Shamrocks! (X, 21, Heart, Green)

The theme for the third week of March was "Shamrocks". We continued our Letter of the Week study with the letter X and our number study with the number 21! 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 started off with green and hearts.

This week we read: The Night Before St. Patrick's Day by Natasha Wing
                                        Little Pea by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
                                        Yertle the Turtle by Dr. Seuss
                                        The Rain Came Down by David Shannon
                                        Bartholomew and the Oobleck by Dr. Seuss

Our question of the week was "What would you do with a Leprechaun's gold?"

To review the color green we colored pictures of green 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!

We painted in shades of green to review as well. I put dollops of green, black and white paint on each child's paper, which they painted and mixed to make their own green masterpiece.

One of my children brought in a treat to share with the class.... and bonus: it was GREEN!

To review the heart shape the children practiced recognizing the shape and colored hearts. I created this little picture with some hidden hearts in it. They had to at least color the hearts, and for a challenge, really work on their fine motor control to color the whole picture! 

I made a bit of a blunder while lesson planning this week and included a circle project. Whoops! But it was still a fun whoops. We brainstormed a list of things that are circles in real life, and then created a book!

For the number of the week:21 we started off by counting to and backward from twenty-one. 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-one. 

When I started in my class, I found a page like this from education.com, so I made my own for the number 21. 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 "Shamrocks", we started off my making leprechaun traps! The children each made a rainbow out of half of a paper plate (because leprechauns just can't pass up a rainbow, you know?) and we swirled them all over with glue to try to catch one. We want that gold! We did not succeed, they were way too smart for our traps.

We sang "I'm a Little Shamrock" from Preschool Express.

On St. Patrick's Day we make some chocolate chip muffins, that magically turned green in the oven!! Wink, wink!

The kids each made their own handprint rainbow, complete with a pot of gold at the end!

For the Structure book that I created for the block center, I made some information sheets about buildings in Ireland.

And for the Plants and Animals book in the science center, I found information about different plants and animals that are native to Ireland!

The letter of the week: X activities that we worked on this week were extra cool!!
The book Sounds Like fun, Phonemic Awareness has great phonics activities for the alphabet. For the letter X, the children have to cut out and glue the words that "Begins like X-ray Fish". Together we talked about the beginning sounds of the words, and then they work on their fine motor cutting skills.

I created envelope games for each letter of the alphabet. I adapted them from activities from Mailbox Letter of the Week projects, both book one and two. The children had to place the "X" items (which have x in the word)on the big X.  All the other letters? No room!

The children worked on coloring a picture using a key. My class really seems to enjoy pages like this because they feel really proud when they're finished, because they've pretty much done it all by themselves! I gave them the instructions for how to color it first, and then let them go! I got this page from a former teacher, but it says it's from education.com.

The children turned a capital letter X into two  x-ray fish. I got the idea from the book Alphabet and Counting from Twin Sister Productions. They give tips for how to make it a glue and paste projects, but I like to give them crayons and the challenge to add the parts of the animal to the letter. It opens up room for more conversation about the shape of the letter AND the features of the animal.

We practice and work on our handwriting for each letter as well. The Original Summer Bridge Activities, for PreK-K has great handwriting practice sheets. The kids trace and write the letters and then have a little phonics practice at the bottom.

From the book Alphabet, Colors, Numbers and Shapes, the kids practice letter recognition AND direction following. Some weeks certain letters have to be colored specifically and sometimes it's up to them. I love these!

When talking about the letter x, there's one game that your definitely can't ignore..... Tic Tac Toe! We played tic tac toe together and with parters, which was a lot of fun, and something that they now do on their own when they're in the art center. I actually made these stone bees and ladybugs to play tic tac toe outside in the summer. I might have to make a set to have in the classroom!

As we work through the alphabet, the children make projects to go on  our "alphabet wall". It's a very fun way for the class to see the alphabet in a new way. This week we made x-ray fish to go in our pond. The pieces were cut out for them ahead of time, and they created their own pair of x-ray fish.

Each child has a journal that they write in every week. When we focus on a letter, they write for that letter. On shorter weeks and during our review later in the year, they write to the theme. This is such a great way to get children excited about writing and reading. I start the children out by tracing, and once they are comfortable and controlling the crayon well, they move onto copying.

I made a cube of cardboard and glued pictures of "X" things one each side. The children say "X-ray Fish, X-ray fish, what do I see.... I see a ____ looking at me!" They roll the cube and fill in the blank. This idea came from a Mailbox activity book for the letter A, and let me tell you, it was a hit!! They loved it!

During the week we made a list of words that begin with the letter X. Here is what we thought of!

We celebrated a birthday this week! Mmm, ice cream cake!

 Leave a comment below and let me know that you stopped by!

Up in the Sky!

 Our theme this week was "Up in the Sky"! The kids are loving summer camp! We have so much free time that we can extend play if needed/wanted, have longer discussions and go completely off task if we want!

During summer camp, we always have  Yoga day where the school  does a child centered yoga workout. The video we've been using is great because most of the poses are named after animals, like a turtle... hello!

 (This turtle was rescued from the middle of the road by one of our teachers, and promptly returned to the woods after this picture :))

We also have splash day, where all the kids put on their bathing suits and we play outside in water tables and have a fun squiggly sprinkler to run through.

We also have some older children that have joined our class for the summer. While my kids are having their rest in the middle of the day, these children have extra play time out of the room and they also work on some practice sheets that I got from the Summer Bridge Books for K-1 and 1-2. They are great worksheets to keep the older kids practicing their skills over the summer! I love the Pk-K book and I use it through out the year for their letter worksheets.

We read this week: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett
                              Little Cloud by Eric Carle
                              Duck by Randy Cecil
                              Polar Opposites by Erik Brooks
                              Up and Down by Oliver Jeffers

Our question of the week was "Why do you love the summer?"I tried this week to call them over one by one so that they had to think about the question, not just repeat what another friend said.

For our theme of the week,we used the ice paint again! We used it a few weeks ago inside, but decided this time to paint outside! It was a race against the heat!! The kids were challenged to paint something that they saw in the sky while we were out there. I love the way these turned out!

Using some dish soap, water and pipe cleaners we made bubbles! I challenged the kids to make a bubble that was not round, so they quickly got to work manipulating their pipe cleaner wands into new shapes. They seemed to catch on pretty quickly that they were only getting round bubbles, so then we started to observe the behavior of the bubbles; some went right to the ground, some floated, the colors we saw, how quickly they popped, etc.

Once we came back inside we sat down as a group and wrote up a "lab report". I talked about hypotheses, experiments and conclusions, and they loved being called scientists!

I like to keep working on our social play during the summer when we have downtime, so one of our afternoon activities was partner puzzles. I have a giant basket of small puzzles (mostly from the Dollar Tree) that are bagged. With a partner they pick puzzles and complete them. Very simple activity but they are working on so many skills like compromise, conflict resolution, sharing, taking turns and so much more!!

We brainstormed as a class different things that we have seen or could see up in the sky. After we compiled our list, the kids decided what they wanted to draw, then we made a class book! I make these little books a few times throughout the year and the kids really do love looking through them with their parents at pickup and throughout the day with their friends. I love when my kids are so proud of the work that they have done. Plus, it makes a great keepsake! I have all our class books from last year that I love to look through and so does my class this year.

We wrote in our journals about the places we would like in an airplane. England, here I come! :)

 While my class writes in their journals, the older children (K and 1st grade) write a reading response log about the book that we read that day!

Gazing at the clouds while laying in the grass is an awesome activity for an Up in the Sky theme! They had fun trying to see shapes in the clouds, and then wrote about what they saw!

We played my favorite game growing up... keep the balloon off the ground! So fun!

And our movie for the week was.... can you guess.... UP!

Our song of the week was "Great Big Rainbow" to the tune of I'm a Little Teapot.

(C) 2001 - 2011 Jean Warren www.preschoolexpress.com

The games that we played this week at morning meeting were so fun!

We played "Body Drumming". Using only our bodies, we do different motions to make sound and rhythm. I model first and either make a pattern for the children to follow or I have them follow a sequence of 3 or 4 motions. Then I will pick a few children to be the leaders. I love this activity because it's something a little different, you can't get "out" and it's fun to see them trying to focus on when the motion is going to change.

"Pop!" is a really fun game, and definitely a favorite. We stand in a circle and each child says one number as we go around. But each round there is a pop number. Instead of saying that number, you POP! the person that would be next, out. We work very hard on having good sportsmanship, and the kids have fun even if they're out because they know they get to play again in the next round!

We played "I have, who has?" which I originally saw being played in a Montessori class. It's so cool to see the children take over the game and help their friends follow along. I currently have two versions that we play, but I am planning on making maybe a shape themed one, numbers and maybe a grab-bag of random things. That might be fun! This week we played Colors and the Alphabet.

"Just Like Me" is a great game when a child is feeling a little bit sad or just to get the class feeling like a group! I start by modeling with a few statements, i.e, I like vanilla ice cream. If a child also like vanilla ice cream, they stand up and yell, "just like me!" After I model a few statements like that, I will pick a few children to be the leader. It's so cool to see them thinking about what they want to say!

We played "Crocodile by the Lake". I found the idea for this game last year and adapted it to be my own. I turned a box into a crocodile with bulletin and construction paper, then filled it with little cards that have a letter, number or shape on them. The children have to reach into the crocodile's mouth (while he's sleeping of course), pull out a card and name what's there. Also hidden in the belly of the crocodile though are SNAP cards (the crocodile wakes up and SNAPS his mouth shut!). Once we pull three SNAP cards, the game is over!

We are keeping up our work on our sight words! Every morning we go over around 10 of them. Once we've mastered them, they will go on our sight word wall! So exciting! We're working our way through the 220 Dolch sight word list.

We had a visiting guest one day this week... Lincoln!