the elephant in the room

Did you know that elephants walk on their toes?  That's one of the things we learned while focusing on the letter "E" this last week.  We also learned that our noses are not nearly as talented as an elephant's.  How would you like to pick up a peanut with your nose? : )

For our letter "E" project I wanted to make an elephant out of the letter shape, but my plans were altered when I found a TON of copies of an elephant printable that were sitting in my files and needing to be used.  Cutting out lots of tiny pieces for a project is not my favorite thing to do, but for the sake of stewardship I went for it...

We cut out the elephant pieces and gave them to the students to glue on to their "E".  I gave them a sample to look at, but let them choose how they wanted to glue it themselves.  

After we glued, we painted the letters with sponge painters and gray paint.  

(Note: If I do the project this way again I'll trace an "E" onto a larger piece of paper and cut out the letter shape AFTER the paint is dry - then the paper won't curl so much.)  Our "E's" turned out great and the students seemed to have a good time gluing and painting.

In our sensory table I added plastic eggs to the corn.  This combo made some great rhythm instruments!  The plastic eggs are also great for those hands - it takes a little work to get them open and closed.

We used craft sticks to make "E", practicing using white glue to put the sticks on our paper. We also added pictures of things that begin with an "E" (eggs, elephants, envelopes, etc...) to our collage. Getting the craft sticks to make a letter "E" was a little difficult for my younger students.  I'll have to get out craft sticks more often to play with to make shapes and letters.

Other activities this week included:

Pumpkin Walk:

• Place pumpkin flash cards (made with our current alphabet letters on the back) in a circle on the floor
• Turn on some music and walk around the circle
• When the music stops, pick up the pumpkin you are closest to and see what letter is hiding on the other side
• Take turns around the circle to share what letter you have

Pumpkin Seed Counting:

• Write numbers on  paperplates
• Add a container of pumpkin seeds
• Count the seeds onto the plate to match the number (if you look closely you can see that we still need more practice!)

Fall Roll and Count:

• Die (only includes #s 1-3)
• Acorns
• Leaf Math Mat
• Roll the die and count the corresponding number of acorns onto the mat

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)