Oceans, Part 1

Today we started learning about the ocean and some animals that live in it.

Book: Angel Fish
This is a fun interactive book which allows the children to lift up a flap and see what's under it! It's main focus is an angel fish, however it has other animals in it as well.

Math-Fish Sizes: I have 4 pictures of the same fish yet each are a different size. I first set it out in the right order and teach them the different sizes. Then I have the children try to set it up in the correct order.

Gross Motor-Johnny Jump Up: I have a picture of a stick-figure jumping. I can use this with a lot of activities. This time I mixed up some pictures of animals (a couple of them live in the ocean). Then I would stick Johnny Jump-Up inside the stack. They would tell me if the animal lives in the ocean or not and when we got to Johnny, they would have to jump up.

Story-Rainbow Fish:
I have Popsicle puppets of the story Rainbow Fish. I told them the story (a great one to teach sharing and friendship). With older kids, you can have them participate and be a fish.

Art Activity: Crab
I mixed red paint, karo syrup (makes it shiny), and sugar (makes it rough, like sand). The kids painted their crabs with it. You can either glue googly eyes on it once it's dried or just draw them on.

Coming Up: Tomorrow we will continue learning about the Ocean! Lot's of fun activities and sharks coming up!

Happy Valentine's Day!

I also tied in Emotions/Feelings with the topic since most of Valentine's Day is about LOVE!

Book:
Today I Feel Silly
by: Jamie Lee Curtis
Such a cute book with 'busy' illustrations, enough to keep a kid looking at it for a long time!

Social: What Makes You Feel...?
I have some Jack-O-Lanterns (I know, wrong season, but the kids don't care)! They have different emotions on them, happy, sad, angry, surprised. As I showed them the face I asked them to make a similar face and then to tell me what makes the feel that way.

Cognitive: Emotions Bingo
I have 9 different 'faces', each with a different emotion. I asked the children to find a specific emotion and place a marker on it, once the page was filled, they could eat their candy!

Book: Kisses
This is also a really good goodnight book...it being about a goodnight kiss.

Math: Heart Patterns
I had 3 different colors of hearts (red,pink, white). I first used red and white since it is easy to tell the difference. I then introduced what a pattern is, I said that each color 'takes a turn'. I laid down 4 hearts (white, red, white, red), then asked the kids what color comes next (which colors turn is it?). It took them a couple tries to understand what I was asking but eventually they got it and told me white! We finished that pattern, then I switched the colors and Pink and Red and they got it all right that time too!

Gross Motor: Heart Jump
I laid down 5 different color hearts (any color). Then told the kids to either jump, tip toe, run, etc. to a specific color heart.

Art Activity: We made Valentines. I let the kids use the glue by themselves and they glued smaller hearts onto a big white one, then painted and colored them.

Coming up: Next we we will be learning about the Ocean and the animals that live there. I love this topic so we will be doing 2 lesson on it, so watch for 2 posts!

Manners...and Families

I didn't have enough for just Manners, so I tied Families into it as well!

Book:
Please Say Please
by: Donald McCullough

This is a cute book on manners. It follows a group of animals to Penguin's house for dinner. Each animal has a bad manner and then fixes it with the good manner. I try to get the children to tell me what the good manner is before I read it to them.

Good/Bad Manner Pictures: I have some pictures of kids doing good and bad manners and we talk about them individually.

Family pictures: Talk about who is in their family. Include grandparents and aunts and uncles. Discuss ways the children can have good manners with them (doing nice things for them).

Art Activity: Draw Family

Activity of the Month

Every month I am going to post an activity you can try with your children. Each will focus on a different skill. Have fun!

Sorting Games
Focused Skill: Math
*Sort canned goods while putting away groceries
*Toys when they clean up
*Money from their piggy bank
*Buttons
*Silverware
*Dirty clothes when you do laundry
*Clean clothes when you put laundry away

Clothes and Temperature

I tied temperature into our lesson today to stretch it out a little. It worked out quite well!

We started out discussing the difference between summer (hot) and winter (cold). What do we do in the summer? In the winter? What do we wear in the summer? In the winter?

Classification Games: We separated pictures into two categories, summer and winter. These pictures had different types of clothes and activities.

Dress Me: I have two paper dolls and some winter and summer clothes. I asked 1 boy to dress his in winter clothes and the other to dress in summer clothes.

Book:
Smelly Socks by Robert Munsch
This book is about a girl who got some new socks and would NEVER take them off. They got so smelly that her friends took them off her and washed them for her. After the book we talked about another to keep our bodies healthy, washing ourselves and our clothes.

Science: I have a meat thermometer (any would work though). I heated up a cup of water and in another cup I put some ice water in it. We moved the thermometer back and forth and watched the red arrow move. We talked about temperature and what it means when the arrow moves.

Art/Fine Motor/Math Activity: We made a thermometer (I'll post a picture of it soon so you can make one, they are really cute!). I numbered circle sticker, 1-5 and had the kids place them in order on the thermometer (for older kids you can do 1-10). It is trickier because they could be starting at the bottom and ending at the top. I then had a pix of a swimsuit, sweater, and coat and we glued them on the thermometer in the correct place (swimsuit up top because it's hotter and coat on the bottom because it's colder).

Skills Worked On: Math (counting), classification, fine motor, science.

Coming Up: Next we we will be doing Manners instead of Oceans. I'll be doing Oceans sometime this month (it's one of my favorite topics and I want two days to do it).

Our Bodies

To start out preschool we always sing a welcome song, the ABC song and then count to 10. Don't worry if they get it wrong, just continue to sing and they will follow along. Soon they will be singing and counting the right way.

Math: Body Part Count-I asked the boys how many eyes they had, how many arms they had, etc: focusing on the number 2.

We then talked about ways to keep our bodies healthy, eating vegetables, exercising, brushing our teeth and hair.

Book:
Aaron's Hair by Robert Munsch
This is a cute book about a boy who doesn't like his hair so it jumps off his head and runs away! Not so much about grooming and taking care of your hair, but you can still tie it in.

Game: Body Part Bingo
Cognitive: Body Part Riddles-I gave them clues and they had to guess which body part I was referring to. For example: I smell the beautiful flowers. What am I?
Gross Motor: Body Poses-I have pictures of different body poses (balancing on one leg, stretching arms up high, leaning to one side).

Art Activity: Body Traces-I traced each child on big, white paper. I had facial body parts already cut out and they children glued them on their faces. (with older kids you can do a unit on the inside of the body and talk about their organs and they can glue pix of organs where they think they go, tuns out rally cute!)

Skills we worked on: math (#2), gross motor, cognitive (thinking), fine motor (glueing pieces on face)

Coming Up: Wednesday we will be discussing the types of clothes we wear and when.

Review!

Today we did a quick review of our basic concepts: colors, shapes, numbers, and letters.

We started out reviewing our shapes. I have foam cut-out shapes and I first ask what shape it is (anyone can answer), then lay them out on the floor for all to see. I then ask specific children, one-by-one, to give me a specific shape. (I usually ask them for a shape I know they don't know to help them remember). Most of the time they will be able to grab or point to the shape once you say the name, but are not able to TELL you the name just yet.

Book: Chicka Chicka 1 2 3
by Bill Martin Jr., Michael Sampson, Lois Ehlert
Cute book, but a little advanced for my 3 year olds (it goes up to 100).
After the book, I laid out apple clip-art with a number on them, 1-10. Using the same method as with the shapes, we reviewed our numbers.

Book: What Color is Your Underwear?
by Sam Lloyd
The kids absolutely love this book! It's a flip-up and so much fun!
I then looked around the room and asked them their colors.

Book: Alphabet Adventure
by Audrey Wood, Bruce Wood
Such a cute book, a great way to review all the letters but also focus on the lower-case i.

Art Activity: I divided a piece of paper into 6 squares, then wrote in each square a specific number with a color. You can do any color, but I recommend going in number order for your younger ones. For example, mine read 1Brown (written in brown), 2 Green (written in green), 3 Pink (written in Pink), etc.
Each child had scraps of each color and some scissors. They were able to cut pieces out from the scraps and then glue the correct number of pieces to the corresponding square.

SKILLS WORKED ON: shapes, numbers, colors, letters, fine motor (scissors) one-to-one correspondence.

Fun side note: As I was running an errand with my little boy (who does preschool with me) he was looking out the window and said, "Look Mommy, a crescent!" (He saw the moon and sure enough it was the shape of a crescent!) I love these little moments that tell me they truely are soaking in every word I say to them!!! Happy teaching!

Hiatus

So 2 weeks turned into a couple of months...a much needed break from a lot of un-needed stress. Due to future happenings I will not be completely focused with my preschool blog but will still continue to teach. I will try to post at least once a week and to those that I had promised lesson plans will do my best at getting them to you often! I am currently enrolled in a Bachelor Degree program where I am learning more about Children Development Infant through Preschool and will occasionally insert some information I have learned. I apologize for not being quite on top of things recently and will do my best to keep up now that I have more energy!