O is for...

O is for Ovals and Octopus!

Well, didn't have time to post yesterday.  'Twas quite a day.  Anyway, I'll just include two of our oval activities along with some of our octopus activities that we did today.

Quick...change the circle to an oval!

This was a very simple activity that they really got a kick out of.  I added a number component by putting a different number of beads on each pipe cleaner circle.  First we started with talking about the pipe cleaner circles and singing our circle song..."This is a circle, this is a circle, how can you tell, how can you tell?..."  And then I took one circle and quickly pulled it into an oval.  They know what an oval is so it was just reinforcement but that's needed also.

Oval Song

Tune:  Up On the Housetop

I am round, this is true.

But I just might fool you.

One way I'm thin, one way I'm tall.

If you stand me up, I'm sure to fall.

I am an oval, this is true.

I am an oval, did I fool you?

One way I'm thin, one way I'm tall.

If you stand me up, I'm sure to fall.

   Gayle Bittinger

End result, these pipecleaner ovals/circles are perfect for counting.  I will definitely use the bead/pipe cleaner task again because they can move each bead as they are counting.  Perfect!  Love this picture.  The number ten oval is the only one that I created a pattern with.  I'm always trying to slip things like that in to encourage them to look for details.

Oval Frame

Before exploring with circle/oval sponges with painting, I reinforced the shape oval by providing an oval piece of paper to lightly tape on a large rectangle.  She sponge painted around the oval edge and then covered the rest of the paper with paint in order to create a "picture frame".  When dry, K. drew a picture of her "family" inside (which ended up being Grandma, herself, a "new" brother, and a toy octopus  :-D).

Okay, now to Octopus.

5 Little Octopuses

http://www.kidssoup.com/

We started out by watching this animated story from www.abctwiggles.com.  I like their animated stories, most of the time.  They do highlight the words as they are reading them.  They are often repetitive which is good also.  Simple stories.  So I printed off the booklet from their sister site (Kids Soup) for the children to cut apart for a scissors task today.

Orange Octopus Playdough Mat

www.sparklebox.uk.co

Great for rolling out those "snakes"!  Reinforce the 8 legs fact.  They thought the fact that an octopus can grow back another leg if they lost one was pretty neat.  Of course, they had free exploration with playdough after this task.

Sensory:  Water Play

Well, I forgot to get my octopus from the garage this morning.  Oops.  It was neat to see them use their imagination though.  They turned a globe shaped container into an octopus and a sponge as well.  So turned out well.  Love to see their creative thinking.  Another child used both hands together to be an octopus and wiggled their fingers in the water to make waves.   I think this came from the fact we created a handprint octopus today.  Love to watch them explore!

Handprint Octopus

http://mindfull-meanderings.blogspot.com/2010/01/handprint-octopus.html

This is how ours turned out.  I provided oil pastels for them to use for seaweed.  Stickers for the fish.   We had used a sponge to add the blue...oops, it was purple LOL..."texture" to represent water on the paper.  O is for orange so we chose orange paint to print with.  They wanted googly eyes, which they ask for whenever they get a chance.  :-P  Cute.    

We did free exploration on colored fingerpaint paper today as our true art project.  :-)  Actually, I usually use black fingerpaint with this paper because it has more of an effect than other colors.  But!  This was exciting for me...H. is working with the black fingerpaint and said, "Ink! Look this octopus sprayed ink!"  :-D   I hadn't even thought of that!  Yeah!  And of course I wore cream today.  Why, why, why?  Obviously I don't plan my wardrobe around our activities because I could safely say that everytime the kids use black fingerpaint I'm wearing cream or white.  Blah!  LOL

The giant orange octopus.

What's Different Strips

These are so easy to create yourself with clip art.  I love them because it's an easy way to reinforce first/last in a line as well as encourage descriptive language.  I find that many times the children can point out which item is different but when I asked them to tell me why...they have a hard time describing/telling me the reason.  It comes with practice.  Last year K. couldn't tell me the reasons but after a few "what's different strips" this year, she is quick to tell me why they are different.  Making you own allows you to be progressive in the difficulty.  Not sure if you can see it here but the first strip I did had a completely different (including color) octopus.  The second strip was a different octopus but still orange.  The third strip was an upside down octopus.  The fourth strip was a smaller octopus and the fifth strip was a flipped octopus and that one was hard for them.  It was just a very small change...they had to notice the bubbles or the eyes.

Perhaps I'll stop here for now.  Hope you all have/had a lovely day!  We enjoyed watching the short lived snow!  Half day for the boys today...they were bummed that the snow was done by the time they left the school.  But I see more clouds rolling in, they may be in luck.

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! 

P is for...

P is for Pumpkin!

A few more pumpkin activities.

Check out http://www.teachpreschool.org/ for great pumpkin ideas!

Cleaning out the pumpkin!  Ew!  Slimy! 

I'm experimenting with coloring the pumpkin seeds.  I'll let you know how it goes!

Penny Pumpkin Rubbings

Pumpkin Hands-On Math Chart

One can usually find erasers in 'large' quantities on clearance after holidays.  They can be used for various activities!  These erasers were from Target, after Halloween, 75 ct for less than a dollar.  Laminating the "bulletin board" decorations allow them to be used over and over in activities as you can use dry erase marker on them.  I like to use those little pumpkins to put up on a wall (in numerical order, 1 at the bottom at floor level-I'm pretty sure there is a picture in one of the past postings) so they can explore with nonstandard measurement of themselves and objects.

Pumpkin Patch Alphabet Match

http://www.childcareland.com/

K.'s quite capable of matching quite a few of the letters, however, this was a very busy "mat", since typically I break the upper-lower case letter matching activities into several sessions so "we" don't get tired of the activity.  But after she got some encouragement...she did well!

Playdough out again.  :-)  Have to take advantage of that lovely textured playdough!

1 C. flour

1/2 C. salt

1 tsp. oil

2 tsp. cream of tartar

1 C. water

Kool-Aid packet in chosen color/scent

Mix together and cook on medium-low heat, stirring constantly until dough begins to form a ball and comes off the sides of the pan.  Knead a bit as it cools.  Store in air tight container or wrap in plastic wrap.

Flowers, again. Last day though :-(

I love doing flower activities...spring-y, colorful, puts us all in a good mood....and SO much to do.  So many neat ideas out there!  Might have to just include them with our bug theme this next week.  :-P

Here are some of what we did today...

Flower Pom Pom Sort

A very simple activity, to make as well as do.  Added a fine motor component by providing tweezers.  It's officially May...so starting into the final assessment of my students.  This was mainly for me to see if they could name the basic colors.  They put them out any way they wanted but as they put them back into the bowl, they stated what the color name was.  We also counted how many flowers there, which row had most, which rows had equal number of flowers.  I also watched for if they went from left to right or not.  Children who have really internalized this left to right concept tends to work from left to right when the task is organized to allow for it.  I believe I got the black and white flower pattern from www.childcareland.com, then just colored them to match the pom poms.

Playdough

Well, this activity was a cute idea but they didn't really "take" to it like I thought they would.  :-) I had provided brown playdough, fake flowers, and teracotta pots.  Of course, we added the watering can, a couple flower cutters, and a rolling pin.  The marbles were an idea from them, "for decoration" but they didn't end up using those either.  :-)  I think I'd use larger and plastic flower pots next time, if I do this again.  The little teracotta pots made it difficult to take the playdough out.  Oh well, done with another group of kids or even on another day...they might play with it differently.  That's what happens! 

Flowers: Ordering By Size

This is something I'd definitely do again. Works well 1:1.  Foam flowers with magnet strip on back.  Easy to make!  First step that all the children did was order the flowers by size.  If they couldn't do six (which is not unusual for preschoolers) then I helped them by saying, "What's the next biggest?"  Then we started with a set of 3 flowers.  If they could order the 3, we went to 4 and then to 5 and redid 6. Next step was to put number magnets from 1-6 in order above each flower.  Then we talked about where the first flower was and where the last flower was.  With the youngest, we stopped there.  Attention span and fine motor skills are not ready for the next step.  The 4 year old took it a step further and drew six flowers on a piece of paper, wrote the numeral and the number word on the paper.  She was so proud!!  The oldest took it a step further from that and we worked together with addition.  Seperating the flowers on the board and adding the magnetic numbers...then writing them on the paper.  So he wrote, 1+5, 2+4, 3+3, etc. Yes, would definitely do that again!  I think we'll pull this type of thing back out this summer with our summer Kindergarten Readiness program.

Button Flowers

Easily turns into a gift for something (like Mother's Day) :-)  The funny thing was I had planned to do the styrofoam cup idea this spring ... and one day I walked into the school to see that Aaron's 2nd grade class did this.  They were displayed on the wall.  Cute.  That's where I got the button idea.   Difference between the 2nd grade work and preschool...is the second grade was capable of making their own very unique flowers using the ripped paper technique.  Most preschoolers wouldn't have had success actually making flowers.  So do that when you wish to have an open ended art project.  I just used up scrap paper and made a much of different size petals for them to choose from.  Hot glue works best on the styrofoam cups.

A different type of mosaic.  :-)

I started them with a plate of glue and a spreader but it really does work better if they are allowed to use the bottle and make a puddle of glue.  LOL  I happen to have 3 butterflies so ...voila!  They were excited to add a butterfly to their garden.  :-)