Last couple times

Last Preschool at my house we went over the letter Y. We talked about things that start with that sound. Then we played a "mother may I?" game where if the word started with a Y then they could move forward. We also played hide-and-seek with sounds. We worked on our worksheets and had fun gluing yarn everywhere., I'm sure you loved that. I will miss doing this next year.

S0 a couple weeks ago when it was that COLD Wednesday class at my house, we made ourselves into the letter V. Then we did some fun games at the computer reviewing some past sounds and worked on our worksheets. That was right before grabbing our yummy rabbit crackers to take to the park and freeze our booties off. Good times. We missed Alyssa though.

Today at Preschool!

Today we talked about action words! We took pictures for the blog then we went to the neighborhood playground and put the action words into action!
We came back and had snacks while we read 3 chapters of the book then had playtime.

Today at Preschool

We started with circle time/calendar and sang all our favorite songs. Then we started our super long craft project. I had pre-cut objects from magazines and had foam stickers ready to place in their alphabet books. It ended up consuming our whole morning and we still weren't able to quite finish it. But I was amazed at how each paper clipping pulled from the bin they immediately knew what page to glue it to. Finn did not want to use any papers for the letter M stating, "This is my mom's letter because her name is Maren and her birthday is in March!" It was so cute! The girls all agreed that the ballerinas just had to go on their B page! They are so smart and it was a great learning day!

Today at Preschool

Today we started preschool with our art project. The goal was to do straw paintings (note to self: must water down the paint first) I t did not go exactly to plan, but, was fun anyhow.
We then went in and worked on the letter Xx. We talked about its sound and then did a writting page. We then read the last Sunset of the Sabertooth and Started Midnight on the Moon. We followed this with snacks and play time.

Today at Preschool!

I apologize for slacking on the blogging! I don't know what my problem is! Here is a very brief run down of the last two preschool days at my house!

DAY 1

Question of the day-- Do you like summer or winter better? What do you like to do in the summer/winter?

Then we made a graph from our question! This was a great way to talk about most, least, higher, lower, and to also have a visual of our question! I will definitely start doing this more! This actually covers a lot of general math skills as well!

Then we reviewed phonograms o, c, a, d, and learned s. We reviewed the writing of these letters as well using the visual of a clock. All of these letters start at 2 o clock and make a circle or part of a circle! It was kind of a lot of writing but they did get through the whole thing and it was an excellent review!

There was all of the other every day things like circle time, calendar, centers, play time and snacks!

DAY 2
Easter!

Ww---Today we learned about Ww! I started saying words like water, wood, and the kids got the letter right away! What smarties! Then they each had to come up with a word that started with W. They were each able to do this without any problem. Then we made a giant w on the floor with tape. We hopped (like the Easter Bunny) on the path of the w first saying down down down up up up down down down up up up (to make the shape of the w). Then we said wa wa wa (not wa wa wa like a baby but the sound of w--how do you type that one up?)

Then we did some fun Easter crafts. We made a paper bag bunny and some Easter basket cupcakes!

Today at Preschool!

Here is the rundown for our fun day at preschool....

* We started out with our circle time songs on the magic blanket

* I showed them three different pictures, toys, tree, time and they all had to guess what the letter of the day was! They all were right on!

* This is when the wiggles began so we took a short recess to play and also have snack

* During snack (apples and pretzels) we read 2 chapters of our book.

* Then we talked about volcanoes, Israel shared that he had seen one in Hawaii. We went into the basic description of how the heat and pressure build causing an enormous eruption!

* Then for the fun we created a volcano out of clay and then we all painted it. We all took turns pouring the baking soda, dish soap, and then for the vinegar! The reaction was priceless!

Today at Preschool

(I did not show them a picture of him smoking)

Today at preschool we did three things
1. I wrote letters Aa- Pp on my board and had them write them on their boards making sure to stay in the right lines (top, middle, bottom)
2. We looked at an art book and talked about different colors and shapes in art and then looked at Jackson Pollock and saw how he did not really have any shapes in his art. Then we made our own Jackson Pollock paintings
3. We read the last chapters of the Magic Tree House book.

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!

Quick Catch Up

I cant remember exact details of the last few Preschools at my house, but, we have been working on cutting things out. We made the Christmas tree ornaments and the time before that (I think) we colored shapes according to my directions and then cut them out.

Katie's house 1/9/2009

• Took turns talking about dentists (as I was/AM still numb from my appointment)
• Upper and lower case letter recognition with the acorn board.
• Sang Alphabet backwards to help them sound out each letter.
• Play dough play time. Made Snowmen, and shaped out the first letter of our names.
• Outside playtime
• Ate pretzels and/or mini organic:) cheese sandwich crackers and/or cheese stick
• Read Chapter 4 of Night of the Ninja

Today @ Katie's house

We began by gluing together our sled ornaments. Then went over the calender and took turns raising hands to tell about the REAL meaning of Christmas. I was super proud that when I asked if Christmas was all about Santa they all said NO! That's right!
We sang Christmas songs. One of them was Once There Was a Snow man, pictured below.
Snack was those natural fruit snacks from Sprouts and popcorn. Some kids LOVED them, others weren't so down.
We played the Alphabet matching game. Where we match upper and lower case letters. Then we were suppose to say a word that starts with that letter's sound. I say SUPPOSE to because Kawika was SO tired at this point that he got up in everyone's face. I feel like I need a babysitter..J/K(well not totally, but I AM NOT asking for one)
The kids played outside for a little bit before it was time to get some reading in the Pirates book. It went by SO fast.

Before Snowman

Tall Snowman

Small Small Small Snowman

PS if you can fix the spacing on the pictures that'd be great. My computer is Wack. Also as of today the Calendar is correct. So disregard any past conversations.

11/18/08

Some things we did (in no particular order):

*Quick review of different sounds as we marched around the cultesac.

*Read Tree House book (about pirates :)

*Ate pretzels and Gogurts

*Played Duck Duck Goose (or Ketchup Ketchup Mustard :)

*Reviewed the Calendar and kids took turns explaining Thanksgiving to me.

*Went over different words that end in AT, (we haven't done T yet, but they all know that sound great.)

*Hand writing pages

*Recess in the yard

I hardly ever take pictures but today, I had a moment to capture them eating. I should have taken a picture of us marching in the front, that was pretty cute.

(I didn't say it was a GOOD picture :)

Cute kids:
London: When all the kids went outside to get away from the Dog, she decided it'd be a great time to get some alone time with him inside.

Alyssa: Is so excited about Grandma coming or something about Grandma.

Jade:Put Israel in his place when he said girls can't be super heroes (I totally had her back)

Israel:was put in his place by a girl :)

Finn: Walked in some spilt dog water and was pretty positive it was dog pee, so we had to wash his feet & slippers thoroughly before we could breath well.

Kawika: Loves to do anything to distract the class from learning, which usually works best with Alyssa.

Preschool Lesson 10/6

This is a little late! Here is what we did--

Circle Time
Question of the day-- How many brothers and sisters do you have? The kids loved answering this one and talking about their brothers and sisters.
Songs-- Shake your Sillies Out, Days of the Week
Calendar-- We talked about how we are now in a new month NOVEMBER. November is in the fall and all the leaves change color and fall to the ground. November also has Thanksgiving! Then we colored our calendar. I had them find the box with a one in it and cross it out, then a two, three, etc until we got to the sixth. They found most of the numbers pretty easily which I was excited about.

Number Order (Math/Numbers)
We started with flashcards of 1-5 (the numbers they have learned so far). I put them out on the floor in the wrong order and asked them if it was right? They all knew right away that it wasn't right and were very good at helping me get them in the right order. We talked about how numbers have to go in the right order (as well as ABC's etc). Then we split into two groups and I gave each group a set of flash cards and they had to work together to get them back in the right order. They did well working in little groups and we played this a couple of times.

Then I got out the big flashcards of 0-10. I layed them out in order and we counted each one to make sure that they were in the right order. Then I randomly picked up 6 numbers (Kade joined us so there were six students) and gave a number to each child. The kids took turns telling us what number they had and then put it in the right spot with the remaining numbers. This was a little confusing at first especially if there were two numbers in a row missing (ie 0 1 2 _ _ 5) but they caught on very quickly. They definetly recognized 0-5 with no problems, ten was good for all of them and 7 and 8 were so so, 6 and 9 got mixed up a few times. I was very impressed though because most of the time they would get the number right and they almost always knew where to put it.

Then we did a dot to dot. I first did a dot to dot on the white board so they could see how to do it. How you have to draw a line IN ORDER from one number to the next to make a big picture. Then I showed them what would happen to the picture if you went 3, 7, 4, 9, 5, 1, etc. They thought that was pretty funny! Then they got to do their own fall dot to dot. Israel and Finn got through the whole thing with out help. Alyssa, Jade, and London got to 7 or 8 and then they needed a little help. Great Job Kiddos.

Play Time/Snack Time---one of their faves although we had to do it inside since the grass is growing!

Story Time
We read 3 chapters of Mummies in the Morning. They were loving it. Jack and Annie met a Ghost Queen named Hutepi who was looking for a book. Jack and Annie wanted to help her but they were trying to read the hyroglyphics on the wall to find out where the book was.

Number Walk
We played number walk to wrap up the day. See post below of last Preschool at Briana's for game details. The kids really like this game and are doing an excellent job at recognizing their numbers.

Today at preschool!

We have Israel doing his Power Ranger kung fu!

Well today was so much fun and I hope the kiddies enjoyed themselves! Thank you Briana for all your help! We started off with circle time and I was happy to see everyone was really picking up on all the songs! We then decorated cupcakes everyone was very peticular in how they wanted theirs to look, such creative kids! We had playtime inside today because the grass outside was wet and they looked too cute to risk getting their costumes wet. We played Halloween Bingo and pin the tail on the cat and made a fun ghost. The time went way too fast and we didn't get to read our book. Sorry! But we did manage to get in a counting pumpkins worksheet at the very end! Briana, Alyssa just missed it and I should have sent one home with you, but I have hers here if you'd like it. We ended with a round of Duck Duck Goose. They really enjoyed that game probably the very most! I wish I took more pictures! Thanks for a fun day!

Preschool Lesson Plan (10/23)

Last Thursday we learned about RECYCLING and Reviewed NUMBERS 0-5.

QUESTION OF THE DAY---(to practice raising hands)
**What do you like to do with your mommy?
Alyssa-- paint
Israel-- "hmmmmmmmm" (I will come back to you)
Jade-- dress up, paint, and cook
Finn-- set up my trains
London-- paint and sing songs
Israel-- (still thinking)-- play

RECYCLING
We talked about what recycling means (reusing something, making new paper out of old paper, turning off lights, etc.) We dumped out a huge bag of garbage (don't worry it was clean recycleable materials) and decided if they were paper or plastic and put them into the appropriate box. We also talked about other things being recycleable (glass, metal, etc.). The kids caught onto this really quickly and were excited to pull out different things from the pile. This also worked well for "sorting" skills which we learned earlier this month.

We then made paper bag pumpkins and recycled some materials we already had around the house (ie brown paper bag and old newspaper for the inside!) Everyone got to pick their own shapes for eyes, nose, and mouth.

NUMBERS
We are reviewing the numbers 0-5 for a couple of weeks just to get number recognition down pat. We played number balloons. There were six ballons with dots (zero dots, one dot, etc.). When I played the music the kids got to hit the balloons everywhere, when the music stopped they had to pick up one balloon and come over to me. I then pulled out a number flashcard and we got to see who had the balloon with that many dots. The kids were very good at this game (we could have played for 30 minutes but we moved on!).

Next, we played number walk. We had the numbers 0-5 on foam sheets spread out in a circle. When the music played they walked around in a circle and when it stopped they stopped on a number. We went around the circle and each child told me what number they were standing on. At this point I was really impressed because everyones number recognition was way better than a few weeks ago. They did great.

We finished up with a number worksheet with numbers 1-5.

KNIGHTS AT DAWN
We finished our book by reading three chapters. I got the book on cd from the library and let the kids listen to it instead of me reading it. They really seemed to be interested in it this way. We acted out some things as we listened (pulling out a flashlight, swimming, looking for tree house etc.)

We also had snack and play time as usual! I did get some pictures of the kids but they will have to come later!

Last Thurs at Preschool! 10/16

Okay, so this is a little late, but better late than never right? We had a great time last week! We talked about following directions. Why we do what we do like... why do we brush our teeth before we go to bed instead of in bed? They thought that was funny, but it was a good way for them to realize that we do things in a particular order for a reason. We made cupcakes to show another example. So I stared with all the ingredients for the cupcakes and asked the kids if I put all the ingredients in and mixed it up if we would get good cupcakes. They said yes, so I put a few decorating sprinkles in the bowl, a few cupcake liners and acted like I was going to put the mix in. They all tried to stop me like I was crazy and that I wasn't doing it right. We got out the directions and then followed them in order and they loved taking turns putting in the ingredients and scooping it into the cups. It really helped them get what I had been explaining by seeing and do it hands on.
We also did a few worksheets on what order did it happen. I would hold up the pictures and have them help me put them in order. All of the kids really had to think about it and I would say that it would be a good idea to do another preschool lesson again on this in a few months. Briana, since Alyssa wasn't here I have the worksheets if you want them to practice with Alyssa, they had things like the first picture had a apple with a few bites out of it, the next picture had a apple core, and the last picture had a whole apple. The kids really could get that one fast, but others were much more challenging and I am working with Jade on this concept to help her. That was the basically the day.
It did take a while to make the cupcakes so if you ever wanted to do a food project I would start that toward the beginning of the day. It took much longer than I ever thought it would, but the kids really loved it so I would do it again :)

Katie's house

It is so crazy how fast 2 hours can fly by when you have kids that can actually sit down and learn. I just love seeing how much they absorb!

• Reviewed whole alphabet and numbers 1-10.
• Went through all Phonograms and introduced G(as in baG, and Gem), & H (Open mouth and release breath, unvoiced) Practiced raising hands on things that start with these sounds.
• Played Pick-up-Rings (not a real game, but Kawika spilled all the Halloween rings.)
• Watched Letter Factory and practice saying the first sound of each the letters.
• Made sucker Ghost and got other Halloween goodies.
• Ate Halloween rice crispy treats(I snuck in some Total when I made them so they aren't totally bad)
• No book today...Time went by too quickly. I guess no more movies :)

*Israel participated in everything and just wanted to eat suckers the whole time.
*Finn was very excited at how fast he did his worksheet, but didn't want to eat anything.
*Jade loved having orange everything to match her. She wasn't into the worksheet.
*London enjoyed getting a head start on her worksheet so she could play in the fire truck. but also didn't want to eat.
*Alyssa did very well working on everything. I forget that she's the youngest and still has another whole year before Kindergarten.

The kids are all doing so well with Phonograms. They are going to be very prepared for next year! I had Jada in public preschool the year before Kindergarten and I just have to say that what we are doing is...I don't want to say better, but on a curriculum level, yes better.

Today at Preschool 10/14

Today at preschool we reviewed colors (primary, secondary, warm, & cool). We then talked about lines and how every picture uses lines. We looked at several pictures of art and picked out all the different kind of lines. We then traced a page of six different kinds of lines, this went well. Then we tried a dot-to-dot made up of different lines (this went OK). We did Gg and Hh worksheets also.
Before we read from the book we looked at Finns castle and nights and talked about the drawbridge, portcullis (gate), courtyard/ keep, crenelation (the up and down notches at the top of the wall. They each chose their own knight to hold and lift every time they heard the word knight during the story. We read two chapters.
We had popcorn for a snack except London who says popcorn makes her choke so she had animal crackers. Then we played. They all behaved really well again!

Preschool (10/9)

WOW!! The kids are doing so well! I am really impressed with how well the kids are doing andactually learning and retaining--way to go mommies!

Here is the rundown for preschool last Thursday!

Circle Time 9:45-9:55am (10 min)
Question of the Day—What do you like to do with your daddy? (practice raising hands)
Calendar—This month is October. Today is Thursday.
Song—Seven Days in a Week (Thank you Nicolle for the great CD)

Numbers~5 9:55-10:20 am (25 min)
Flashcards— Count 1-10, lay out cards, children count objects and check the number on back(got these awesome flashcards at Walmart for 97 cents FYI)

Whiteboard—Practice writing the number 5 and drawing 5 objects
Tactile Numbers—color and decorate the number 5 with 5 stickers

Reading Time 10:20-10:30am (10 min)
The Knight Before Dawn (we read chapter 3)

Finn dressed up like a Knight to get the kids excited and we drew a picture on the whiteboard to explain all of the new words we learned like moat, drawbridge, hawk house

Snack Time 10:30-10:35 am (5 min)

Play Time 10:35-10:55 am (20 min)

Sorting 10:55-11:20 (25 min)
Foam Shapes—sort foam shapes by color, and then by shape (the kids did really well with this--they were a little confused about the shapes since there are blue hearts, red hearts, etc. but they caught on really quick!)
Activity—sorting and gluing fruit loops onto their own paper