Today at Preschool

WOW---what a busy day today was! I had a lot planned and we really got through most of it but it was really busy. Luckily it was a good kind of busy because the kids didn't really even want to play much---play time only lasted 10 minutes! Here is the general run down:

Monkey Game
We played the monkey game right at the beginning until everyone arrived. Grab rubber bananas with large tweezers and place into monkeys mouth. This is suppose to help with fine motor skils (ie writing later). The kids LOVED this and asked to play several other times during the day.

Question of the Day
"What is your favorite book?" The kids loved standing up and sharing their favorite book with everyone.

Sight Words
I decided to start exposing the kids to a few simple sight words that aren't necessarily "sounded out". Today we did the words "I see a....."

Game-- there were shapes hung up all around the room. Each child took a turn, stood up, and said "I see a (circle..etc)" and then went and pulled down the shape. They brought it back to the group and everyone repeated "I see a circle".

When each child had a shape I put the words "I see a" up on the wall. Each child took a turn and brought up their shape and put it at the end of the sentence. Then they got to use the magic pointer (ie a wooden food skewer) to point at each words while everyone read them together. The kids had a great time and really picked it up fast.

Then I read the little book to them. We looked at the cover of the book (which is actually a prerequesite for Kindergarten to know where the front cover of the book is) and talked about it. Then we opened it up and used our fingers as the magic pointers to point to each word and read them. Obviously they can't read the shapes but I told them that they can always look at the picture to help them figure it out!

Then the kids colored their books. I tried to emphasize staying in the lines! They did pretty well but I think that something that could be emphasized even more!

Play Time, Snack Time, Story Time (we only read the books that the kids brought, no Ninas today)

White Boards
We got out the white boards. Each child should have a white board and little cloth eraser in their bags now. I wrote their name at the top and had them practice trying to use correct proportion and staying in the lines. London did very well with the lines and using capital and lower case where needed. The rest really needed help but started to get the hang of it.

What a fun day! After preschool my mind was racing with ideas and suggestions so here they are:

BAGS
PLEASE have the following in your child's bag:
sippy cup
pencil box with scissors, crayons, pencil, white board, white erase marker (I highly suggest black since there was much commotion about the other colors) and glue stick
white board
cloth eraser (I provided one for each child today)


Suggestions:
* have your child read their book to you
* write your child's name on their whiteboard with permanent ink
* show child how to write their name with the correct proportions and practice writing this on their whiteboard (they are really getting good at tracing but the free hand tends to be everywhere---which is totally to be expected at their age but now we can start showing them the correct way!)
* for future preschool lessons--make a connection between tracing and free hand, maybe have them trace on paper and then try it on the white board (for example only one child could write the letter A on their whiteboard without having to trace it and of course it was Alyssa because she has the A in her name but that was when I realized that we need to make more of a connection between recognizing, tracing, and writing!)

** If you really want to be over zealous try this (I did it with Alyssa just because I was curious and I am new at teaching the "letters" part of preschool--

1) Get out some paper and pencils.
2)You (adult) writes all of the capital letters in random order on one page, lower case on another page.
3) Point to each letter at random and have child say the letter (SKILL--recognizing letters) Do this for capital and lower case (I even made a note of which ones Alyssa got confused on!)
4) Give child a blank sheet and have them write letters. I just went in order and told her she could write either capital or lower case. (I made a note of which ones she needed help on!) (SKILL-- writing without tracing). I didn't worry about proportions just general shape.
5) Point to each letter and have child say the sound of the letter. (SKILL-- phonics) (again I made notes)

I wasn't sure where Alyssa stood on all of these skills but now I have a better idea and I know which letters she could use some extra practice on! If any of you want to do this I highly recommend it! I don't mean to use this as a comparison of the kids because they are all doing so well---but if any of you do this, let me know how it goes that way I will have a better idea what to spend more time on in future lessons! For example---Alyssa recognizes all of her capital letters but got confused on a few of the lower case letters. Also, there were 9 letters that she couldn't write on her own. Now I know which letters to have her practice! HOWEVER---if you feel like completely ignoring this idea that is fine too! The kids are doing so well and I would love any ideas suggestions on what to work on for the writing/reading part of preschool! KATIE---let's have a little pow wow about how we want to split up letters and writing etc.

Today at Preschool--Briana's

Okay--I have been horrible about blogging my preschool days! Before Christmas we spent a day on PATTERNS! The kids did really well and caught on quickly! We did two and three color patterns. I showed them a pattern on a strip of paper with the last spot empty and then we had to fill it in! After that we took wood dowels and foam square beads and made each pattern on our stick. The kids really liked this part and were able to recreate the patterns really well!

On Thursday (January 8) we did lots of letter stuff! We first played the balloon game! We had 6 balloons and each balloon had a letter on it! When the music plays they hit the balloons all around and when it stops they have to bring a balloon to me. At first I just said "I am looking for the letter Ll" and so on. Then it got harder..."I am looking for the letter that says sssssssss." The kids were doing awesome so we made it even harder..."I am looking for the letter that starts the word lollipop". The kids did extremely well with this too!

Then it was on to AT words. We used the white board and magnetic letters to make lots of different AT words and tried to sound them out! Sat, cat, bat, fat, hat, mat, pat, rat. The kids caught quickly-as they usually do and were able to get the words pretty quickly just by changing the first letter and then making it's sound! I plan on doing this with lots of other words, ED, ET, and so on!

We had snacks, play time, and read Night of the Ninjas (we started over because I had no idea where we were or what the story was about and the kids really couldn't agree!)

At the end we had a few minutes, so we did "STATIONS" as does every kindergarten in the world out there! We made two stations "patterns" and "sorting" both previous activitites from my house. We split into groups and each group spent 5 minutes or so at each station. It was a great review activity and kind of fun to wrap up the day!

And AGAIN---I am very impressed with the kids and their learning! How exciting!

Great Link for our Books

I found this great link for the book we are reading "Dinosaurs before Dark". It has vocabulary, questions, and activities for each chapter. It also has this for many other Magic Tree House books which we will use later. We certainly won't use these as actual worksheets since our kids can't read but they have some good questions we could ask the kids about the last chapter as a review and about the new chapter that we read to them!! Just an idea--and I am sure there are many other great ideas out there! (I tried to put this link on the right side of the page under the book image but I think that Maren is the only one that can do that--so go ahead and add it if you want otherwise just click on the link below!)

http://www.mce.k12tn.net/units/units_with_books.htm