Simple...But Busy Times!

Well, I wondered about whether I'd get to post very often here.  :-)  Obviously the answer is no, since the last post was a month ago.  I find that I don't get very many pictures of Mr. T. either but he surely seems to be enjoying our busy mornings.

 

Number Rings 

Have I shared the bead "bracelets"?  I know I did last year with the preschoolers but not sure if I did with T.  He loves these!  We've done them a few times.  I placed beads on pipe cleaners 0-10. He can move the beads to help him count correctly and then he places the corresponding number in the center.  He recognizes all the number 0-10.  However, he does place the numerals 01 for ten.  He doesn't count to 10 in the correct order consistently yet...but he's getting there!

 

Family Name Snowmen

Learning to cut circles.  I did try the glitter glue around shapes to help him with his cutting but he has enough strength in his hand that he cuts right through the glitter glue.  Oops!  He was so disgusted with himself.   Anyway, decided to just go back to plain paper with thicker lines and encourage him to turn the paper not his scissors.  Teaching him how to cut is trickier than it was for the other children. He's a left-y...I'm a right-y.  Same for writing.  Been quite interesting!  He really did enjoy this activity.  We did a name every day. 
 

 

Go Fishing

T. is actually picking up letters and their sounds just by listening to the other children (mainly me with the first grader).  Heaven help us but he even is starting to grasp finger stretching words to hear the different sounds.  So, I decided it's probably time to start doing a little more "formal" activities.  I first thought I'd do the order of learning how to read but then switched to the order of writing them because he's interested in writing letters also.  Rather have him learn letter formation correctly.  So, we went to F this week.  HWT's order.  Though we did a bit with building the letter...we focused a lot of the sound it makes.  One of the very simple activities he loved (we actually did it multiple times) is to "go fishing".  Yarn with a magnet at the end and fish shapes with a paper clip on them.  An oldie but goodie activity.  I've done this activity for years and every child loves it.  Anyway, I found these lovely F fish at Ms. Carlie's Little Learners.  Each fish has a picture that begins with /f/.  And since another thing T. is picking up on his own is patterns (notice the snowman hats in the above activity) I encouraged him to set the fish in an abab pattern on the table in front of him.  He doesn't know what I mean when I say "well, what would come next?" but that's okay.  I got a laugh out of it.  He looks at me with his nose wrinkled and then down at the tray on the floor and tells me, "none-zero-I don't have any left."  !!!!  Love it! 
 

If T. could do numbers and letters only for "school" he'd be quite happy.  :-)  Actually, it's probably because that is what he witnesses the most...especially with the 1st grader.  Language Arts and Math take up most of the day.  He's usually sleeping when we work on the 1st graders other subjects.  The tactile numbers he placed on top of a number line that I created in PrintShop using animals in the form of numbers.  Mini erasers are great counters!  Check Oriental trading for a large selection.

Another very simple but pleasing activity for T.  Taking a deck of cards and sorting.  What I liked was I was able to reinforce the difference between a letter and a number.  He'll tell you to "count" with any numbers he sees and he'll tell you to "read" with letters but he still interchanges the words when he's talking about them.  Definitely normal for a 3 year old.  No concerns...but I'm always looking for ways to slip that concept in.  :-)
 

What a kid!  He's quite the loud mouth which causes some problems during the morning but he surely makes us all smile.  I hear my 7 year old say a lot "He's got a big vocabulary!"  (C.'s all into vocabulary right now because he does "vocabulary" every day.  I was just thinking...the other day my husband was trying to figure out why we can do online vocabulary on a particular computer so he was going through a lesson.  He said...these words don't have anything to do with each other...they seem random."  At the time I thought "Whatever, he's learning because I hear the new vocab in his talk."  But now that I'm thinking about it...even though Vocabulary seems random...it's not...because it's pulling in words from all the subjects that he's working on at the time.  Interesting.  Ha!  This is the preschool blog.  Well, guess that should have went over on the Schooling At Home blog. Oh well, that's the way it goes...everything is intermingled in my brain.  :-P)  Back to "big vocabulary".  T. does.  It is so neat to listen to him.  One benefit with being with older kids day in and day out. :-) 

Had a few more pictures to share but my card reader decided not to work, once again.  Odd how it randomly decides not to read the card.  Anyhow...all for now. Hoping that you are having lovely days.

S is for Sewing a Snowman!

Just a quick post to share the picture of the final product of K.'s sewing project.  :-)

Today is the last day before winter break.  May take a break from blogging or may post a few pictures of what my own kiddos are planning on doing over break.  Still hoping for snow! 

S is for Snowman! Day 5

A few more activities with a snowman theme...

Marble Painted Snowman

Wish I had a large class for this activity!  They'd all be SO different!  Today I demonstrated how to draw a snowman filling a paper and encouraged them to use three circles to drawn their own snowman on their paper, freehand.  The newly turned 4 year old immediately started fist drawing circles so thus I recommend having two very different colors of crayons so that you can outline around their snowman as a visual of where to cut!  Then they cut out their basic snowman drawing, marble painted, glued to background and added details.  Simple and turned out lovely!

Ah...some day T. will actually participate instead of preferring to pull up a stool and watch.  It's kind of amusing.  He's very content just to watch.  A little different than my other two boys who were well into doing art, sensory, and other activities by his age but they all grow and develop differently.  T.'s an observer...especially with anything that might potentially be messy.

Melted Snowman Silly Putty

 

They did enjoy this (not T., of course...wouldn't touch it after the initial try!  LOL).  I purchased these from OTC for A.'s 3rd grade class as a little something for around the holiday times.  Since class numbers have dropped since I ordered the class gifts...my kiddos here are "benefiting".   It's a neat concept...the outside of the snowman tends to rub off...about a third of them came with paint rubbed off in spots on the containers and thus flakes get in with the silly putty but the kids don't seem to mind.  Good sensory activity!

We combined it with having potato flake trays also.  So with two sensory experiences...we didn't get to everything planned.  Oh well, some other time!

Snowman Colors

Lovely free printable that can be found at http://thekidsplacehomedaycareandpreschool.blogspot.com/2011/11/free-printable-snowman-colors.html. 

I did provide tweezers but they chose to use their fingers as the perler beads were really too little to manipulate to their button places with the tweezers.  :-)  Matching the hat to the snowman was great for color review and I love that they are labeled with the color words with the font I like the best.

Rhyming Snowman

I have a large selection of stamps, a garage sale finding.  You could just use magazine pictures or print some as well.  So, the other day I had my boys go through the stamps and find as many matching rhyming pairs of stamps they could find.  Actually there wasn't very many!  I was surprised there weren't more.  The picture is pretty self explanatory for how I created it.   The children enjoyed this and it was great review!

S is for Snowman! Day 4

Over the weekend we got a little bit of snow...but only the roads are still white...the grass is back to the lovely greenish brown color of fall.  Hoping for snow over break.  Since it will be the "first" snow, my boys will spend a lot of time in it!  Yes, kind of a selfish thought but really, we are ALL ready for a good snow!

So a couple of snowman activities to share today.

Candle Warmer Snowmen

Inspired by Teach Preschool-who did fall leaves with their candle warmer.

She made more than she wanted on her paper so we just sent the "extras" home.  I love that she put earmuffs on some, a scarf, crazy hats..a good variety.  Shows that her creativity is starting to develop.  At the beginning of the year she would have just used one color and one design on all of them. 

K. definitely enjoyed the melting process...and how much smaller and smooth the crayon became.  We will definitely do this again...maybe as more of a free exploration...with more colors but today we focused on snowmen as an intro to this type of activity. 

The first two steps:

Vowel Snowmen

Vowel Song

Tune: BINGO

The vowels of the alphabet

I know them all by name.

a-e-i-o-u

a-e-i-o-u

a-e-i-o-u

I know them all by name.

The vowels of the alphabet

I know their short sounds too!

/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/

/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/

/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/

I know their short sounds too!

You can find the Snowman Vowel Sort Worksheet at http://www.kellyskindergarten.com/Monthly%20Centers/January/JanuaryCenters.htm.  The link next to the image of the vowel sort snowflakes.  You'll notice that our "worksheet" doesn't look like the original.  :-)  I'm not a big worksheet fan and just doing the worksheet would not be enough practice for me so I cut the snowmen out, placed at the top of a large construction paper and used our alphabet miniatures to sort (using different objects than the pictures on the worksheet) and then had her sort and glue the pictures onto the snowman as a review.

Snowman Sewing Project

I don't know if I mentioned that we started a small sewing project.  I know I posted a picture on facebook.  This is K.'s first project that represents something.  We've done sewing explorations before but this time we are creating a simple snowman.  Obviously we aren't quite done yet...she has some buttons to sew on the belly and she wants a carrot nose then we'll decide how she wants the mouth and if she wants arms or not and other details.  Not sure if we are going to leave it as a banner or make it into a small pillow.  We are using felt as the felt shapes stick to the felt background and allows for a little easier time in sewing a shape to the background.  She's done a great job and my 8 year old son wants to start one...good winter break activity! 

S is for Snowman! Day 3

Well, raining and 50 degrees out this morning on the way to school.  LOL  If the temperature dropped we would have quite a bit of snow covering the ground. :-P 

Counting Technique

I've shared this before but it's something I'm going to share again.  Preschoolers sometimes recount or forget objects when they are counting, especially if they aren't in a straight line.  Allowing them to place a small bead (or other object) on each item helps out with this, especially with numbers over ten.  If the child is counting concrete objects, encourage them to move them (to a specific area-such as the left of a piece of tape) after they have counted it.

Snowman Themed Addition

In our schools, they use linking cubes a lot with their math facts-addition, subtraction, multiplication, division.  Since this is the case, for me, it's important to introduce the use of linking cubes so they are a familiar as a "tool" as well as a toy.  So today we used them with an addition activity.  Each of the snowmen had a number on them.  I actually color coded them, but that is not necessary.  Works better for young students though.  Vocabulary we used: more/less, odd/even, add, take away/subtract, equal/how many in all, math fact.  I wrote the math facts on the dry erase board (corresponding colored markers) but you may wish to have your child write the math facts themselves if they are at that level.  I had a younger student today so chose to do it myself.  Each child turned over a snowman, stated the number on the snowman, and found that linking cube strip.  Then we put them together and counted how any in all. And I wrote the addition fact and we continued on.  This would make a nice bag center...especially for a kindergartener.  They should be able to do this activity on their own, filling in a math sheet with the math facts and answers.

Word Chunk Snowman

Used /s/ sound words and placed as many buttons as chunks in the word on the snowman.  These mat could also be used for number snowman,  or listening for beginning/middle/ending sounds as well. 

And some nice open-ended activities today:

Shaving Cream

We used this for our "snow" paint this week and thus needed (yes, I was told that) to pull it out for free exploration.  And since we were going to use the polar set with the "snow" dough...and that didn't work out due to the stickiness I pulled them out with the shaving cream.  :-P  See T. on the left there in the bottom picture.  No way was he going to even get close enough to get any of that stuff on him.  LOL  Some day...right now he just tells me he's going to watch. 

"Easel" Art

When we put our house up for sale, I moved a lot of stuff to storage and our easel was one of them.   So, used our sliding glass door as our easel.  :-)  Great conversation takes place when they are doing things side by side!  (And actually, the sliding glass door is a whole lot easier to clean than the easel.)

Music and Movement

Wanted to share that one of items we use for music and movement are holographic icicles.  You'll find those right now at the dollar stores...and everywhere else too! I bought three+ years ago during the after xmas clearance sale for .25 a piece.  :-P   I left them "as is". Cover the staple backs with tape as a safety precaution. They've lasted a long time but we don't have them out all the time either.   And so how you use your music and movement materials, the age of your children and their energy level are all going to play a part in how long they last.  The children really enjoy these "streamers". 

We had a laugh-filled morning and H. asked his dad..."Why did you come so soon?" at pick up time today.  :-P  Made my day!

S is for Snowmen! Day 2

No snow yet...actually the forecast is rain!  :-(  Oh well.  39 degrees out today when we went outdoors.   We're having fun with our snowmen days!  Here's a few more activities we did with the focus of snow and snowmen.

Snowflake Snowman

Children explored with painting a piece of paper with watercolor/salt mixture.  They also explored with cutting paper snowflakes.  :-)  They made at least one large, medium, and small snowflake to create a snowman on their watercolor background. 

Especially fun to watch them open that first snowflake they made!

Salt Snow

Children love to use eyedroppers so after exploring with salt a bit I provided some watercolors and eyedroppers.  I've done this before with liquid watercolor.  This time I used what I had on hand...and that was the watercolor "spray" bottles that make such a mess!  LOL  My hands were covered with watercolor just preparing the bowls!  Oh well!  The children enjoyed the process and yes, they have slightly stained hands...but I thank my families because they understand that the process of an activity is so much important than the outcome and whether or not their child got dirty or not.  :-)  I try to minimize stains but they do happen, especially with this particular brand of watercolors! 

Snowman Seriation/Measurement

Just simply created my own snowman seriation set in Print Shop awhile back.  Children order by size then use the linking cubes to explore with nonstandard measurement.  Also, I incorporated the concept of estimation or "guesstimation" with this activity.  In the first grade classroom I was in they were doing estimation and one thing I noticed was that this was difficult for the children to do.  Obviously they had very little experience with it.  Most had a really hard time logically thinking about what would be larger (they were working with addition/subtraction facts) and what would be smaller.  There were also some that had a difficult time "letting go" and guessing and understanding that it was okay for them to have the incorrect guess.  So I told myself that I was definitely going to be doing more "guesstimation" activities here with my kiddos.  So we did today.  Do you think you will have more or less cubes than the green snowman?  Encouraged a guess with each snowman and let them know that whatever they "guessed" was a-okay mainly by just being matter of fact and stating..."Okay...let's fnd out how close we were!" 

Snowman Alphabet

http://www.makinglearningfun.com/

Children chose a hat, stated the letter, found the picture to put it on.  The only representation I didn't care for was that they used "earth" for the letter E.  Hmmm.  So I did that one for them but they did the rest.  :-)

Oh!  I did want to share the book we read today.  Repetitive, which allows for more interaction.  Humorous in a very simple way!  Might want to check it out...was so fitting for us this week because we have some "sneezy" issues going on with this cold going around.

Sneezy the Snowman by Maureen Wright

All for now...maybe I'll take the time to look at some other blogs today and see what others are up to this week!