Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Letter L activities

Today we had a visitor, one of the children I taught last year, Lillie was with us.  It is always fun to see how the kids, who have been here, have changed and what they remember.
Of course, the first thing that we do is the pledge, recite our scripture, John 3:16, the calendar, the weather, and then proceed with activities of the week.    We usually make something that we use our skills with scissors, glue, glue sticks, small and large motor skills.
This morning we made lion masks.  I am always amazed, even though I set out various pictures of what a lion is to look like, How the kids come up with colors of their own.  I don't remember a lion being red white and blue
We had a work sheet with pictures of various things that start with the letter and its sound, such as legs and arms  which has the  illll sound??
We played a game with a picture of a leopard with its many spots, and on some of the spots were numbers and letters  They laced a skittle on the letters as I called them out.  They are getting better each week with recognizing their letters I read them a book about"Where is Sam" andthey would lift a door to show Sam dressed in various costumes, such as a clown, r an alligator.  They had fun with that.
Then I told them the fable of the Lion and the mouse.  The lion captured the mouse and the mouse pleaded to be let go.  The Lion laughed, but eventually let the mouse go.  The mouse said that one day he would help the lion and it was so. The lion was caught when the hunter tossed the netting over it.  The lion could be heard all through the jungle, and the mouse came to his rescue.  It chewed the strings of the net and the lion could escape.  Moral  of the story: even the smallest of friends is worthwhile.
We did a Halloween activity where I had the children use press pins to make a ghost on black paper to put on our windows.  They are getting better at this activity, too.
Well, that was our day.   Unfortunately I can not down load pictures, AGAIN so this is my best!
Preschool is always challenging and lots of fun

Friday, October 17, 2014

Spiders and skeletons

Since it will be Halloween soon we chose to use the letter "S" to represent spiders and skeletons  We talked about the various ways we can make a web and they tried to make them.  Each child did their own thing with the web on their pages.Here are the spiders that are hanging from the letter "S"
 Chase shows his orange spider ring and the spiders he was to cut in a small square and past to the letter "S"
 We had some silly faces to go with the spiders
 This activity shows the head or tail in the shape of the S   They were to match it to its companion page

a headless snake, a skunk with no tail, a squirrel with no tail and a swan with no neck and head.

We made these cute skeletons with q tips for the body parts.  If you this you might remember that the q tips with plastic base should be used as they are easier to cut for the smaller parts of the body  The made teeth with white crayons and some even colored the eyes green
 This next activity was to cut out the squares with pictures of objects beginning with the sounds for A as in ant    s as in skunk   g as in goat   and o as n octopus. 
 Then we played this skeleton game..  They were to roll a five for the head a six for the body a 1 or 2 for arms and 3 or 4 for the body parts.  They are really getting good at keeping the die in control and everyone was a winner and received  (what else) but a spider man sucker.
Another successful pre kinder  day!!

Letter "D

The letter of the week was D and it was a fun filled week.  We read this book to see how many things we could find with the letter D
 
 played a "d"ice game involving numbers
 dressed up likd dog and dragon
 A guide for tracking dragons
 a match game with various kinds of dragons
 "d"ressed up
 used pastas to make this dinosaur, talked about fossils and different kinds of dinosaurs
 looked at books that had pictures of the many kinds of dinosaurs that have been found and named
 The week went fast and I finally got these pics on line.  Sorry but the process has changed again and I am not good with change

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

letter A and Ants

Today we are working on the letter A.  Each one was to cut squares that had a picture of an ant on it.  Then they were to use glue sticks to paste the ants on to the upper case A and lower case A.  Then they could decorate them as they pleased.
First I had a muffin tin and in the bottom I placed a green circle with the numbers from 1-12 on them.  The children were to lace that particular number of plastic ants in each well.
When they had done that, we removed the circle and all the ants in that well to make sure that it was done correctly
 Or project this morning was to cut rows of ants into squares and using a glue stick, they were to paste the ants on to the upper case and lower case A

 We used this game to see if we could follow directions
 And we also played number bingo so that we can learn the numbers from 1-20
A good time today!!

Friday, September 19, 2014

letter g gold and green

Another g day in preschool.  After opening excercises, the children were given templates of the upper case and lower case G.  I had cut up "confetti"-like pieces of green and gold paper so that the kids could paste them on to the letters.
 It was interesting watching each child as he or she finished their pasting
 


Then I handed out the play dough and we made the letters C  O  and G.  I showed them how to roll out the dough to become snakes to form the letters

 Next we used this work sheet.  They were each given a die and they would  roll it.  Then count the spots on the die and find the corresponding number on the page.  Each was to find each number before they moved on to another game.  We will be working on recognizing letters so you could point them out to each of them
 We were finished and the boys love the geoboard now so they started to put the bands on until it was clean up time and parents were spotted.
Another good day in PreK
 
 
 
 

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Letter G, goats and games

Another new week, another new letter and new fun. Today we started our day with g for games.  I got out the geoboards and all the kids put the rubber bands on the boards to make shapes--squares, rectangles, triangles ovals and whatever they could think of.  When they had emptied their little bags of bands, they had to now take one at a time back off and put it into the bag.  They were not to take one off that it was on the bottom and pull them all off, but one at a time if it was on the very top.  It was a little frustrating at first, but guess what??  They found out they could do it!


Then we tried the game of Perfection.  They had a lot of fun with this game and jumped as the figures popped up.


We used our word book and today we are on the letter G so we traced the upper case and lower case G first, then moved on to spelling out Goofy with the G traced and last was the drawing a circle around an uppercase G and a square around the lower case G
Then it was snack time and playtime.  I had bought some more action figures over the weekend an  put them in a plastic box.  When these two opened the box they were excited!!  they spent the whole time with the figures and the bat cave
When we came back upstairs, I read the book The Three Billy Goats Gruff to the children and they were to circle the parts of the stories as I read them.  They did very well

Then I had the pictures on the sticks and they acted out the story of the Billy Goats Gruff

I also read the G book  Gorilla, Be Good and we found items that begin with the G sound
Our final activity was Number Bingo and though they were a little rusty on this, they are learning and that is the important thing


 
Another good day in PreK and more fun and learning.
 

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Letter O, ocean and octopus

It was a good morning at GranJan's preschool!! The kids were anxious to get started and they noticed new things in the classroom, so off to the races!!!
We ha our usual opening excercises  and the kids noticed that we had big arrows on the map!!  We added the three O states--Ohio, Oklahoma and Oregon.  In our travels this summer I was able to pick up some post cards, so the kids each got a post card from Ohio and Oklahoma. 
Chase noticed the camel on the wall--Shinrai--trustworthy.  We talked about what that meant and if our friends and family were trustworthy and how we can be.
I put a puzzle of the ocean creatures on the table and gave each child five pieces to put into the finished project.  We first  looked at the picture, then established where each creature was on it.  Then I turned it upside down and each one started to put the puzzle together.

 Some tried to put the pieces given them, together alone, but I tried to make sure they would have to look at the whole puzzle to find where his pieces would go  They get better each time we do this.
When the puzzle was complete, I handed each their workbook and we found the page with the letter on it and I read each instruction to them so they could complete each step.
When we completed the workbook page, I gave each one their own dry eraseboard and they were to write upper case O and lower case O on this unlined area.

I gave them each a colored piece of construction paper, along with some foam fishes, some seaweed, an octopus, some sea shells, colored shells and sand so they could make an underwater scene
 Each one was different and was unique to each child
 
We topped off the day by playing alphabet bingo. We will do this often so they can associate the letters with the sounds.
 They were each given 16 pieces of candy to put on their letter cards. When they said Bingo, they had to tell me the letter to keep the piece of candy.  It is always amazing that when candy is in the picture they seem to be able to remember better!!
 
So, yet another preschool day and I think they all learned something and had a fun time doing it.
On to letter G