Spring Has Sprung! (Yy, 22, Yellow, Star)

The theme for the last week of March was "Spring Has Sprung", and boy were my kids happy to celebrate the return of Spring! We continued our Letter of the Week study with the letter Y and our number study with the number 22! 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 yellow and stars.

This week we read: The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle
                                        Fletcher and the Springtime Blossoms by Julia Rawlinson
                                        The Story of the Root Children by Sibylle von Olfers
                                        Jamberry by Bruce Degen
                                        Duck by Randy Cecil

Our question of the week was "What is your favorite thing to do in the springtime?"

To review the color yellow we colored pictures of yellow 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 star shape the children practiced recognizing the shape and colored stars. I created this little picture with full of stars in it. They needed to color the stars yellow and then the rest of the picture!

For the number of the week:22 we started off by counting to and backward from twenty-two. 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-two. 

When I started in my class, I found a page like this from education.com, so I made my own for the number 22. 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 "Spring has Sprung", we went outside to search for spring! Out on our playground and on our school's nature trail, we looked for signs that spring was really here.

We sang "Pretty Little Flower" to the tune of Itsy Bitsy Spider.

"Pretty little flower, smiling at the sun.
Down comes the rain, now she looks so glum.
Back comes the sun and dries up all the rain.
And the pretty little flower, is smiling once again!"

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

The kids played a quick flower sorting game that I made. I made a set of flowers that I "laminated" with contact paper. The set worked so that they could be sorted by color of the petals or number of the petals. They did so great!

We painted giant flowers! I can't show you the final projects because this is something we will be putting into our Eric Carle themed art show in April, but here's a preview!

The letter of the week: Y activities that we worked on this week were y-great!! 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 "Y" items in the yard.  All the other letters? Back in the shed!

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.

The children turned a capital letter Y into a Yellow Jacket. 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.

The book Sounds Like fun, Phonemic Awareness has great phonics activities for the alphabet. For the letter Y, the children have to cut out and glue the words that "Begins like Yak". Together we talked about the beginning sounds of the words, and then they work on their fine motor cutting skills.

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.

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 yaks with some yarn hair. They colored their yaks and glued on some yarn!

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!

We made a class book call "Yakking about Yesterday" where each child illustrated something that they did yesterday. They got such a kick out of it when we read it later in the day!

I made a cube of cardboard and glued pictures of "Y" things one each side. The children say "Yoda, Yoda, 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 Y. Here is what we thought of!

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

Turkeys, Pilgrims and Native Americans! (Jj, 7, Star)

The theme for the third week of November was "Turkeys, Pilgrims and Native Americans". We continued our Letter of the Week study, with the letter J. This week we also focused on the star shape, and we kept going on our number study with the number 7!

We celebrated a birthday!

This week we read: Red Fox and His Canoe by Nathaniel Benchley
                                        The Very First Thanksgiving Day by Rhonda Gowler Greene
                                        1 Little, 2 Little, 3 Little Pilgrims by B.G. Hennessy
                                        Thanksgiving Cats by Jean Marzollo
                                        The Thirsty Moose by David Orme

Our question of the week was "What would you bring on the Mayflower with you?" My favorite part of this question was a conversation that it sparked between a child and parent at pickup. P: What was a the Mayflower? C: A boat. P: Do you know who was on the Mayflower? C: Yea, some old people.

The shape of the week: star was fun to talk about.  We practiced drawing stars in the air, and talked about where we see stars. The children worked on their fine motor skills and shape recognition by coloring shapes. I made this sheet myself based on recognition sheets that we have already done.

For our song this week we sang "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"

For the number of the week: 7 we started off by counting to and backward from seven. 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 seven. 

When I started in my room I found some papers in my room I found a random number page like this from education.com, so I made my own for the number 7. The children had to practice writing the number and then color in that number of squares. What a great way to really introduce graphing and what a great way for them to work on their one-to-one correspondence.

For our theme "Turkeys, Pilgrims, Native Americans", we talked about the way Native Americans lived before the pilgrims. We looked at some materials from the Lenapes (which is our local tribe).

We sang the song "Indians and Pilgrims" to the tune of Row your Boat.

Beat, beat, beat the drum, 

Beat it loud and clear.

To tell brave Indians everywhere

That hunting time is near.

Cut, cut, cut the logs,

Make them long and short.

To help the pilgrims build a house,

A warm and friendly fort.

(C) Copyright 1997-2014 by Preschool Education

We talked about how corn was a staple crop and used it in an art project, which conveniently doubled as cool Thanksgiving decorations! =]

We made handprint Mayflowers! I love hearing my kids' giggles as i paint their hands, and they're always fascinated by the amount of things that we turn their handprints into.

Speaking of which, we turned their handprints into turkeys for a keepsake Thanksgiving placemat. So cute!!

We made strawberry juice while channeling the Lenape Indians. I cut the tops off of strawberries and put them into plastic baggies. The kids did all the work mashing them, to which we added hot water. I let the strawberries sit in the hot water and we observed the juices coming out of the berries. It was really cool to watch. For a little sweetness I added some honey. I was really happy that almost everyone tried it... and liked it!

The letter of the week: J activities that we worked on this were were jubilant! The book Sounds Like fun, Phonemic Awareness has great phonics activities for the alphabet. For the letter J, the children have to cut out and glue the words that "Begins like Jaguar". 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 put the "J" patches on the jacket. All the other letters? Not on this fashion statement!

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 colored and cut out pictures of jet planes. I attached them to toilet paper rolls so they popped a little!

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.

Using 7 Jellybeans, the kids sorted and colored the pictures. This helped them work on their color matching and one-to-one correspondence.

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.

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!

From one of the Letter of the Week books, we made little flip books about a Jet flying around. I love these because we can work on whole group activities and following sequential directions. They are also simple enough that when finished they can look through it and tell the story to themselves.

The children turned a capital letter J into a jaguar. 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.

I made a cube of cardboard and glued pictures of "J" things one each side. The children say "Jaguar, Jaguar, 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, 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 J. Here is what we thought of!

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

Outer Space!

We continued our summer fun with the theme, "Outer Space!"

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.

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: I Want to be an Astronaut by Byron Barton
                               My Picture Book of Planets by Nancy E. Kryulik
                               Our Stars by Anne F. Rockwell
                               Roaring Rockets by Tony Mitton
                               The Birth of the Moon by Coby Hol
                               Circus in the Sky by Nancy Guettier
                               On the Moon by Anna Milbourne

Our question of the week was "If you were an astronaut, where would you go?"

For our theme of the week,  I made a little board game with construction paper and star stickers. Using a dice we moved up the stars to the end of the game in small groups.

We talked about the differences between day and night, like different things that we see and the way that things look. on one piece of paper we divided it into day and night, and I challenged my class to draw the way things look during the day and during the night.

From _____ the kids colored stars in with the correct colors. Never can have too much practice! =]

The class painted their own planets and stars, and we made a galaxy in our hallway!

In journal my class wrote about what planet in our solar system they would go to.

While my class wrote in their journals, the older children filled out these reading response pages to the books that we read.

We made number constellations. After choosing and writing a number on a square of blue construction paper, the kids took a pencil and poked holes along the number or on the points. When they were hung up on the window, you could see the constellations! So cool!

Using play dough the kids made moonscapes and other space shapes.

We watched Wall-e!

Our song of the week was "Climb Aboard the Spaceship" to the tune of Itsy Bitsy Spider.

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

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

"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!

"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 "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!

The Weather Changed" is a fun game. The kids decide on movements for 5 different weathers before we start. I start as the Weather Person and go through the different weather, while we change the movements. Then the kids get a turn as the weather person!

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.

That's all for now! Leave me a comment please if you visit! =]