today was that "moose are great swimmers".  Our letter Ws became waves today.  We did them with oil pastels because we were told that they would be bolder-resist watercolor better.  Then we "washed" our paper with blue water color to make water...and added our moose swimming in the water. 

Scissors

-am family 

I created this in print shop using a jam coloring sheet.  Placed one at the top and flipped the other so that when the children cut it out they would be able to fold it up.  We stapled the sides and voila! a jam jar.  It was strawberry on our jam jar so I created strawberries with words that belong in the -am family.  Note in the first picture, I had highlighted around where I wanted them to cut.  Otherwise they tend to cut all lines if there isn't a bolder cutting line.

Phonological Awareness

Sequencing and Word Chunks

We sequenced the story and checked our work with the book.  Then I choose the main word on the sequencing squares to say and the children clapped out the word telling me if there were 1, 2, or 3 word chunks.  The following website has many If You Give a Moose a Muffin activities and printables you might be interested in.  www.homeschoolshare.com/IfYouGiveaMoose.php

Art

Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas lived about 200 years ago and liked to draw things that moved.  Two of his main focuses were horses (horse racing) and ballet dancers.  Monday we worked on a lesson about breaking animals into shapes to make them more simple to draw.  Today we drew a lot of horses on big paper.  Colored them with their choice of media and cut out.  In The Art Garden's (www.theartgarden.info) lesson she encouraged the children to paint a background and then add the paper cutouts.  I chose not to as time is short so we just had the children choose what color construction paper background to use. 

5.5 yrs

"The horses are resting after the race."

6 yrs in Aug.

"The horses are eating supper and getting ready for bed."

8.5 yrs

"In the desert.  The horses were running away from a hungry bear and they ran into my picture and the bear stepped on it.  The horses turned into a piece of paper."

 

5.5 years

"The horses were at the circus." 

(The green animal is a monkey :-))

Here I was quickly showing them how they could possibly show different "poses" for the horses all using the same basic shapes or triangles and rectangles.  I'm not much of a drawer so no fear of it being "too perfect" and the children feeling like they can't do it.  On a general basis, I don't usually show an example but in lessons like this one it's almost necessary for them to able to get the idea. 

Moveable Letters

Just wanted to share the variation we did today as it might work well for your child(ren) also.

After they sounded out the word and put the letters there they were encouraged to put their finger under each sound once again stating it and then "say it fast" sliding their finger underneath the word.

Smash! Mash! Crash! There Goes the Trash

Maybe I'll start by sharing a tidbit of a conversation I had with my husband last week.  I only feel comfortable in sharing this because I really don't think he meant it in the way it sounded.  :-)  I had one day before we left for camping and had a full load on that day.  I hadn't been sleeping well and I was far from finished getting ready to leave and so I jokingly said, "I think you should stay home and I'll go to work for you today."  Yes, we have mornings that start out that way...doesn't mean we don't love our job or our children...but sometimes you wonder how it's going to go when you know you aren't starting on the "right foot" to begin with because of minimal sleep and so on.  He said, "Okay, I'll stay home and have two days off."  Um.  Hmmm.  :-P  Like I said, I don't think he really meant it that way.  Side note:  the day went just fine.  However, it does come to mind today.  There are many who are very unaware of what we do.  Like I mentioned before, to some I'm considered a babysitter.  To others I fall in the category of a stay at home mom.  In reality...I'm neither.  I do not have the freedom of a stay at home mom.  And for those that think I'm a babysitter...they just need to come walk in my shoes for a week.   Even my husband, who lives here, does not truly understand what my job all entails.  You don't, unless you've done it.  The planning, the prep, the making sure your house is acceptably "clean" all the time, being sure that not only I but the family members are following licensing regulations, the billing, the budgeting, menu planning, keeping up with assessments, and so much more...even before (and after) the children arrive.  There is very little time for myself.  I'll share my rate with you.  I make 2.75/hr-per child and that's only when there are children present.  Though this fall I will be going back to preschool hours being a set fee and "I'm sorry if you have decided your child is too tired to come today.  I've already purchased materials and did a lot for planning."  (Yes, I've had the excuse...but I won't go into how much I disagree with that.)  But presently, they pay for the hours they are in attendance. This does not include any of the extra time that is involved. So, in essence, I make very little after we subtract groceries, bills, art supplies, toy replacement, activity materials, etc.  I don't do this for the money...nobody in this field does. We do it because we love the children and know the importance of a positive early childhood.  So that being said, anyone that considers being home with 6 kids a "day off" has never been in my shoes.  To really understand they must do the lesson planning, the scheduling, the billing-including DHS, activity preparation, photo organization, meal prep and clean up all along with trying to keep the house clean and the family's needs met (and trying to get ready to leave on vacation also).  Easier said then done.  :-)  And I'm not complaining...I just felt the need to "vent" today and help others have a better understanding of what we preschool teachers do.

So, today.  I wouldn't say it was the "best day ever".  Nor would I say it was the worst day I've ever had in this field.  No matter how long we are in the field, we have off days...either because of personal reasons and we are having a rough day or the many factors in the children's lives are playing into the rough day.  Which is probably what was happening today.  To say it nicely..."the children's listening ears were not on today."  So, needless to say I revamped what we did.  I could tell I was becoming frustrated in how everything was going, not smoothly at all, and how I had to repeat repeat repeat.  Why am I saying this?  I want you all to know that we all have days that aren't so smooth.  When we share activities about our day...well, all seems just fine...everything went so smoothly and in reality...it doesn't always go that smoothly.  Doesn't mean it wasn't a profitable day...just not what we expected or wanted.  So it is okay to revamp or even set activities aside for another day.  One of the things I did today was stop an activity and have a little conversation about listening and another about emotions.  The best way to teach about that is in the course of the day ... not necessarily it's only lesson. I do feel I need to say that if you are constantly "setting activities aside" then you need to take a look at what you are doing.  What the cause?  Perhaps the child is not ready for the activities you are wanting them to do.  Maybe your expectations are too high/unrealistic or too low and they aren't challenged.  Maybe there isn't enough open-endedness in the activities.  Maybe there is too many "sitting down" activities.  Maybe you need more of a hands-on approach.  Take an honest look at yourself and your child and go from there.  Children don't often "misbehave" for no reason at all.  There is usually something that is triggering it.  I know that today's behaviors probably stemmed from the weekend.

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www.amazon.com

We love this book.  Lots of rhyming also a great way to review/introduce blends,

if your child is at that stage.  Let's see, you can't see the author very easily on this book.  Barbara Odanaka

A lot of giggles came out of our gross motor activity today. 

First I provided 5 pieces of newspaper to each child to create "trash".  We slipped in a little skip counting by 5s also.  Nice to give them a visual of how it works vs. just memorizing 5, 10, 15.  So all together we had 25 newspaper balls.  Yes, I could have done this myself but scrunching newspaper is a very good fine motor activity.  Even better when you encourage them to do it one hand with their nondominant hand. 

I had a masking tape road and A. had created us paper plate steering wheels.  So we drove our "garbage trucks" down the road using the heel-toe method on the line.  "Walking the line" is very beneficial for preschoolers.  Consider doing this also when you are learning or reviewing a letter or number.  It was harder then they thought it was going to be!  At the end of the line there was a trash can.  The children had put their trash around the can after crumbling the newspaper up.

Then they counted the newspaper balls, out loud, from 1-25.  I had the older ones go first so that the younger ones could hear.  Both of the younger ones difficulty remembering what comes next when they hit around 16 and one of them tends to hurry his way through it so he doesn't always do the 1:1 like he should.  Counting isn't his favorite thing to do.  So this was a lovely activity to reinforce both the counting sets and oral counting.

Then they made all sorts of racket as their garbage truck picked up the trash can and dumped it (over their head for the next child).  I will definitely do something like this again.  It was a hit!

   

Numeral Formation

Kind of hard to see in the picture but each child had a formatted page with two columns and gas pumps.  One gas pump said odd and the other said even.  The children wrote the numerals 1-10 on the garbage trucks.  Then they were cut out and they decided if that garbage truck would go under the odd column or the even column.

Here is the work of one child.  She chose a garbage truck.  Stated the number (6).  Then she put six manipulatives in a line and then buddied them up.  Then glued the garbage truck onto the correct column.  Here's the little poem we used today.

Odd and Even

If you are an even number

You always have a pair

So if you look around

Your buddy will always be there.

But...

If you are an odd  number

There's always a lonley one.
He looks around to find his buddy

But he's the only one.

---Marg Wadsworth

Letter Formation

This activity went well.  We missed a couple of days and so we were behind in our letter formation activities.  So decided that U and V would go well together because most of my preschool students will make a U and then make a V a U also.  :-)  They have a difficult time with stopping at the point and going back up.  So this was perfect.  I was on limited time as we were leaving for vacation last week so chose just a plain semi instead of searching for a garbage truck pattern.  :-)  Children wrote a U in one truck and a V the other.  Then they wrote u or v on the picture strips.  Cut out and glued onto the correct truck.

I was sure to include both short and long sounds for the vowel u.  You may wish to consider clapping out each of the words and talking about word chunks.  Since my kiddos are interested in spelling I have introduced the concept that every word chunk has a vowel, this summer.  You my wish to also. 

Phonological Awareness

 Well, this activity had a lot of potential.  However, since it was a listening activity and our listening ears were not working well this morning...it flopped.  I will do it with them though on another day but wanted to share it with you as you may wish to do it with your children.  I really do not have enough "trucks" for each child to have three so we did any vehicle.  They set them in a row and we reviewed beginning, middle, and end.  Then they were given a sound to listen for.  Always start with a very easy to hear consonant...something you can emphasize like /s/.  And I stated a word that had it in the beginning, middle, or end and they pushed that car toward me.  If you have young preschoolers you may wish to do only two cars, beginning and ending sound.  Or another variation would be to put a letter sticker on the top of two vehicles.  State words that start with that sound.  Have them push the vehicle forward with the matching letter.

I probably should stop with these activities. Time flew by!  Have a great week.