T is for Trees

We've really enjoyed our week doing so many different activities around trees and seasons!

  A new take on a circle collage!  Love it!  K. was much more into doing a collage with this tree in mind than if I just gave her paper background and the circles for a "free" collage.   Been tempted to do this project myself.  Really what I want to do is the 4 seasons with circle trees and maybe a black border around them all.  But since we still have one 4 seasons project in the works...and I can't find my circle cutter at the moment...we'll do it another time!

Here's a child who has "perimeter" and "magic c formation" engrained in her mind.  :-P  And another comment...those "tap and glue" caps for glue bottles really do not benefit a child.  They don't learn to control liquid glue as a child who uses a normal liquid glue cap.  That's all they used in my boys' K class.  I wasn't all that impressed.  :-D   Yes, less mess/waste but really...not as beneficial (and usually more frustration!).  Use them on occasion if you must but please use regular caps as much as possible.

Four Seasons of the Year

At calendar time we reviewed the four seasons and are learning a new song. To listen to this Four Seasons song:  http://freesongsforkids.com/audios/four-seasons.    Simple to remember the two verses and we are beginning to learn it in sign language.  So far we have introduced the words: four, seasons, Autumn, Winter, Spring and Fall.   

We did use this as a sorting activity also.  These trees can be found at...hmmm.  Well, the website address at the bottom of the printable says www.ayearoffhe.com.  But that address "can't be found" for some odd reason.  ???  I thought it was a recent save on my part but perhaps it wasn't.  Anyway...can't find this printable on any of the general google searches either.  So if someone knows where we can find this...please let me know and I'll continue to search for it also.  It's a very nice seasonal sorting activity.  My other thought was it was a link from TeachersPayTeachers.  But searched through there and didn't find it either.  Hmmm.

Back to the topic...we did review the months, as usual, but this time I led them to see that there are, in general, three months to every season.  The Months of the Year printable (Montessori for Everyone) has lovely realistic pictures that go right along with seasonal talk.  :-D

Word Family Trees

In our course of talking about trees we remembered that fruit grows on trees.  :-)  So, to help extend their thinking beyond just apple trees...we looked at various fruit trees in a magazine.  Then did this very simple activity using pears vs. apples.  I chose 5 trees/word family chunks because I wanted to reinforce short vowel sounds.  The pears each have a picture of a word that end in the family chunk.  She was able to check her work by seeing if the other words in the tree rhymed with the one she was placing there.  Good practice for rhyming!

Ten Frame

Apple Tree Recording Sheet:  http://www.heidisongs.com/free-downloads/

And why haven't I've used ten frames consistently before?  I don't know.  But I will from now on!  These are often used in the K/1 class here in town.  Another way to give children a visual representation of a number.  Lately, I've really encouraged K. to "not count" the dice when we are doing an activity that utilizes dice.  She's done really good with this...no longer has to take the time to count those itty bitty dots.  So today I introduced the 10 Frame to her.  And how I did it was through the "Flash" method.  Flashed a card, 3 seconds only, and encouraged her to make what she saw on her 10 frame.  Then she compared her frame with the flash card and recorded that she did that number.  She enjoyed this and, surprisingly, she was able to leave her dots on her frame and just change them to make the new frame, which I didn't expect her to be able to do right away.  I expected that she'd have to clear off her board and start new.  Awesome!  She immediately began to tell me that a number was "1 more than 5" or "almost to 10".  I didn't expect her to do that right away either!  When I flashed the 10 dots she said, "two five rows" and held up one hand and then the other "5+5=10".  Seriously!  I was impressed!  We will definitely be doing more 10 frame work.  Actually- next week I have something planned for that to go along with I is for icecream.

C is for ...

C is for cat!

www.amazon.com

This was a nice rhyming book.  Not a book I'd go out and purchase but one I'd get from the library again.  There is a mouse on every spread of pages which was fun!

KWL Chart

We used the computer today as a "research" tool.  I find that what happened here is very typical for this age group.  My students are very use to giving "dictation" so 'what I know' is really easy.  The hardest part is the 'what I want to know'.  Usually you have to help them out in this regard until they are use to thinking like this.  And then 'what I learned'...with a group of children is pretty easy again.  They like to tell about new information.  And one child's comment will spark another child's thought and so on. However, with K.  She was ready to do something else by this point.  KWL charts are a great tool to extend thinking.  Perfect for a beginning of a theme, learn about the topic and end with the KWL chart by reviewing what was learned.

Scissors: Calico Cat

I like how this cat template looks similar to the letter C.

www.familyfun.go.com for the template

Crayon-paint resist.  Part of our "research" was to find out about colors of the cat.  So the main colors of a calico cat were black, white, and orange.  She did have some white crayon markings on there but I can't see them in this picture.  We, of course, to time to trace the c.  Magic C is the term used in Handwriting Without Tears and I often state as a reminder to make a circle, magic c and close it up. 

-at Family Review

Typically I use lowercase letters for 'reading' activities like this...obviously, since when I pulled my paper letter squares down (OTC, by the way) I had very few lower case letters...so we used upper case instead.  The paper letter squares are nice but you can do the same thing with letters cut out of magazines and newspapers. 

Fine Motor: Lacing Cat

Addition/Subtraction Cat

I've been wanting to get more addition and subtraction activities in for K.  This is a very simple paper plate cat which can be used multiple times.  We talked about the number 5, how it was formed, what the word looked like, how it looks with dots (like dice).  You can't really see it in the picture but the light pink nose is just a piece of paper with the number 5 on it.  Then we used cubes to think of three addition facts and three subtraction facts that would equal five and wrote them on the whiskers.  I used sticky tack to hold the nose and the whiskers so we can do this again with other numbers.

Color Cats

If this looks familiar-I used these color cats during our summer program.

I made it more challenging for my preK student by having the color word card in lower case but the magnets in upper case.  Just a little way to reinforce that upper/lowercase matching.  I made this activity flow a little more smoothly/timely by having the letters for each color together with the color cards.  It's important not to spend too much time on one thing because they may lose interest.  So think about what specific goals you want to have and focus on those.  Works so much better to do small tasks with a specific concept multiple times over the course of time vs. trying to teach a specific concept all in one large session. 

Math: Patterns

Well, one thing I love to do is create activities.  The other side of it is that I've had K. since a baby so I like to do "new" things. Well, anyway...I keep forgetting that stuff done awhile ago she would have been too young to really remember/grasp the concept so I've been really trying to go out to my tubs and glance through the before I start planning and making something new.  Help save on cost and time.  So this was one of the activities I pulled out of one of the bazillion tubs.  LOL  Mailbox publication activity I'm sure.  Looks like their type of pictures.  You could easy "stretch" any animal like this either drawing freehand or using a coloring sheet.  I laminated the cardstock cat (and dog) and placed a piece of velcro across the body.  Then the pieces were laminated and velcroed also and voila!  :-)

Art: Table Top Easel

We had lots of fun today...hope you all did too!

One Duck Stuck

I think I'll just give my K Readiness program schedule again as it was something that was asked recently. Please keep in mind that all students are 5+ in this summer program.  My preschool routine, during the school year, is different.  You have to explore with schedules to see what's going to work with you and your child(ren).  Each year I usually have a different schedule as my students vary from one year to the next.


Our K Readiness Summer program runs 8:30A-12:00P.  We added a bit of time to add lunch in, for various reasons.
Upon arrival children do
*  calendar
*  high-frequency word booklet.  I would like that the books are read frequently at home but I'm going to guess that they are being read to their family once.  I'm not too concerned.  The main point of the booklets were to get the basic of how to read down...left to right, top to bottom, front to last page, pointing to the words, noticing the first letter and sounding out the simple words and using the picture as a clue to what the words say and an introduction to sight words, which often do not "follow the rules".  Just building the foundation for when they are truly reading the books in Kindergarten.
*  journal-related to the book we'll be reading


Then we move onto moveable letters.  This is where we are moving letter manipulatives to create CVC words that use short vowel sounds.   During this time we review 1) listening for beginning, middle, ending sounds 2) short vowel sounds 3) sounding out and saying fast a word.  Talking about real and nonsense words. 


We read our focus book and sometimes we slip in our phonological awareness activity in here.  Otherwise we do it toward the end of the morning.


By this time we are sitting for quite awhile and so we do some movement that usually incorporates another concept.


We move onto our numeral formation activity that often incorporates other math concepts.


Art is next.  We've been inspired by http://www.theartgarden.info/ this summer focusing on artists or an illustrator.


We then finish up with doing a listen and do activity, a letter formation activity (not usually theme related, I use the HWT alphabet order and the activity usually allows for repeated formation of the capital letter), and a scissors activity that typically focuses on word families.

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Very enjoyable book, repetitive text, rhyming galore, great pictures, and the animals aren't really "typical".  I love that!  You could sure use this book as a jumping board into the habitat and characteristics of the animals.  And a great word to introduce/review is onomatopoeia.  Splish, sploosh, plop and so on.

Well, I really didn't have a good picture at all for these activities but this one shows the alphabet mats in the background.  I do enjoy these mats.  Can be used for so many different activities and when they play with it on their own they are naturally reinforcing letter knowledge.

For our moveable letters today we used our alphabet mats to find the vowels, and we all made a CVC word and told each other what it was, sounding it out/saying it fast.   The older children were encouraged to make real words but the younger ones made any words and we talked about whether they were real or nonsense words.  It was so neat to see and hear the expression from one child when she made a real word "on accident".   We passed our vowel to the person on our left and reviewed the short vowel sounds each time.  The picture shows C. with rhythm sticks.  We used rhythm sticks to chunk out words (starting out with the animals) that were in the book, after we read it. 

For our gross motor activity, we all got in a line and passed a tactile ball, over our heads, to the left/right, under our legs, etc.  The first child made a pattern out of quacks and the second person copied that pattern, etc.  Then to end it we all made a tunnel with our legs and the first person in line tried to roll a small kickball to the end of the tunnel.  Easier said then done, they found out! 

We incorporated our new discovery box today for math. 

I had A. place a set of numbers from 0-9 in both sides.  We used the wooden numbers that came with the box as well as our tactile numbers.  Then the children were given each a rubber duck (oriental trading) and they reached in and chose a number, feeling it and then quacked as many times as they thought the number was.  I helped the others count by holding my fingers up as they quacked.  This was great for talking about the different shapes of the numbers as 2 and 5 got mixed up by multiple of the children because if they feel a 2 upside down it feels like there is a hat on it.  In the end, the two younger students put their numbers in order from 1-9.  The older students checked their work.  Then I gave them the challenge for later (another easier said then done activity) to reach their hand into both sides and find the same number.  I can see that our new discovery box is going to get a lot of use this fall!  You can make one of your own with a shoebox and a tube sock.  Or you can do what I've done in the past and just put things in the bottom of a tube sock.  I've also put a large plastic cup in the bottom of a tube sock for smaller items.

What?!?!  I just purchased this from http://www.discountschoolsupply.com/. I went on to get the picture and it's now in the clearance section for $4.99!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  So I went on and ordered a few more for birthday gifts.  A 5 star review and I agree.  It's made lovely and the wooden shapes, letters and numbers are a lovely addition.  I'll be sharing the different ways I use this box throughout the school year. 

Art today was an activity to go along with the book. 

A. had painted us some green paper adding texture by using various tools when the paint was wet.  This will help me lead into Wed.'s art lesson as the focus book/lesson is with regards to an Eric Carle book.  Though the lesson from http://www.theartgarden.info/ does not focus on the paper collage technique I always bring the children's attention to it.  For this particular activity I provided brown fingerpaint for the muck, a duck, and the green textured paper to use as the weeks around the marsh, like in the book.  They were welcome to use scissors or just rip their paper.

Our scissors activity went along with the -uck word family. 

The actual idea was a pond made with blue paper but since we were doing One Duck Stuck we decided to use brown paper for muck.  :-)  If your child(ren) would benefit from word family exploration, this Mailbox publication Word Family Helpers is recommended by me.  The children have enjoyed these little projects and so have I!  I plan on using C.'s for during the school year with my preschool students. 

Oh Where Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone?

www.amazon.com

Iza Trapani's books.  The illustrations are always beautiful and most of the books (if not all) are a variation of a well-known children's song.  Love these!!!

Anyway... we just leaped into some activities that were related to dogs vs. something specific out of this book.  Though one child did state during our "Dog Show" numeral formation activity that this dog might have gotten the 'most adventurous' award.  :-P  Remember that much learning can take place through conversation so do encourage it.  So maybe I'll share first the Dog Show activity.  This original activity was from www.kidssoup.com.  I changed it a bit to work for my goal.  I'd change it a bit more before doing it again.  :-) That's the way it goes sometimes!  

You can't see it well here but here's what I did.  I erased the numbers on the ribbons and also made them smaller (I'd go even smaller if I could but that would effect the amount of space for writing the number.  Hmmmm.)  The children wrote the numbers 1-10 on the ribbons and we talked about ordinal numbers (first, second, third).  Then while the children were gluing their dogs onto their paper, A. and I cut out the ribbons.  I really wanted to keep the ribbons in order to help reinforce left to right and top to bottom.  But...without a helper, not sure I'd do it that way with another group.  Works okay when there are just a limited number of children.  Then we read the order that was provided by Kidssoup and the children pasted on their ribbons to the appropriate dogs.  Though it helped them listen and look for detail...I think next time I'll let them put the ribbons on each of the dogs on their own and then tell us why each dog got 1st, 2nd, 3rd and so on.

Another activity we did today was the Number Pokey.  I used various breeds of dogs and the numbers 11-20.   We reviewed the numbers and animals, talking about each of the dogs.  Then I stated a number...if they needed a clue I'd tell them the individual numbers (ex: 15 is a one and a five) and then state the dog's breed and what it looks like as another clue.  We then sang...

Tune:  Hokey Pokey

You put the "golden retriever" in.  You take the "golden retriever" out.

You put the "golden retriever" in and and you shake it all about. 

You do the doggie pokey and you turn (and bark) yourself around.

Put the "golden retriever" back on the floor. 

Hint:  when you are leading a song like this...put yours upside down when you have used it to help you remember which ones you've done.  :-P

For art... we digressed a bit.  Strayed away from The Art Garden lessons.  I've been wanting to do that "take a line for a walk" art project.  So today it fit in well.   We took the dog for a jog.   Each child chose a crayon and sticker and I attached the sticker to the crayon with masking tape.  Ta-da!  Now it was time to take the dog for a jog.  :-P  After a period of time we stopped and then I encouraged them to paint a different color in each section. 

With these older children I've been using the large watercolor sets.  A. uses my Prang set with every color imaginable from my own art classes (requirement for elementary education) A. and L. uses a double set also but one is regular watercolor and sparkly on the bottom and the other is regular watercolor and smelly on the bottom.  They love those!  For my 4 year olds with "Ms. Amber's watercolor experience" I provide the 8 color set and with 3 year olds I often use the 4 color set.  Younger children...I tend to masking tape off colors to provide less.  I heard once ... a good rule of thumb for choices is give them as many choices as they are years old.  So a 2 year old-2 choices, a 3 year old 3 choices.  I'm not so sure about that thought...experience and expectation plays a big part in how many choices I give a child in anything.  :-) But I do feel a two year old can only handle two choices well.

Our scissors-word helper activity was A Jog for Dog.  Pretty cute!  There were other words besides -og words so reading them and deciding if they belonged on the road or not was a good activity. 

Word Family Helpers

a Mailbox publication

And for phonological awareness I did a review of uppercase-lowercase letters.  I really haven't spent a whole lot of time with this because the kiddos this summer know them pretty well.  But we don't want to fall into the "if we don't use it we lose it" rut so I'll bring it in a couple more times this summer.  A. made us a large dog for the wall.  We had dog bones in a dish for the dog but we could only give them to the dog if they were matching.  Because we had five people to do this activity and most knew their upper-lower case letters I did all the pairs.  At first we thought we'd bark if we got a match but we soon found out that with 26+26 letters, the probability of getting a match was not high.  :-)  So we started checking each others for matching letters.  We had the barking session after we were done.  Next time I'll do smaller sets of letters to match so the probability of actually getting a match is higher. 

Didn't really make a theme related H letter formation activity but the kids just thought of it as a dog house.  :-P  There were many pictures available.  They stated the picture word and told me if it started with the /h/ sound or not.  If it did they wrote H or h on the picture.  Then they glue the H pictures onto the windows in the house.  I did a larger H h practice on the back of the house at the beginning.

Listen and Do

Just wanted to make a comment about these.  We do one each session.  I pulled it out on Monday and one child said..."Oh!  The Listen and Do! I love that!" and another piped up and said "so do I!"  Well, this came as a surprise because just recently I was contemplating cutting it out of our morning.  The reason why I was doing it was because in my children's K class they did these ALL the time.  I understand the importance of listening and following directions but...anyway.  :-P  Needless to say, we'll keep it up for a bit more.  During the school year I do not do these types of activities frequently.  Our following directions and noting details are done frequently and informally in a completely different approach then this. 

Moveable Letters

I just wanted to show two pictures here.  The first one was Monday the second one was Wednesday.  Do you see a difference?

Wish I had an "end" picture of L. from Monday.  The words were all over the felt, some running into the others and so on.  Check out the right one.  Do you see what he's doing?!?!?!  He's putting a two finger space between his words.  WOW!  And the best part...it was all without me saying a word.  During journal time I encourage them to at least write some letters on their paper.  Well, L. he doesn't like to just write letters because he knows that they aren't "right".  So we go a step further and he tells me what he wants to say and then I start at the beginning of the sentence saying each word so he can clearly hear the individual sounds.  Then he writes what he hears.  Side note: I don't correct him if he's incorrect.  Whatever he thinks and writes is fine.  Well, during journal time I've encouraged him to do the spacing between his words and very seldom do I need to remind him anymore.  He has brought that over into our moveable letter activities.  Yeah!!!

Better be all for now :-P  You probably can figure out by now that I can talk/type about my days "all day long".  Have a good one!

The Perfect Nest

I've enjoyed planning around a book.  Done it in in the past but find it's easier to plan books around the themes when they are a week or two long.  But since each day of our K Readiness program is "seperate"...not connected to another...planning around a book has been pleasant.  Might be something you are interested in doing. So, today's book was The Perfect Nest by Catherine Friend.  I initially had planned to start into blends with our moveable letters because the main child was flying through the short vowel sounds but when I mixed them up it was more difficult so we'll spend a bit of time mastering the vowel sounds before moving onto the new concept of blends.  Anyway...the nest in the title was going to be our jumping board...short e and a st blend at the end.  But that's fine...we just subtracted a letter and got "net".  :-)  One of our words from our CVC-short 3 set.  So for moveable letters we sorted /a/ and /e/ sound words.  I encouraged them to sort and glue first, then write the vowel in the center then figure out the beginning and ending sounds.  Went well.

To incorporate some movement, after sitting for a bit, we played Duck, Duck, Goose.  Not my favorite game but it did the trick.  The concept we incorporated was odd and even numbers.  I used a hula hoop for the "nest" (instead of having chicken soup) and used masking tape to divide the nest in half.  I also used the  masking tape to make x's for the children to sit on.  This gives them a visual of where to sit.  Before each child started into their "duck, duck, goosing" they chose an numbered egg and counted out that many craft sticks.  Then they put them in sets of two.  If there were no "odd ones out" it was an even number and they put the egg on the even side of the nest .  If it did have an odd one out then the number is "odd" and they put it on the odd side of the nest.  If a child was tagged before they got back to the other child's place then they sat on the eggs.  :-)

I don't have a picture of the "nest" that I can actually post but I'm sure you can imagine it. This picture shows how I encouraged them to organize their sticks so all the children could see what they were doing.

Our numeral formation activity incorporated seriation also.  

Ordering a set of ten will be very difficult for some preschoolers.  It all depends on how much experience they have with this type of activity.  You may wish to use a smaller set.  I glued the birds on already as we have minimal time to do the activities and the focus was numeral formation.  They ordered the nests, glued them on and then wrote the numerals.  I included the numeral words on the wings to slip is a bit more literacy and used a different color for each bird to review color recognition.  They work with color, shape and number words right from the beginning of the year in our Kindergarten.  

Our art today focused on pastel colors. 

Again, www.theartgarden.info is my inspiration for this summer's art.  We are in the process of creating a book.  I plan to do something similar this fall.  It'll go a lot quicker since I run a 4 day program during the school year.  We started with mixing primary colors to make secondary colors.  Today I provided white paint with a dot of all the primary and secondary colors.  They used q-tips to make the lighter color.  I encouraged them not to mix the colors on their paper as they did with the previous color mixing paintings.  Since I had that "suggestion" they were also allowed as many pieces of extra paper to explore with after their first work was done.  They all know that about me now and all of them asked for extra to explore with today.  It ended up as fingerpaint. Good thing the colors were so light!  :-)

Our letter formation activity...N- "long line down, leapfrog up, diagonal and back up".

We reinforced the letter formation by first writing with our finger on the paper (a few times for some children), then writing it with pencil, then tracing it with liquid glue (squeezing a liquid glue bottle is very beneficial for hand strengthening and control) and then they placed the lowercase n noodles on their N using the same formation-line down, leapfrog up, etc.  If you are doing this type of activity with young preschoolers, remember their fine motor control isn't that developed...nor is their attention span so you may only wish to suggest it but don't push the children to make sure the noodles look like n's or that they are placed one right after the other.  Actually, I would say that for any child.  :-)  My students here usually take my suggestions but in the long run "it's their work".  You can tell, in the picture above, which child has strong fine motor skills and a good attention span which one doesn't.  That's a-okay!  Every child develops at their own speed.  I believe in helping children take steps from where they are vs. trying to get them all to one level.  Manipulating these small noodles takes coordination and the use of those muscles in the hand.  If your child needs a hand work out...this type of activity will do it!

Scissors today was a net of -et words.  Most of the scissors activities relate to a word family.  Today's work came from Word Family Helpers by Mailbox. 

Another activity we did today was regarding sight words.  I don't expect the children to have these memorized before the end of summer.  My goal is to introduce them so that when the teacher begins to speak about them at school it'll all click into place relatively easy.  My goal is for them to have a strong foundation to build upon once they start into formal schooling.  I had birds sticky tacked around the livingroom with 12 sight words.  Hmmm, funny thing.  They all corresponded with the sight words on the word search that Caleb was doing.  :-P  Anyway...they took the birds off the wall and flew back to Caleb. I helped them with the words and they stuck it on the wall near Caleb who then found the word in his word search.  A quick, active activity that incorporated various levels of development. 

The bird patterns were from www.childcareland.com.

Hope you all are having a good week so far!

April Showers Theme

It's never too early to explore with any type of concept.  It will definitely set the foundation for future learning if they are too young to grasp the concept.  One benefit for having a mixed age group is that children listen in and explore with concepts long before they are "ready" too and if they are older but still don't grasp it...then they'll get it the next go around.  The problem comes in when we, as adults, expect the children to grasp and show understanding of a concept before they are ready.  I see that often with well-meaning parents trying to teach their children academics at two years old.  Just like we develop physically from trunk to extremities...we also learn things in an order, cognitively, and it all must build upon each other.  So, if a parent is thinking their child is "smart" and wants them to write their letters of the alphabet "because their know their abc's" that parent is actually pushing the child in a way that is going to cause frustration which can cause issues with attitude toward "school" later.  More likely than not, the 2 year old can sing the abc song.  Yes, that has it's place...but that is not the same as knowing the letters and sounds out of place.  Also, at two, they are not physically ready to write.  There needs to be so much more fine motor work done prior to expecting a child to pick up a pencil and write their name.  But it just come from the lack of knowledge of child development coupled with wanting "what's best for their child". 

Okay...not sure why I felt I needed to mention that...but maybe because one of our activities today would have been seemingly "too advanced" for my students.  We actually worked with word families today.  But that's Kindergarten work!  Well, perhaps, in a traditional school setting.  But I'm not all that traditional.  :-)  My goal is to help each student, individually, take a step forward from where they are at.  Actually, I would say that both the 4 and 5 year old are probably more advanced then what they expect of the K students upon enrollment, at least in our area.  But so be it.  Why hold them back?  Go with the flow of their development.   Anyway, after a child can hear and make their own rhymes and are also showing letter recognition, I like to take it a step further and introduce word families.  They noticed right away that the words we were working with rhyme.  Yeah!  And the oldest student noticed that the word had the same letters at the end of the word.  Yeah, again!  There in lies the key difference between word families and rhyming words.  Rhyming words use the sound at the end of the word and word families have the same sound and the same letters at the end.  For example:  bear and chair rhyme but they are not in the same word family because they have the different ending letters.  All four older children did this activity today.  Definitely exploration for the 3 and 4 year old but it's stretched the brains of the two 5 year olds, especially the one that has been with me since a baby. 

You can't really see it well but some of the raindrops have -ot word family pictures, dot, spot, cot, hot, tot, pot.  I wrote the word so that the ending sound was in a different color then the remainder of the word.  For the younger ones, they'll use the activity for rhyming reinforcement but the older ones will begin to build on what it means to have the same letters at the end of the word.  Each child did a different ending and we'll keep them all posted for a bit.  Extras:  half of a circle is a semi-circle; crayon-water color resist as an art technique; counting raindrops; noting that sometimes a handle on an umbrella is the same shape as the letter J. 

Okay...my wall is more than a drying rack (previous blog).  :-P

It's a work space also.  It's beneficial for children to work standing up and it's nice for me not to have to help each child up into the booster seat at the table each time they go to a new "work".  :-)  Activities like this work well at a wall.  There were actually two more clouds off to the left. I spread it across the whole wall to keep it less cluttered.  I taped the clouds on the wall and placed the raindrops on the wall in two columns with sticky tack.  Sticky tack works very well for activities that require moving pictures.   The children looked at the picture on the raindrop and placed it under the cloud with the same beginning sound.  This activity is a printable from www.kidssoup.com

Rainbow Painting

I did encourage stripes because I wanted them to get the effect of the project.  So that put it's down a bit on the art scale.  :-)  The younger ones tend to use every color that you provide.  The older ones tend to come up with their own idea.  That's what we want to strive for.  The craft scissors were difficult for the three year old to use and even the four year old, but she got it.  I wonder if they have child size craft scissors.  Hmmm, will have to look into that! You could do the same idea but with regular scissors.

Tomorrow is Free Friday.  I don't plan specific activities for this day.  Sometimes we finish up projects or doing baking/cooking.  We'll just see how the day goes.  Perhaps it will be really nice outside :-P and we'll spend the majority of it outdoors.  Wishful thinking, I know!  Hope you all have had a great day!