Thursday, August 28, 2014

Our body and our feelings

Today we talked more about our bodies, but specifically we talked about our feelings:
The first thing that we did was to put a paper plate on a heavy paper and draw around it to make a head.  We then laced in some yarn to make hair for the head.  There were two plates, so one was to be a happy face and the other a frowny face.  The one I made as an example Tripp told me looked angry, not sad.  They put googly eyes on the faces and smiles, or frowns.  Then they put a tongue depresser as their stick.  We then  asled  "How would you feel if . . .
Or, how eo you feel when. . . .
such questions as:
 Your mom tells you you're going to have a new baby sister or brother?
You break your favorite toy by accident?
Your mother or father spanks you for something you shouldn't have done?
it is your birthday
you have a fever and must stay in bed?
you ruin your new clothes by playing in the mud


 I needed to find out how they are doing at recognizing the upper case letters of the alphabet



We talked about our houses and homes the other day and the kids wanted to have "houses" in the play room, so I set up a few of the tens and they had a good time moving from house to house .
 They also learned about some more feelings--they were hurt when they were not permitted to enter the "house " of one of the other children.

Each day, one of the things that the kids are asked to do is see that their area is cleaned, their chairs pushed up to the table and their work put into their bags.  Here is Chase using the hand sweeper and the floor looks really good!!
 Then we played the body game where they had six body parts and to get the part they rolled a dice, picked that number part and then they had to do the action.  One was to see if they could touch their nose with their tongue!!
We are now ready to start learning our letters.  Tuesday we will begin with the letter "C"

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Our Body

We talked about this wonderful gift that our Heavenly Father gave to us--this Earthly Body.  I told them about that special place a mother grows the seed that becomes a beautiful little baby.  I showed them the way the baby grows and how thankful we are when a new baby comes to our house.  We talked about our hair
and our eyes

Then we talked about our teeth.  Things we should eat and things we need to do to keep our teeth healthy and strong.  Here is June showing off her first set of teeth

 I told them how important our teeth are in helping us speak--the sounds of the different words
 I gave them each a pair of nice white teeth, and this set of awfully decayed teeth and gums  Sam and
 Chase wanted to show us those awful looking teeth--they thought they were "cool"
June looked in a mirror and decided she wanted to show off those nice white teeth she has
 as did Jane

and also Tripp also showed us his smile!!
I read thisbpook by Tedd Arnold about a little boy who was just sure that his body was falling apart from the inside out, starting with his losing of hair and belly button fuzz.
We talked about our whole body--our blood, heart, lungs, skeleton, skin and just about everything this fabulous body has.


Then I gave them a worksheet with the different parts of the body.  They pasted the parts to the shell of a body.
 Here Chase has his finished
 
When we were finished I had them use their fine motor skills by using this clothes pin to pick up the items in the dish.  Of course we had a few of the pins break, but that is the trying experience of pinching something together to pick up the items.  There was a little ninja soldier, a lizard, a button, a small eraser
Then I took some of these items, placed them on a tray, covered them and had them figure out which item was missing.  They all did really well with this.

When the room was cleaned up and everyone had collected their backpacks, we headed to the family room to wait for the parents and to listen to the "bells"  There is a little play area where I have put a Fisher Price barn and animals, some blocks, and these trucks.  The boys especially like this place.
We had a great day in PreK today and I hope they can tell their parents just how thankful they are for the wonderful gift they have been given--a body!!

Houses and addresses

We talked about houses that people all over the world live in

 Then we colored and drew about a house and put the children's address on the house



 We played this game again so they would remember whose house belongs to who and then added the addresses that belonged to each house
 Then they each were given the house drawing and they were to color it, add whatever they wanted and then, of course, put their addresss on the house

 Then we did some cutting to place the things that belong in a school room

 We read Look at me
At the end of each day,(Thursday, the 21st) they have clean up and put their chairs up to the table.  They each get a turn at this little hand sweeper to pick up any paper and trash


 
The end of a day of learning!

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Families and home addresses

This day we all gathered together and talked about families.  We have a banner that tells what each of the letters of family means   F is for Family  F is for my whole family    A is for the advice you give me   M is for the many ways you care   I is for the interests that we share  L is fot the Love that comes from you   Y is YES I love you too
!     F-A-M-I-L-Y  that's you     We pasted little boy and girl and parents on the page with each of their family members.

 We went over the vowels today.  The long vowels are the sounds of the letters  the short vowels are a as in apple  e  as in elephant  I as in pin   o as in octopus  u as in umbrella


 Jane found some green shoes today
Chase brought his spider man action figure and he and Sam played with the Bat Cave
 Tripp found this truck
 When we played the game with the homes and addresses, I showed the kids how to use a paper clip to clip the pieces of the game together.  Jane quickly found out that if you pull too hard it takes the shape from the clip.  So after giving her another one, I helped each one put the pieces into the clip.
We played this game: on the left side of the page is the picture of each child's house.   these are the cards that we used for a match game that the children played.  There were two of each house and they were to find the mate for each one.  Now, this game when a card was drawn that showed a house they were to put a skittle on the space beside the house.  Then on the right or the last column, they were to match the address to the house.  Each child was to tell us when their house number was picked and point to their housel 
 These were the cards we clipped together--the house address.
I read them the Book Tell Me Again about the night I was born by Jamie Lee Curtis and we talked about the day each was born.  I told them that when our children had a birthday, I always told them about the happenings of that day and how excited we were to have a new baby in our home.  It is important to tell our children each day that they are special--they were planned to come to our house and that We love them.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

safety rules


 

Today we talked about the safety rules in life.  In specific, we talked about what we would do if there was a fire.  First, I emptied a puzzle of a fire truck on to the table

This was another practice time with putting a puzzle together--learning to work together and cooperating to finish a project.  Each child was given six pieces.  We looked at the box to see what the picture was to look like and pointed out different things to look for.  The blue sky, the yellow uniforms the firemen wore, the red truck, the black tires and the green grass.  We finished the puzzle.
Then a picture of a fire truck was given to teach one and they were to color them (I had copied a picture of what the Mesa Fire trucks look like), cut them out, paste on the number to call (911) and pasted magnets on the back for them  to put on their refrigerator.  We had a phone and  each one called 911 to practice in the event that they need it.



Then we were off to the kitchen for snacks, played a game of I spy while we ate and then headed off to the play room.  Here is Tripp in his hard hat playing with the cars mat

 Jane and June were busy in the kitchen cooking up some kind of activity
Chase found the dragon costume
 and June found some pink slippers

This is the first of many times we will use this activity.  On the paper are just a lot of black dots.  On each of the dots the children were to put a small amount of glue.  Object, to teach them they do not have to squeeze hard to get a little bit of glue on their papers.  They put on the glue and then were given some wooden shapes to place on their dots.  Then they were asked to make butterflies by pinching  squares of colored tissue paper  to make a little butterfly, and put them on the paper.


Chase was the last to finish gluing on his items

While he was finishing, I read this book "Never talk to strangers  to the children

 And finished our day with Safety Sam and basic rules of safety.
 I hope you will go over some of the basic rules with them to enforce them.
Another good day with these cute kiddoes.  It's great being a teacher!!