Books

Addie brought home three awesome books from her preschool through and early steps program 'Raising a Reader'. We've read them so many times, Addie's favorite is Where is Bear by Leslea Newman. 

This is a cute story about forest animals that are playing a game of hide and seek. The rhyming and simplicity of the story make it an easy and fun read. It also is very sweet too as it talks about working together and taking care of friends. 

The second book is: My Granny Went to Market by Stella Blackstone

Another great story for counting and rhyming. It takes readers around the globe to different countries for a little glimps of life. 

The third story is What Time Is It, Mr. Crocodile? By Judy Sierra. Another great rhyming story and an introduction to telling time. 

Self portraits

Today Addie and I made matman. Matman is from the curriculum Hand Writing Without Tears. I used this activity and song while teaching in my preschool classroom. It is amazing to see the difference in their self-portraits after teaching them this song and using the pieces to build him.

Book review

We got Dog's Colorful Day by Emma Dodd from our local library this past week, well several weeks ago, and Addie and I have enjoyed reading the story as well as giving Dog colorful spots and the wiping him clean. It is a good story for learning colors, retelling the story, and jut good fun.

Flower Life Cycle

In our theme of Growing and Changing, I decided to focus on the flowers lifecycle as well as parts of the flower. The girls each colored and sequenced pictures of a flower that grew from a seed to sprouting and then growing into a flower. 

As you can tell he is really into purple right now. :-) 

We read the book Sunflower Life Cycle  by Jeff Bouter.  It is perfect for showing pictures of each stage. 

We also told the story of Jack in the beanstalk. It was a very short story but we used little props and pretended to plant a seed. I feel like we could have gone a lot further into the story and planted our own seeds and over the next two weeks watch them grow in little windowsill plastic bag planters. Maybe that will be an activity for just me and Addie. 

Then we decided to focus on parts of the flower; we talked about the roots, stem, leaves, and the flower petals. The girls made two pictures. The first picture was placing pieces of the flower in order to create a whole picture. 

The second picture I had them paint glue and use pieces of tissue paper to decorate their flower. These look especially nice hanging in the window. 

We also learned three new songs that taught us all about flowers. 

The Seed Song 

Seeds are planted deep deep deep 

In the ground they sleep sleep sleep Yellow sunshine bright bright bright Raindrops falling light light quite 

Gentle breezes blow up blow blow 

Seeds begin to grow grow grow and grow and grow and grow and grow. Song to the tune of twinkle twinkle little star. 

Flower Garden 

The farmer plants the seeds 

The farmer plants the seeds

 Hi ho and Merry-O

The farmer plants the seeds. 

 

Sung to the tune of the farmer in the Dell the following verses are as follows. 

The rain begins to fall… 

The sun begins to shine… 

The plants begin to grow…

The buds all open up… 

The corn is growing high… 

The farmer picks the corn… 

The farmer eats the corn…

Plant a Little Seed 

Plant a little seed in the dark dark ground. 

Outcomes the warm sun yellow and round. 

Down comes the cool rain wet and slow. Up comes the little seed grow grow grow. 

Sung to the tune I'm a little teapot. 

Jack and Jill

This morning we stared off by talking about the nursery rhyme, Jack and Jill. The girls colored a picture and they each had to trace their name and write it once as well as the words Jill and Hill.

Addie was practicing her lower case e's. For circle time we recited the nursery rhyme Jack and Jill and used felt pieces to retell the story. We then moved on to focus on rhyming words. I was planning on doing a rhyming concentration game but seeing the skill level that the girls were on with rhyming changed my plans to create a matching game. 

Each girl took a turn to choose a card from the bottom pile they then had to identify the picture and find the matching picture with the one on the board. Once they found their match they put it in their own pile. When we were finished they each organized their rhyming pairs into piles. 

We put them back on the board while singing a rhyming song by Dr. Jean. 

For example:

"Whale, tail, these words rhyme 

Whale, tail, these words rhyme

Whale, tail, these words rhyme 

Now let's sing some more"

Sung to the tune: Skip to my Lou

Craft stick Puzzles

These number puzzles are so great! I got the idea/printout from MakeTakeTeach@blogspot.com. She has wonderful products, some are free but mainly I love getting ideas from her blog. It was fairly easy to do and I love that I can put any picture on the craft sticks and use whatever symbols I want on the bottom (numbers, letters, etc.) The ones shown here are print outs from the previously mentioned blog but using a variety of pictures and number if sticks could be a great way to keep kids quietly entertained. 

Addie loved figuring out the puzzle and she used the numbers to help her figure it which stick was next. Great for those counting skills. 

Luke on the other hand liked destroying the puzzle and of course eating the puzzle. 

Preschool- Vegetables

Picture search: I spy. 

 Told the story of Stone Soup with flannel storyboard pieces. Each child cut out pictures if vegetables and glued them to their own black pot.

We made play dough and the girls used it to create their own salads. I gave them plastic knives and plates and let them have at it. By then end they were creating cakes, but I guess cake is tastier than salad. 

Jack be Nimble

Today we discuss the nursery rhyme Jack Be Nimble. First we introduced the nursery rhyme by singing it several times through. Then for fun we put each girls name in place of Jack's name. As we recited the rhyme with the girls names they got to jump over the candlestick. 

Next we worked on some math by arranging four candlesticks from smallest to largest. 

Next, we went back to the nursery rhyme.   We looked for all the uppercase and lowercase J's, circled them and then counted them all up. 

Once we finished, it was time to make our own candlesticks. We used paper towel rolls cut in half; the girls decorated those with markers and stickers and then brought them over to be glued to paper plates. I use a hot glue gun to attach them to the plates. To add the "flame" we use orange tissue paper that we twisted, placed in the hole and fluffed at the top. 

I is for Igloo

Today in preschool we talked about construction, specifically the construction of an igloo. The girls constructed the letter I using circles and rectangles; they made uppercase and lowercase.

After we read through and talked about how to make an igloo. We used the book Igloos by June Pressler and Curious George Builds an Igloo. Then I had the girls use marshmallows to cover the igloo. After they finished with the marshmallows they counted how many it took to build their igloo. 

Stone soup

This week we read the story Stone Soup and each of the girls made their own pot of soup by cutting vegetables out and gluing them in the pot.

 

We sorted fruits and vegetable cards and made a salad with play dough. The girls used plastic knives and plates to create their salads, however, when I asked them what they were making they all responded with cake or cupcakes. 

They also did a picture search where they each had their own cards and used whiteboard crayons to mark the pictures they found. They spent 20 minutes doing this activity and probably would have gone longer but it was time for playtime. 

Apples

Addie's apple prints; she used an apple to make these, but the star in the middle of the apple didn't show up. Still she had fun. 

Addie also put the apple stickers on the apple tree. 

It was a great fine motor activity and kept her busy. 

We read The Riddle of the Star and for a snack made apple muffins, which dissapeared as quickly as they were made. 

Favorite Friends

This week, school was at another person's house but Addie and I still had fun working on favorites, friends and the letter F. 

Addie and I looked for things that started with the /f/ sound. We found fish, frog, fan and flashlight. 

This is Addie's book of favorites. It is personalized with Addie's favorite color, food, toys and other things like that. 

For this activity I had printed pictures from the computer then I cut them into strips made guidelines and it was her job to cut and then glue. 

We also worked on our numbers. If you type in childcareland.com  there are many great resources on that site. This is one of the books we made:

One other activity was an I Spy worksheet. Addie used small little picture cards and then located each picture on the worksheet. When she found it she colored in with a white board crayon. 

 You can print this for free at JustSomethingIMade.com. 

First week of preschool

Last we Addie and I has our first week of preschool. We are doing a joy school of sorts with three other little girls. The main focus was to get the girls used to a schedule and structures activities instead of just playtime. For our structures activities we read If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and then made cookies:

Our song we learned was who stole the cookie from the cookie jar. The focus was on name recognition. 

For our second day at preschool we read the same story and they each had a turn to put our vocabulary words on the word wall. 

We did however learn a new song, Dr Jeans katalina Madalina. The girls each made a heart of gold for our craft. 

 We used the song pieces to help us sing the song and make Katalina over and over again. 

We also developed two rituals for our preschool. One is a song and the other is a way of greeting or goodbye. The song we sing for our signal that the preschool day has begun, but I started using it for every transition. The greeting is simple and mainly for Addie's benefit but she was to greet each of her friends as the arrived with a handshake, highfive, hug or a smile. 

Sorting with beads

Last Sunday I was trying to keep Addie occupied while we enjoyed the game and this is what I came up with. Take an egg carton and anything that your child can sort. Addie's been really sorting by color lately so I went with that. I give her the beads and let her match them to the corresponding color in the egg carton. You can let your child sort by anything and with anything, just make sure whatever you give them won't be a choking hazard; small toys for some are not the best educational materials.

Book of the week

This week I only have one favorite book out of our four. It's titled, "The Bear Came Over To My House" by Rick Walton. This book is so much fun to read, even Addie can remember most of the words and that's because it is very repetitive. However, the key word changes in every turn of the page. For example; "The bear came over to my house to see what he could see. And what do you think he saw?" The only words that change are "see" and "saw". This book works on present and past tense verbs as well as rhyming words. The book is silly but also a nice bedtime story.

Post office

This past week Addie and I have been playing post office. We set up a letter making station that can be easily put away in a box; I made a post office box out of an old box and a small letter carrier bag out of some scrap fabric. The letter making station consists of paper, stickers, pretend stamps, markers, envelopes, and letter stamps.
We talked about what kinds of things need to go on a letter; name, address, stamp and where item goes on the envelope. It is also good practice for Addie to spell her name, work on her address and hear about where others live. We also talk about community helpers , people who live and work in the community and provide services.
Next we will work on creating mailboxes for her to deliver the mail to. We can work on matching the envelopes to the mailboxes by color, letter, shape or whatever concept we want, the possibilities are endless with this and it is so much fun.

Painting crafts

Our group we meet with for crafts has done three projects this month that were very successful with our kiddos and lots of fun. They were painting activities so naturally the kids had a good time. The first was a symmetrical heart. The kids painted the heart and then folded it in half and when the opened it up, it was the same on both sides. Addie made three of them. This was so easy and with almost no prep at all. All we did was cut out the hearts as the kids asked for them.

The second one we did was painting with ice cube paints. I simply used an older ice tray and put different colored paints in the sections; I added a small craft stick to each cube for a holder and then put it all in the freezer. When we were ready to paint I took it out, popped the ice paints into a tray and let the kids go to town. We painted on tin foil, but you could probably paint on paper as well.

The third craft was painting icicles with Q-tips; these are a wonderful tool for painting when you want them to paint in a smaller area, not use too much paint, and for those who are still learning to hold with a proper grip. We will cut them out when they dry and hang them up in the window.

Art time fun at the children's museum

Addie and I were playing at the children's museum and we ended up in the art area. Addie found herself paper, glue, scissors and puzzle pieces to decorate with. I think she is a little young for cutting with scissors but she wanted to practice so who was I to stop her. I showed her the correct way to hold the scissors, walk with the scissors, and cut with the scissors. Most importantly we talked about what we cut with scissors, which is paper, only paper! She had a struggled quite a bit with keeping the scissors on her fingers but didn't give up; practice makes perfect.

Curriculum Froggy Get dressed

To start off this section we read the book froggy get dressed. We talked about all of different clothing items that Froggy got dressed with; a scarf, pants, boots, etc. Addie got to post the pictures on a felt board. We also looked through our winter clothing bin and Addie got to try on all of her winter clothing just like Froggy.

Two winter stories to read along with this book are Jan Brett's The Hat and The Mitten. We made pictures of the characters and held them up when they appeared in the book.

We talked about how white mittens are hard to find in the snow, so she chose the colors and painted her mittens so she could always find them. We also painted a tree with a marble to look like winter, basically just painted it white.

Here are the before and after pictures.