The beginning of the end... R,S,T,U

The end of the school year is such a whirlwind of activity.  I had a crazy spring and am just now feeling recuperated from it all.  Blogging definitely fell off the "to do" list for awhile - I'm amazed by all those who can keep up a daily or even weekly blog - AMAZING!

Here are more alphabet activities that we did in our class...

Rainbow, Rectangle "R"

We cut out rainbow colored rectangles to glue on the letter "R" .  We had discussed rainbow color order during the spring and some of my students were keen on gluing their colors in the correct order.  Others were more creative with the process - one student make a rainbow road! 

"S"  is for Snakes

I wasn't able to get a picture of our large "S".  We glued on wiggle eyes and a forked tongue to create a snake.

We also created snakes from pipe cleaners and straws.  I copied pictures of snake heads onto card stock,  cut them out and hole punched them.  Then I threaded a pipe cleaner through to create the snake's body.  The snakes and straws (cut into 1" pieces) at a center area.  The kiddos threaded the straws onto the pipe cleaner to create their own snake.  Great fine motor work and great practice for making patterns!

 Tiger "T"

Super simple letter "T" art - use an orange "T" shape, add black stripes (made from construction paper or electrical tape)!  

"U"  is for Umbrella

The kiddos had fun with this project.  To make umbrellas to glue onto our "U", we folded decorated cupcake liners (I found princess and cars themed liners :) in half and added a toothpick for the handle.  

 

 

 

emm en emm oh peeee

Learning content with music works like magic - if it's learned the right way.  The "ABC" song is one of the first ways many kiddos become familiar with the alphabet.  We sing it almost daily at preschool and it's one of the most requested songs I receive from the students.  

My one complaint about our traditional ABC song (same tune as "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star") is that the middle of the alphabet (L,M,N,O,P) is sung rhythmically faster than all the other letters, usually making for some comical jumbled versions of the song (as sung by a 3 year old, hence the title of this post).  When I sing it with the students I usually slow down at letter L and sing very slowly for those poor letters that get jumbled together.   I also try to find other ways to sing the alphabet throughout the year,  and doing it backwards with your pre-kindergarten age students is quiet a brain workout!

All that to introduce our exploration of L, M, N, O & P (which was done slowly and deliberately - please forgive me for this epic post!).

Letter L 

Activities can be found in my post "lion around".

Letter M

"5 Little Monkeys" Printable found here

I printed and laminated the monkeys and numbers then added magnets to the back.  I put them on our magnetic easel and let the students play.  The kiddos are all familiar with the finger play so using the pictures to say the rhyme was a smooth transition.  We also pulled the monkeys into transition activities and class discussions about the letter "M".

Marble Painted "M"

 Painting with marbles is lots of fun!  

#1 Place the construction paper (ours had the letter "M" traced on it) into a plastic container.  

#2 Choose several colors of paint to squeeze onto the paper

#3 Add some marbles

#4 Put the lid on the container 

#5 Shake, rattle, and roll!

#7 Remove paper from container & let dry.

#8 Cut out your "M" : )

M & M Painting (as seen at Teach Preschool)

Sort, add water, soak then paint!  Note: The picture of the toothpaste, toothbrush, and soap was a different activity for the day that was accidentally pulled into our M&M painting by my assistant.  I'm still cracking up that we painted our "health" page with candy!

Letter N

N is for Name:  I already had the circles with letters from our names written on them from a previous activity.  We took those letters and glued them on a large "N", practicing spelling our names. 

Nuts and Bolts:  

These are a great counter/sorter/fine motor toy that I found from a catalog a few years back.  The nuts and bolts are different sizes, shapes and colors.  At a center area I placed colored paper on trays for the kiddos to sort our nuts and bolts toys onto.

For a group game we sorted all the nuts then counted and compared which color had the most and least.

Letter O

O Art:  I had lots of random left-overs in my "O" file so I decided to put all the pieces out on our art table with scissors and glue.  The kiddos had a great time gluing and cutting while talking about "O". 

We also used some left-over Cheerios to decorate our "O's" one day.

 

Letter P

Penguin Pajama Party!  

This group of kiddos is totally into dramatic play.  My assistant and I created a space in our classroom to celebrate penguin style.  

At the party:

• Penguins
• Pajamas (the kiddos worked really hard to pull them on over their clothes - we strongly encouraged them putting on the pj's by themselves)
• Party plates, napkins, cups, etc.
• Pompoms
• Pears, Pineapple, and all sorts of other "food" from our kitchen : )

Purple Puffy Paint P's

We painted large "P" with purple puffy paint (a mixture of shaving cream, glue, and paint).  Fun!

Hope you enjoyed our alphabet fun - and hope L, M, N, O, & P got sorted out of their usual jumble ; )

Miss Eileen

more February fun

I realize February is a thing of the past (where does the time go???), but here are some other activities we did while learning about friends, Valentines, and more.

Sensory Fun, Pom-Poms, Tongs, and Muffin Tins:

This is a great activity for all sorts of learning.  At this center I observed:

Dramatic Play:  Lots of pretend baking going on!  The students used the tray under our sensory table for the "oven".

Math: Sorting by color, counting, and one-to-one correspondence

Fine-Motor practice: using the tongs to pick up the pom-poms and place them in the muffin tins

Social Skills: I had three muffin tins (play is limited to 3 students at a time) but one was different (the stars/hearts mold) which led to the students negotiating sharing options.

Math, Mailboxes, Hearts, and Numbers:

(inspired by a post at Teach Preschool): 

On this table I placed mailboxes, small plastic hearts, and magnetic numbers.  The mailboxes and plastic hearts were Target finds (the hearts are table decor, to put in flower arrangements, etc.) 

I would set the center up in the morning with the numbers on the mail boxes and my older students would start by putting the correct amount of hearts in the boxes. 

 By the time my younger students got to this center there was lots of dumping, pouring, sorting, taking lids on and off, etc. 

Later in the week I added construction paper hearts to sort the small plastic hearts onto. 

Magnetic Valentine Bears 

(A Target or $ Store find... I don't remember ):  I've been using my magnetic easel as a one student activity place.  I put it in a place in the room away from the other centers so students can work solo.  It's nice to have a place in the classroom for students to disengage from group play when needed.  It's also a good place to redirect a kiddo who might be having trouble getting along with friends.

Fine Motor, Weaving/Tying:  

Um, ya - I was inspired (again) by Teach Preschool, but this was a center did not work as planned.  Instead of weaving the strings through the dish drainer mat (found at the $ store) my students tied up our table!  This table actually belongs to our Children's Ministry Dpt. at our church - it's a hippo (I think) - and has "eyes"  and "nostrils" on the top with holes through the middle.  It's also slatted so the strings pulled through the spaces in the boards quite nicely.   There was lots of looping and tying fun so I let it happen until it got out of control.  We will definitely have to try weaving again (on a different kind of table - ha!)

Group Game, Heart Alphabet Match:

I'm always on the hunt for ways to play games with preschoolers in a group setting.  This game I came up with on the fly.   

Here's how to play:

*Grab a set of matching cards (I used these alphabet cards I made from dye cut hearts and stickers).

*Students sit, or lay on tummies,  in a circle (I just figured out that laying on tummies is great for keeping bodies from lunging forward into the circle to point or grab).

*The teacher lays  the cards one at a time, face up, in the middle of the circle.  

*The students watch carefully for a match to come up.  If a match is spotted, they say the name of the letter, the first one to say the name gets the match.

*Students collect matches until all the cards are gone!

Note: I helped out students who were not as fast at recognition as others, if someone had a lot of matches we shared our answers and matches with someone who didn't have many.  The goal of games in preschool should not be to win, but to encourage participation and success for the whole group.

January language activities

I have so many stages of language development in my classroom that I'm trying to offer a broad spectrum of activities to grow skills.  I'm always on the hunt for fun review games that focus on letters or concepts that we've been discussing.    

Here are a few language activities we've done this month:

Review: Find the Inchworms (plus "Jellybeans" AND the Alphabet!)

I brought out our magnets and inchworms again and this time added our "jellybeans" (see this post) and magnetic alphabet pieces.  We had fun catching the objects with the magnetic wands and rummaging through the grass to find jellybeans: ) 

When it was time to clean up this center at the end of the week, I led my students in a group activity to sort the items.  We went around the circle catching inchworms, jelly beans, and alphabet letters and sorted them into the correct bowl.  After the items were sorted it was a cinch to put everything away in it's proper place.  (I love being sneaky with clean up!)

Alphabet Mittens:  

I believe the mitten pattern that I used is from a Mailbox book that I have.  (I made them a number of years ago).  To prepare, I hung the mittens in alphabet order from a string and clothespins.  For a group game I took off random mittens and passed them out to the students.  We sang through the alphabet and figured out which letters were missing.  The game was lots of fun when Miss Eileen got a little silly if a letter is not there ; )  I think we played this game at least four or five times -over the course of two weeks - and sang through the alphabet at least 20 times!

Shaving Cream Writing:  

For my younger students I tried using shaving cream to practice our letters.  Since this was an introduction to playing in shaving cream, it ended up being more about the experience than the writing.  Now that we've experienced it, I'm hoping next time I try this we can be a little more intentional about writing current letter we're focusing on or our names, etc.

movin' along...

Here are some transportation activities we did last week:

{Language} Alphabet Roads: 

These printables are from makinglearningfun.com - we cut the letters out, glued them to construction paper, and laminated them.   I used to have a set of mini cars that would work better with these, but our matchbox cars are working for now. 

{Sensory}  Beans, Blocks and Cars: 

Rocks or sand would work with this activity too, and I when I do it again I'll put it in a larger, flat container - the sensory table is too curved and deep to run the cars around much.  

My students ARE having a great time with the trays connected to the side of the table.  They fill the tray with beans and run the cars along the length of the tray through the beans. (AND we're practicing using hand brooms to clean up our mess off the floor!)

{Math} Car Count (printable from prekinders.com, titled "Road Count"):

I wanted to do this activity outside in our parking lot, but it was FREEZING the day we did it, so I improvised with our classroom car collection.  I gave everyone a worksheet and blue and red crayon.  I lined up the cars on the table, one by one; if it was blue we colored a circle blue, if it was red, we colored the circle red.  At the end we counted up our circles to see which color had the most.  

This activity challenged my 4's a little and it was a great way to assess where my students were with their attention spans, listening to and following directions, and counting skills.

{Building} Train Table: 

Always fun to play with trains!  We kept our snow out and had some other helpful vehicles clearing the tracks for the trains to pass through.

{Art} Wheel Art: I have a HUGE amount of leftover shapes, pictures, etc that I am trying to use whenever I can.  I was happy to put them to work with this activity.  I placed the shapes and pictures on a table with glue, scissors, and markers, and let the kiddos make their own transportation artwork.

{Art, Sensory} Car Paint & Car Wash:  Painting with cars is so much fun!  We did a group painting, I covered our tables with paper, put the paint on trays, gave everyone a car and let them go at it.  We had a lot of finger painting too and kiddos with paint up to their elbows!

To clean up, we had a car wash the next day.  We used large, flat containers with a little soap and water at the bottom, gave the students painting sponges and let run their cars and trays through the wash!

Keep following along for more transportation fun!

Miss Eileen

alligator soup

One of the core words in my life is "balance."  I'm extremely fond of living in the middle between the extremes, using a bit of each perspective to create my own recipe for life.  Our preschool program has developed out of this philosophy.  

 

When I began working at our school I was introduced to ABeka's preschool curriculum.  It is a curriculum for Christian schools (written way back when) that our school has used for many years.  In my opinion, the program in its purest form is very structured and way too intense for preschool and  it definitely does not fit the current trend for play-based learning.  As much as I dislike the intensity, I've chosen to keep the curriculum.  This gives our students some continuity when they move on in our school (our Kindergarten and other grades use parts of the curriculum also).    Over the years, I've let the curriculum become the base of our program and  I've mixed in other ingredients to go with it - balancing between a "structured school" and "play" environment.   

Some things to know about how I structure my class activities:

• I use Abeka's curriculum for parts of my activites
• My class is a mix of 3's & 4's - I try to offer activities for various developmental levels as well as activities that can be adjusted based on skill level
• We are a "letter of the week" program - not that the rest of the alphabet gets left out of the mix - but it gives us a focus for each week.  Our 3's focus on 2 letters for 2 weeks and and then have a review week
• We have monthly themes - which gives us even more to do : )  Sometimes it is a bit much so I choose to focus on what my students are interested in or what I'm excited about teaching

That being said, here are some of the activities we did for week 3 (focus letter "Aa"):

Sensory Table, Alphabet Soup: foam alphabet letters, beans, spoons, and bowls (inspired by playinghouseinmaryland.blogspot.com)

Alligator Eggs: large plastic eggs (always a winner!), laminated baby alligator cut-outs, other pics that begin with "A", metallic gift filler (from dollar store)

 Alligator Count: alligator magnets (clip art copied on card-stock, cut out, attach magnet on back), number magnets

 Alligator "A's" (inspired by notimeforflashcards.com) they turned out so cute! (For projects that require glue I put white glue in a paint container, add a little water, and have students apply with a paint brush)