Monday, May 25, 2015

My Mom! (I, J, & K, 28, White, Octagon)

The theme for the first week of May was "My Mom!". Since we finished our Letter of the Week study, we are now reviewing our letters! This week we reviewed letters I, J & K and continued our number study with the number 28! We have gone through our shapes and colors once, so from now until graduation, we will talk about two each week and do some small review activities. We worked this week on octagons and white.

This week we readAre You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman
                                        Llama Llama Red Pajama by Anna Dewdney
                                        Llama Llama Misses Mama by Anna Dewdney
                                        I Love My Mommy by David Bedford
                                        I Love My Mom by Anna Walker
                                        The Night Before Mother's Day by Natasha Wing

Our question of the week was "Why do you love Mom?"

To review the color white we talked about things in real life, at morning meeting, that are white. The kids also colored pictures of white things. I found these pages on pinterest, and I love the concept! My general rule of thumb is that if the children can explain to me their reasoning for coloring an object, then I am all for it!

To review the octagon shape the children practiced recognizing the shape and colored octagons. I created this little picture full of the shape. They needed to color the octagon signs red and then the rest of the picture!

For the number of the week:28 we started off by counting to and backward from twenty-eight. They love doing this every day and when we get to the end of counting backward, they all scream blast off!! ;) The kids also practiced writing the number and word for twenty-eight. 

When I started in my class, I found a page like this from education.com, so I made my own for the number 28. The children have to practice writing the number and then color in that number of squares. It's a great way to introduce graphing and helps them to work on their one-to-one correspondence.                    

For our theme "My Mom",  we drew pictures of our moms!

We sang "Mommy, Mommy, I Love you". 
(C) Jean Warren www.preschoolexpress.com.
In their journals, the children wrote about why they love their moms.

The children also worked really hard to make this really cool gift for their moms. I air popped some popcorn, and the children each took turns to drizzle colored chocolate on them... Yum!! Then, the children made a tissue paper flower to tie it all together. They were so excited to give them to their moms for Mother's Day! We of course had to try some to make sure it was good! =]

While reviewing the letters I, J and K, we are really focusing on practicing writing, having good control over letter formation, and having a solid knowledge of the letter sounds.

My children that are moving on to kindergarten next year, are working on sight words and this worksheet from Confessions of a Homeschooler are amazing! They challenge the children to think of the word in a new way and get creative. This week they worked on the word "in".

I created envelope games for each letter of the alphabet that we played the first way through the alphabet. My children that are staying with me another year played these again to work on their letter sounds.

We reviewed writing and finding the letters that we are talking about, I, J and K. The pages for my younger group came from Letters for Little Learners, and I found these more advanced worksheets for my older children from education.com.






The book Alphabet and Counting that we used used  to turn our letters into fun animals, also has cute little tongue twisters for each letter. I printed them large and illustrated them, then I laminated them with contact paper. Using wet erase markers, we take turns finding the letters hidden!



On their own, they searched for the letters as well!

The letter of the week books have pages that you can make a book into. I picked from both to get my "favorites". Each week, we'll work on these pages, and each child will end up with an alphabet book at the end of the year. I like to do these pages, because not only do they get more practice writing the letter, but they also have to finish the sentence on the page, which is really cool. It gets them thinking!



There is a 15-20 minute span of time while the children are waking up from our rest time and afternoon snack. During this time, we talk about what they will be doing in the afternoon with their afternoon teacher, and what we did in the morning. We also spend some time learning about animals through videos. This week we watched one, two, three, four and five about jaguars. We also watched about iguanas, kangaroos, jellyfish and koalas.

I made an "I have, who has" game filled with I, J and K things. I love this game because once it starts, the children completely direct it. I love seeing them help each other and play with each other.

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