L is for...

L is for Leaf!

www.amazon.com

Today we enjoyed Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert.  During Journal Time, the children used paper leaves to create their own leaf character.  One child created a leaf lion and another created a leaf bird.  (The other children are really to young for "journal" so they just explore with the materials or are taking a nap at that time).

I frequently do a hands-on number chart with the children.  Doing these types of activities allow for reinforcement with number recognition, numerical order, concepts of first and last, odd/even, skip counting (for children ready for that), counting with meaning, 1:1 correspondence and whatever other basic concepts I am able to slip in...such as colors, like we did today. 

During group time we did a Mailbox activity from their Pumpkin/Leaves (preschool) theme "tub".  The children sorted whether the object started like leaf or ball.  Then for scissors today we did something similar on an individual basis.  I cut the leaf page in strips so it wouldn't be so overwhelming and they decided which pictures on that strip started with a /l/ sound and which did not.  They cut out the leaf that did and glued it onto the tree.   You could create something like this on your own very easily but I printed this activity from www.abctwiggles.com which is a sister site to www.kidssoup.com.  I find these sites have very easy to implement activities that are worthwhile to do.  It's one site I actually pay a membership to.  I haven't found another that is worth a membership fee yet.  Let know if you know of any great sites!  We are all busy and so why recreate the wheel if it's out there already?  :-) 

  

For art, we created marble painted leaves.  I'll share a finished product picture hopefully tomorrow as it's a two-day activity since we'll need to cut the leaves out once they are dry and then also find some sticks outside this afternoon to create it into a fall leaf mobile.  Stay tuned.  :-)  They love any type of marble painting.  Today they turned it into "popcorn" painting by bouncing the marbles up and down...thank goodness for high edges on the box!   Quite enjoyable to watch their excitement.  :-) 

L is for...

L is for Lion!

www.amazon.com
How's that for a front cover?  :-)  No words.  The back cover is a the picture of the mouse. 

This book we "read" today was a picture book based on the fable "The Lion and the Mouse".  The illustrator of this book is Jerry Pinkney.  This is definitely a picture book with the only words on the pages would be the onomatopoeia (screeech, whoo, roar, etc).  They children did very well and telling their own story.  For our journal I put "First, ________.  Then, ______________." Interesting what they put down as "first".  Both children drew versions of a lion and a mouse.

I find that the "magnet pages" available make great play dough mats.  This week it's our "fine motor" activity and we are working with the play dough every day.  Last year we did play dough about once a week.  This year, I'm not sure how it's going to pan out.  I think I'll put some space between the days so that they stay interested.  Anyway, typically what I do is have a task and then allow for free exploration.  I laminated the L is for Lion Magnet sheet found at http://www.makinglearningfun.com/themepages/magnetpageprintables.html and encouraged them to create small ball of playdough to place into the circles on the lion and letter L. 

We also created a pattern lion.  We combined scissors and math today because our time seems to be "too short".  Mainly, that is happening because we can't really start until baby is asleep or else Ms. Amber is up and down and up and down dealing with the baby.  So, for the next few days I'm going to try combining some of the daily skill practice until baby gets on a consistent sleep schedule.  I also have opened up sensory play for during free play as they like to play with that longer and that allows for that.  Just playing it all by ear.  Love the flexible children I have here!  We'll get a good schedule figured out here in the next week or so I'm sure.

Younger "4" did an ABAB pattern and the older 4 did an AABAAB on her own.  :-)

Off to gather materials for tomorrow!

L is for...

L is for Lizard!   

http://www.amazon.com/

A nice book that I've mention this past summer I think, is called Lizard's Song by George Shannon.  The summer kiddos as well as the ones today can be heard humming "Zoli, zoli, zoli...".  One daily activity we do is a journal in response to the book we read. 

Eventually the children will begin writing their own responses.  At this point in the year I start out with a fill in the blank sentence related to the book and they answer it, I write their answer, and they draw the picture.  Sometimes the answers are the same, like today, but other times they are quite different.  After we accumulate a few journal pages I'll bind them together and send them home.  Each journal page will have the book and author at the bottom so I'm hoping the parents will read this book with their child.  Children are so excited when we read a book they are familiar with at home and vice versa.  And repetitive readings of a book has so much value!

We also started into our focus letter.  Last week we worked with Mat Man and discussing sticks, curves, horizontal/vertical/diagonal lines and this week we used some of our Handwriting Without Tears tools to create the letter L. 

Sticks and Curves Set with Captial Letter Cards

(I really did not get very good pictures at all this morning so I'll use their thumbnails from www.hwtears.com.

We first used the capital L card to talk about whether we use sticks, curves, or both to make the letter.  Then they created the letter L with their own sticks in front of them.

Stamp and See Screen

Now picture it with the letter L.  :-P  We used the magnet sticks to create the L, then we used the magnet to trace over L.  This tool is going to get a lot of use I think. 

Roll a Dough Letters

Again, imagine a L and a lizard in the upper right hand corner.

I love that all of their items have the smiley face at the top left hand corner.  I used to use green smiley stickers and then moved to green dots long before I know about Handwriting Without Tears.  It's just a great way to create a visual of where to start when writing.

Slate Boards

Children used a small sponge chunk to write the letter L, then traced over with a chalk piece, then erased with the sponge again...all whiles saying L says /l/.  This repetition really pays off! 

We also did some Math Explorations with lizards.  My goal today was to see what they remembered from last year.  So I set some items out and said, "See what you can do here at this desk".  

Concepts that we introduced last year that I was looking for...

* creating a more/less set using the symbol correctly. 

* oral counting and counting with meaning.

* 1:1 correspondence with counting as well as placing one lizard on one branch

* if they remembered what a plus, minus, equal sign meant

* if they could sort by one characteristic and also verbalize their sorting technique.

* patterning-though this is a little more difficult to get with a set of so many different colors.  This works best when you provide just 2 colors.  We did a little patterning last week during journal time so I saw where they were at and so I wasn't watching as closely for this skill.

* measurement language

L is for  Longer.

This past Mailbox Preschool Publication had a simple "Longer/Shorter" book that fit very well into our morning this morning since we were talking a bit measuring with the lizards.  We used this as our scissors activity. 

No time to share everything so will let this be all until tomorrow. 

Have a lovely week!

Sight Words

My oldest student is ready for a bit more of a challenge and so in the afternoon I have some activity trays set aside for her that focus on print concepts/vocabulary, sight words, and reading concepts.  No, this is not typical for most preschoolers.  I do not normally do much more than generally introduce the idea of sight words and really, most are not ready to learn to read until at least the last part of the school year or even until they get into Kindergarten.  But we'll have to remember that she has been with me since a newborn and here full time during her main preschool years.  Makes a difference!  It'll be exciting to see this part of her development. 

Today I'll just share three sight word activities we did focusing on the words one, two, three and red, yellow, blue.  I chose these words first as I often place the words under the colors and numbers in our activities so they are somewhat familiar.  As an introduction we did a little crayon/water color resist.  This is not a new activity for us...we do them quite frequently but the idea of "magic words" always adds the excitement.

I had wrote the simple sentences on white cardstock, with white crayon.  She painted over the cardstock with watercolor and then we read the sentences together.  One of my goals was to see where she was at with simple sentence comprehension.  I had placed the corresponding colored markers and stencils on a tray for her and after we read the sentence she chose the color of marker we needed and the stencil and traced the stencil that many times.  I chose to color the shapes in myself, for various reasons. 

The next day we did some simple sight word puzzles.

I just used a different cut for each rectangle to make them into puzzles.  I can always do more in the same format and use them for games and that will allow for review in the future.

Then another day we played Memory. 

Eventually we'll have to move to just the words as many sight words do not have a picture to correspond with them.  But we can create more in the same format and make a larger memory board.

The really nice thing is that I have her every day, all year, so we can go as slowly or quickly as we wish.  Next week we'll be adding "look" and "a" but also using these same sight words until she really gets them.

Please share any of your sight word activities...I sometimes get in a rut with sight word activities, especially, and so am always looking for reminders and fresh ideas! 

Discovery Box Math and Alphabet Mini Mats

We purchased a Discovery/Tactile Box this summer and I foresee it getting a lot of use.  It seems that when there is a "mystery" involved, the children really keep their interest.  For our math activity today I pulled out the tactile numbers 1-5 and our geometric shapes.  We talked about each of the numbers, stating their name, feeling them and did the same with a sphere, cone, pyramid, cube and a cylinder.  Then we put the numbers on one side of the box and I placed a certain number of a shape (ex: 3 pyramids) in the other side.  The children reached in and counted the shapes (pulling them out to check their work) and then reached into the other side to find the corresponding tactile number.  This is more challenging then one would think!  The main reason why I did this activity was to get a good sense of what the numbers felt like.  I find that they can be more successful in recognizing and writing numbers if they have a good sense of how they feel instead of just remember how they look.  Of course, we talked about how they were made (sticks/curves) and sang the numeral formation verse to go with each number.

At the dollar store this summer, I found foam alphabet/number mini mats.  Well, since we have the large foam alphabet mats I thought they'd get a kick out of these mini ones.  I can see them being used for various activities this year also.  Today our goal was to explore with the letters and place them in alphabetical order.  Well, the children are not ready to do that on their own so I put the mat abc order and let them put the letters in.  I encouraged conversation about the letters (name, sound, a word that begins with the sound, formation) as they were working.  A nice little addition to our alphabet activities.

T. (2 years 3 months) was so interesting to observe as he was exploring!  He's just starting to match basic shapes and objects so this was definitely a challenge for him.  But wow!  He was really noticing the difference between a stick and a curve and though he smushed a G into the Q...there ARE similarities between those two letters.  :-)  T. recognizes and E and an O.  However, today he had dropped one on the floor and he was telling me "z on floor."  Over and over he was telling me "z".  So I walked to him and lo and behold their was an N on the floor.  Yes...very close to the letter Z.  Big smiles from this mama! 

Sand Tray and Water Play

The two activities I think I'll share today are our sand tray and water play activities.  This week, being the first week, we are doing very familiar materials.  That comes from my time with large groups with quite a few new children each year, I guess.  Probably wouldn't need to do that with my kiddos this year but it does allow for comfort to come from familiarity as they begin their school year schedule again. 

Yesterday, our fine motor activity was pouring sand into various containers.  Today we had our sand tray and I added "lines sheet" for them to refer to as they were exploring.  We've introduced Mat Man (Handwriting Without Tears) this week and so we've been talking about lines-sticks/curves, horizontal/diagonal/vertical. 

I mentioned Mat Man...this is not the greatest picture.  We are really short on space so we're going to have to do some rearranging of something...either furniture or ourselves with mat man because he's a good size.  Today the children told me the parts that we needed to create and we sang the song that goes with it.  Then I pulled out our discovery box which I had prepared with shapes and letters and we put our hand inside, choosing one and trying to guess what it was without looking.  Then we created it with the sticks and curves of mat man (which explains why he's missing some parts in this picture.)  One thing I like about the song that goes with mat man as that it goes beyond just naming body parts.  It also gives a simple function and we can also vary it if we want.  The body verse (the blue mat-we'll be using it starting next week to build letters) ends with "to hold what is inside".  So, we've talked about about what's inside our body.  Interesting!  Our Let's Move activity comes soon after this and boy oh boy it got our heart beating pretty fast today.  So neat to see them connecting that observation with Mat Man already.  I think Mat Man is going to be a hit and a great conversation piece along with what it's typical function is. 

For sensory we are working with water this week.  Yesterday, being the first day, we had just plain water with familiar tools for exploration.  They NEVER tire of water play...and so much learning can take place also!  We have the kitchen set out this week and so I pulled a few of the utensils/plates and such and we did some dish washing.   The way I set it up was to encourage order and working from left to right.  The older one really got into the dish washing process. The younger ones were more interested in playing...which is okay also. 

Ha!  Should have taken the picture from the other direction.  Oh well, you all can picture the children sitting so that the yellow tray is at their left.  :-P

Hope your morning went well!

And we're off....

What a lovely day.  :-)  My boys went back to school and my preschool students came back with smiles and excitement.  Just a reminder to our preschool families (and school-age children), please ensure that your child gets proper rest so that they can learn and develop to their greatest potential! 

I'm not even going to try to share EVERYTHING we do in a day.  Just not possible.  So I'll try to share a couple activities each day.  Today I'd like to share our art and math activity.

Bubble Art

I colored our bubbles with liquid watercolor and chose to pour just a little into bowls so that we didn't have a bubble bottle incident.  They tend to be easily knocked over!  Also, the watercolors I used were not really all that washable so I didn't want them to stick their fingers into the bottle each time they dropped the wand inside.  We started with our paper on the sliding glass door and ended up placing our paper down on the floor.  We found that the bubbles would just 'float off' when we tried to blow them at the paper.  :-)  However, the children had more success at blowing bubbles downward toward the paper.  The interest point was popping the bubbles.  If you are able to get a bubble to land on the paper and stay for a few seconds it made a circle.  I found that they were more excited about it when they worked with someone else so I suggest that this be a group activity or if you are homeschooling your little one then ask if they'd like to work with you or vice versa.  This can be done outside for less mess worries (though it really wasn't much of a mess this morning) as well on smaller or larger sheets of paper.  Consider having your child cut out a circle first and bubble paint onto a circle to reinforce scissor practice and the shape circle.

In the Montessori circles you'll hear about "crumbing a table".  I used that idea as a jumping board to our math activity we did today. The children love to help but it isn't always a "help" so why not really teach them the right way to do it so they can be a true help...and in the process, reinforce shapes, number recognition and counting with meaning. 

As you can see, the tray allows for the material to be contained.  I created a square with masking tape in the center of the tray.  This is where they swept the foam shapes too.   The goal of that is to encourage them to create a pile and sweep it into the dustpan in one or two sweeps.  I created cards that had the numeral, numeral word and a corresponding number of shapes.  The children flipped a card over, told me what the number and shape was, if they could.  If they didn't recognize the number we counted the shapes together.  Then they put that many foam shapes onto their tray, swept them into the square and then together into the dust pan and dumped it in the "trash".  FYI:  I made sure there was enough of the shapes for each child to do it without sorting through the "trash".  Eventually I'll move the square onto the table cloth with we do projects like sand pouring or have a lot of snips from cutting.  Then we'll move the masking tape square to the floor and practice with the broom.

Hope your "week" started with a smile!