words ending in "n"

It is a rainy day here in Arizona, but we got right to the fun stuff and the time passed very quickly.  I started by introducing them to the geoboards and it was a real exciting thing for the kids to learn how to wind the rubber bands around the pegs to make shapes.

Tomorrow is a birth day for  I and so we held up the banner and sang Happy Birthday to her.














We will really be focusing on alphabet recognition and sight words  and today the word "the" was gone over and over and over.  So, please go over it again at home.

We have been rhyming words, too, so as you can see on the page here you have the opportunity to ask them if certain words rhyme.  Have them sound out the words.
Now, today I gave them each a book to take home.  Please look at the page and ask them what they see on the page.  The words will tell the story of the page.  For instance, if there is a dog on the page making cookies, the words might say  On Monday, Dog made cookies in the morning.
Here is A with her book

Here is I with her book--"Is It Alive"  She has already read over it with me, as I have with each of the kids

S got the book Bears, Bears, Everywhere

B got the Cad and Dog book showing them painting

And C got this one about the  Four Seasons

Now, when the kids have read these a few times, they should have them memorized.  Be sure that you point to the words as they are reading them, so they can recognize letters, sounds and wordsl
When they can read them to you they can bring them in to read to the class.

These last two pages you will notice that there are pictures inside the circles.  The first one was a nest.  There was a strip of circles with the word associated with the picture.  They cut out those circles and after telling what the object was, they found the sound it started with, located the word and pasted it in the circle following the object   We are still working on our cutting, as well as learning to put the caps back on the glue when they are finished using them

We sang Happy Birthday, ate Nacho's for our letter N snack and ate chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting.  We played in the playroom , cleaned up our toys, and returned to the class room to go over the things we learned today.  Am always excited to see the baby steps they are taking in their learning.  Slow, but sure.  Another week in preK and we are still HAVING A GOOD TIME  Thanks!!

Nests and numbers

This morning we waited as the children started to make their appearance.  Sammy got here first and said "where are all the kids, Gramma?"  He is not always the first to arrive so it was a surprise to him.  As each child came in, they were given another hidden picture page to find the hidden items incorporated into the picture. The kids are amazing at this activity so you will be seeing more of them.

 We talked about how the magpie taught the other birds to make a nest.  Each bird took the portion of the information magpie told them and flew away and made their nests with their information.
We got their jackets on and started on our nature walk to find some things that birds might use to "feather their nests". 

One of the kids found a feather and I told them to look for more, because this is especially good for the birds to make a nice warm nest

Ivy found a nice thin "twig"  which would be good to intertwine with the "mud"











The fallen leaves from the neighbors tree would be excellent to weave into the nest too










A bird could tear up this receipt too

 WE also found some things that would not be good to put into the nest,  One was bigger pieces of tree branches and some pieces of hard plastic.  It sure would make it uncomfortable for the birds.  When we finished discussing what goes into the nest, each was given a little nest and some of the things we found outside, they put into their little nest  along with a little egg and a colored bird.

  It is important that they know the difference between numbers and letters and this worksheet was helpful.  They were to circle the numbers and put an x over the letter  Then we read off everything on the sheet so we could tell what those numbers and letters were.

I have these big plastic letters from 1-10 and we looked at them to see what each one was.  Then I lined them up-out of order- down the middle of the table and as I drew a card with the number on it, they each had to look for it and grab it as quickly as they could.
It is always good to see them work together and learn good sportsmanship along the way to learning the numbers.

















The highlight of the day is always show and tell. Today we worked on helping them know what to say.  For instance, this gun is is silver with a white handle.  It does not shoot bullets, but on the side of the gun it opens and caps can be inserted.  The caps smell funny, she said, but it is fun to play with.

Once again, Spiderman was of interest to the kids and C  shot out the webs and let us listen to what Spiderman has to say.

The morning always goes too quickly, but we are able to get some things done.  One thing we did do was show pictures that they had to identify as beginning sounds of N.  they were given the happy face and sad face and when the sound was  "NNNNNNN" they held up the happy face.  If it was  another letter they had to make the sound and tell us what the item was.    I think they are learning well, and I will be happy to hear them sound out words for themselves soon.
Thanks moms for your support.  Just another day at PreK and a good time for learning was  had by all

Rolls, rhymes and raindrops

It was another chilly day here in Arizona and before the day began I received calls that three of the students would not be here today because of illness.  Most of them were fever, chills and head cold.  I hope that they will be well for next week.
I got up this morning and mixed up some dough for rolls, as this is letter R week After opening exercises we got our hands washed and came into the kitchen to get started.  When I mentioned that we were going to make rolls, the kids decided they wanted to make cinnamon rolls, so the fun began.  We got into the drawer, each picked a rolling pin,

 and after putting some oil on the table, I put a nice big blob of dough down for each child to roll into what they thought was a rectangle.  We had already gotten the other items together, so now we each had a knife to put the butter on to the dough. Then came a slotted spoon to help to evenly put the sugar and cinnamon mixture.  Next came some brown sugar.  Not the time came to roll up their rolls and they each did an amazing job!!  I gave them scissors and the cut of pieces and I placed them into their pie tin to raise and prepare for baking. We covered them with dish towels, to keep in the warmth for raising. The next four pictures show our masterpieces.

 Then we cleaned up our mess, washed our hands and prepared for our snacks.  While we were eating we discussed other things that started with the letter R and when the kids said rain, we just had to have an experiment.  We talked about how the water on the earth collected in rivers, pools, and oceans would raise into the atmosphere, form clouds and then when they are full would empty by raining.  I showed them with a pan and water and boiled it, just opening the lid enough for them to see the clouds, then how the water dropped from the lid to form "rain".

They had a lot to take in!!
Then they went down to the play room and we practiced rolling the balls back and forth to each other and even tried the "one bounce" activity.  There were lots of giggles!  Then out came the bowling balls and each took their turn knocking down the pins.

 Brigham went round and round on this little toy

   
It was time for table work and I gave them each a deck of cards.  They had to pull out the Queens and the aces, then match their suits.  Ivy did it in record time.

Then we talked a little bit about rhyming words and they chose Dr Seuss  book Hop on Bop  With the repetition of words, it made it pretty easy to have them repeat rhyming words.

I then pulled out some cards with the picture on the front and the word on the back.  We spelled them and sounded them out  These were beginning sounds of letters we have already worked with.

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To make sure that they know what an upper case and lower case "R, r" is we traced and colored these rain drops.  Upper case was green and lower case blue.  The umbrella was red for the upper case and purple for the lower case.  If they completed these exercises, they got stickers.  And with the completion of this, B got to choose a prize today

 Another rhyming game.  If the two pictures rhymed they would hold up the smiley face, if they did not rhyme, they held up the sad face.  They had fun doing this and we found out just who could rhyme.

Though we only had three here today, I think we all had a good time.  Another fun day at GranJan's prek.

Rainbows and rabbits

Here we are at another week and the flu bug has managed to hit a couple of us already.  We only had four students here today, but we are pushing forward.  It is parent conference in the public schools so I took this opportunity to do a little testing this morning to see just where each student stands in terms of what they are learning and am very pleased to see just what they are learning.
R is for rainbow is a little craft from www.makinglearningfun.com   and was a lot of fun made by using frosting as the glue and each color of the rainbow were the fruit loops cereal.  It was not easy keeping the frosting from not getting eaten, as well as the fruit loops.

 Before we go too into placing the colors on the rainbow, we got these bottles and experimented with colors.  First was red, then we added some yellow and came up with orange.  The third color is yellow, and added to blue becomes green.  Blue plus red equals our last color of purple.  It was fun to see the kids eyes as a new color appeared.

 

With knives and a bowl full of frosting a masterpiece was made.

    As we worked to finish our project, I told the story behind the rainbow, from the Bible account.  There was a man by the name of Noah.  When God saw that the world was becoming so wicked, he met with Noah and asked him to build a big boat (I was informed that this boat was called "the ark")  He and his sons built for a long time until it was completed.

When it was completed, Noah and his sons were to told what to put in to the Ark.  Food, seeds, animals. When it was all loaded and the doors were closed, Noah and his family waited. ..  . .  Then it began to rain.  It rained a long time-40 days and nights-until there could not bee seen  any trees, mountains, OR people.  They were on the boat a  long time, until Noah sent out a bird to see if the water had gone away.  When he saw that they could come out of the boat, the first thing Noah did was to build an alter to God, to thank Him for safety.  God put a rainbow in the sky to promise mankind that the earth would never be covered by water again.  That is why we see the rainbow in the sky after a storm.

When I asked Brigham what took him so long to complete his rainbow, he told me " I thought it might be boring, so I waited"  He did finish the task and I asked him if it was boring, and he decided it was fun and should have done it earlier.






Each day we try new things, and today we tried to find various things in the "Hidden Pictures".  I was amazed how quickly they learned how to spot the hand, spoon, bell, etc.  hidden in this picture.

 Then we tried some rhyming words.  They were to circle the rhyming  word that began with the letter "R" and sound of "urrrrrr".  Again, they met the task.  We talked about other rhyming words as we read some of the books they had chosen for me to read.

I told them that if there was enough time today they could talk about the items they brought home to show for their "show and tell" 
Cooper showed us his spider man that talks and shoots webs 

 Brigham showed us his "sword" and showed us how he would use it.  What an imagination--how that pair of toenail clippers turned int to a little sword.  He hadn't fooled one of the girls, but we talked about how we can use our imagination to make items just what we want them to be.

The end of another day with B dragging his backpack behind him and Ivy showing that mischievous grin--a gesture showing that her day had been a fun one!!  We sure love prek!!