Alligator, Bear, Bumble Bee

I'm thankful that every school year is a little different.  Different kids make for different dynamics in the classroom which leads to different learning activities.  It takes a season of trial and error to figure out what activities will engage a group of students.  I've been "learning" my class; their interests, strengths, weaknesses, likes and dislikes.    When I'm planning I try to balance between activities that I know will engage the kiddos and activities that are a little more experimental - so we can all expand our boundaries a little.  

Here are some activities we did while reviewing the letters "A" and "B" that were new to my curriculum this year:

ALLIGATOR TOSS:

To create the container I enlarged a picture of an alligator on our photocopier and then traced it onto a piece of green card-stock (if you want the alligator to last longer than 2 weeks I'd recommend using heavier cardboard or laminating)  I then taped the alligator to a plastic container to create a space to catch objects.  We tossed plastic apples (from our housekeeping toys) into the alligator's mouth - nom, nom, nom! (inspiration was from here)

BEAR STICKY TABLE

I love the idea of using contact paper sticky side up (inspiration @ Teach Preschool - search "sticky table").  This was our first experience with the sticky table this year and it was fairly successful.  I really liked that the contact paper gave traction with our ity-bity bear counters - lots of help for small, uncoordinated fingers.  

BEAR SORT AND COUNT

For a group activity I used some bear sorting cards that I made on Publisher.  To begin I placed one bear of a different color in each pocket on the chart.  I passed out a small number of bears to each student and they had to bring the bears to the pocket chart and match them to the correct row.  After we had matched all the bears we looked to see which color of bears "won" - practicing comparing sets!

 

BUMBLE BEE

The book "Bee-Wigged" is hilarious on a variety of levels. Jerry Bee is an enormous bee that has no friends because everyone is scared of enormous bees.  Jerry's life is transformed with the discovery of a wig...  We read the book together and made our own bumble bees that looked like "Jerry Bee" (minus the wig). 

 

To make these bees I used:

• Yellow construction paper, cut into a large oval (body)
• Black construction paper, cut into strips and accordion folded (legs)
• White construction paper, cut into small circles (eyes)
• Markers (to draw a face)
• Black paint (to add stripes)

My students chose to complete this project in a variety of different ways - they turned out really cute.

 

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.

got your goat?

Anyone out there have any good goat activities?  Our animal friend for letter "Gg" is "Gomer Goat".  I had plenty to do this week so I wasn't able to dig very deeply into more activities, but I'd like to find more in the future.  I think I might need to invest in a copy of "The Three Billy Goat's Gruff" for next year.  

Letter "G" activities...

"G" Goats (I think these are pretty hilarious) I found the idea here.

• Cut outs of the letter "G", horns, ears, and beard
• Large wiggle eye (you might want to do two - I can never get the preschoolers to understand the concept of putting one eye on an animal art project - ha!)
• Glue

I give the students the pieces, show them an example, and let them glue as they choose. 

For an alphabet review game we played  "Throw it in the Garbage" (great mix of fine and gross motor skills!).

• Garbage Can
• Paper scraps with alphabet letters written on them

To play:

• Pass out the letters written on the paper to the students.  
• Take turns naming the letter
• Crumple and toss into the garbage can.  

When we all had a turn, I dumped the can and students chose a piece of paper again.  

• Uncrumple the paper to find out what letter is hiding inside!
• Crumple it back up again.
• Toss into the garbage.  

(This was in my lesson plans from last year, but I know I just saw it on a blog recently too - can't remember where!)

Other activities this week:

Craft sticks (letter recognition, math, fine motor skills):  I put craft sticks and flash cards out at a center area for students to use to make shapes and letters.  I saw a lot of really neat designs/letters from my older students and my youngest students thought it was great fun to grab them all in their hands and drop them (they do make a cool sound... as well as a mess).

Table Setting (one-to-one correspondence, social studies):  During the month of November I add place mats to our housekeeping area.  To make the place mats, I traced the toy dishes (as they would go on a set table) on a large piece of card stock.  Then I decorated and laminated the mat.  Looks like a healthy meal!.  

goin' fishin'

There are so many things to do in the classroom at this time of the year.  I'm afraid  I try to do too much so the kiddos can experience it all - at least I keep them busy!

For letter "F" I pulled out our magnetic fishing set.  I used the toys for a group game as well as a center.  I purposefully use one fishing pole to encourage sharing and taking turns - the rule is catch 1, pass the pole to a friend.  (Multiple poles get tangled or turned into weapons anyway, so it solves that problem too : )

Love that this student sorted out all the pink fish : )

Our "F" project ended up taking a back seat because we had so many other things going on this week.  A few students were able to put one together though.  I went super simple, using left-overs from past projects.  We glued fish cut-outs on the large "F" and I had some "F Fish" words that we glued on also.

Other skills we are working on:

Associations (language skills): I put out a game that has pictures of objects that go together.  The pictures are puzzle cut so only the correct pictures fit together.

Block Stacking (number recognition, one-to-one correspondence, and fine motor skills):  We played it as a group game and I tried to use it as a center, but it wasn't very popular.

• Turkey number flash cards
• Alphabet blocks

To play: Turn the flash cards upside down, flip over to see how many blocks to stack

Opening and Closing Containers (fine-motor skills):

• Various containers, some with lids, some without (I even included lids that did not fit on containers)
• Small Animals

The most popular activity I witnessed was finding all the bugs and putting them into the screw-top containers.

Easel Painting (fine motor, color discrimination, art!):  I introduced easel painting to the kiddos.  Because it was the first time for many, I only used 2 colors (red & yellow) so they could get used to the process and so we would not have an overwhelming mess!  Most of the paintings were one orange blob, but a few of my students (especially the ones who had multiple turns) actually painted pictures.  My goal is to have the easels out more frequently so the kiddos can become more creative with their painting.