Friday, February 28, 2014

Letter P, pigs, penguins, panda bears

This week the letter we are learning is "P".
 The upper case "P" was to be colored purple and the lower case "p" was to be colored pink

 
 Two of the children placed these crayons on the table for us to use
 This is Joe's picture  looks like a few other colors jumped into the glasses
Then we traced the piece of pizza, colored it and added the toppings--pepperoni, cheese, onions, olives
Sam had brought this book for show and tell and so we read it to the class.  In the book it told of three magic beans.  We found three beans for each child.  A golden coin--Mickey found bags of it at the castle, and a golden egg.(from  the hen who laid golden eggs)
 These were given to each of the children
Tuesday was my birthday so the Johnson boys brought these yummy doughnuts to celebrate
 I lit the candle and the kids sang the "Happy Birthday" song to me
 I gave them milk and they ate doughnuts until they were full
Instead of playing in the playroom today, the kids opted to go out for a walk.  So, I thought that I would turn it into a scavenger hunt.  The first thing they were to find is the American flag. 
 We next moved on to orange blossoms and what an aroma came from this tree
 Where would they find a butterfly??
 A rooster, or a weather vane.  What do the letters n, e, s, w  stand for??
 Do you think that they would mind if we tried out the tire swing?
 Whoa!!  Stop!! We are at the end of the street, time to go back!!
 Our next activity was using a push pin to outline the letter "P" and "p"
 Fun to watch as they work
 A pattern to follow.  These are foam characters
 Janaye is trying to get them in order
 Next we put bottle lids upside down, to mark the letters on the pages.  Lily does it great
 The penguin worksheet has 9 places to mark.  This was a fun one
 Next we moved on to find the patterned shirts that match the objects in the above picture
 Joey uses a dry erase marker to draw his lines
 It is time to play "yell out" when they call out the letter as I flip them over
 

 A break in the activities gives them a chance to show and tell--this is a talking pumpkin
 Dinosaur tattoo
 As we sing the alphabet, Sammy points to each letter so we can learn to recognize them
 
 mmmmm  tastes good  popcorn and pretzels
 We patterned the blocks, counted them and stacked them  The kids love blocks used in these many ways


 
 One more book--numbers
 And our final book "The Three little Pigs" and the big bad wolf   This one we used for comprehension and the kids did an amazing job getting all of the story right  AND they had fun doing it.
 
Two days in one learning the things that begin with the letter "P" and lots of fun doing it.  Next week will be the letter "W", so if you have something that begins with that letter, show and tell would be a great time to show them.
PreK is lots of fun.. . . . . . .
 

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Letter M, magnets, magnifying glasses, m&m's

This week we worked with the letter "M", "m". Each child was given one of these sheets and then I showed them how to tear little pieces of colored paper and attach them to the "M"
 We use the McMillan method of teaching the letters, and this is our 18th letter
 This is an example of the torn paper
 Sam had fun with his
 The pictures turned out very well, with a little help, of course.
 Joey needed a little help at the beginning, but caught on to making the pieces smaller
 His favorite color is green as you can see
Here is our letter M
Then we got out the magnets and the kids really had fun with those.
 We had these discs and the put a magnet under the table to move the discs around the table
 We also had these pieces that were attached together by magnets
 Lily had a lot of fun with those she had
Each of the kids had some sort of mag net, either a wand, a horseshoe shape or just refrigerator magnets.  The ones they really liked were the high powered ones.  Sammy kept saying, "I can feel the power, Gramma!"  That was exciting to me because I sometimes wonder if they have gotten the lesson being taught.  They just have the fun that goes with it.
 Sam also used this horseshoe shape and the discs and metal balls.

We ended Tuesday with Mickey Mouse and Miss Jo read the book Mickey and the Sorcerer.  They loved the moving brooms!!






Sammy brought his woopie cushion.  Boys always think these things are funny.  
 Joey brought this little wooden car.
 Lily brought this book and she read it to us (in her very own way)  What was funny was when the other kids would start to talk, she would say, "would you please be quiet".

 These are magnetic letters of all sizes and colors.  We used these for letter recognization.  There were lower case letters, as well, and some numbers and shapes.  The ones who recognized the letter got to keep the letter and the one getting the most recieved a prize.  Candy is a great motivator. 
We then had a worksheet.  Inside mushroom shapes were pictures of things beginning with the sound "mmmmm".  They were to color the pictures or draw a circle around them.  There were words such as mom, monkey and moon.
 Joey colors everything his favorite color--green
 We had snack time and while they were eating, I introduced the magnifying glass.  We looked at salt crystals, sand and letters on a newspaper.  They were obsessed woth how much larger everything was.When we came back from play time, we played conversation heart bingo.  We are working on colors, as well as where to put the colored heart  under "B" "I", etc.  A big job for these little three year olds.  But, amazingly, they do quite well.
Then we introduced them to the book "The Mitten"  A Ukrainian folktale adapted and illustrated by Jan Brett
 Here is their mitten
 These are the animals that went into the mitten.  These are the actual drawings from Jan Bretts book.  I hope that you will go over the story again with the children.
One of the best ways to introduce the letter "M"
Another good day at preschool.  I hope you moms are going over the letters we are learning. I would like to see some of them putting their sounds together soon to make words.  Let's set a goal??
Love working with your kids!!