More fun with letter C

The weather is changing and so are the attitudes of the children.  We have been in school almost a month now and some of the excitement has worn off.  Their attention span is a little longer, and now we can move things along a little faster.
When the kids get here in the morning, the first thing they usually go to are the puzzles, but on this morning there was something else to pique their imagination. S and J found the geoboard and they really had a fun time making shapes of all kinds.

Hyrum went a little slower through the calendar activity and the kids are repeating the days of the week and singing their little song.  We talked a little about how the weather is changing and how that affects the changes in temperature, too.  Appropriatel H has the Cat in the hat pointer, as today we will talk a little about "The Cat".

This first activity the upper and lower case "C" is written.

 Their job was to take the circles, and first put the circles over the upper case "C"

 They caught on to this with caution

 yet were able to locate the correct one

 Lily was able to find the right ones with a little help

Then they were to follow the dotted lines connecting Curious George

 Joey has his own way of following the lines but he gets it done

 I think Hyrum was the fastest and does a good job!

 Lily also gets her tracing better each time we do it.

 Our next activity was finding the correct shapes that appear on his hat and put the matching piece on his tummy. These kids know their shapes!

 Show and tell is always their favorite and they can hardly wait to tell the class about what they brought.  Sam and his family went camping and found this strawberry plant.  He hopes to see  it grow and make strawberries.

 Hyrum brought his big brother's fire truck

 Lily brought her soft, fuzzy "lamby"

 Joey brought his robot

 Janaye brought a telephone

 We then got to roll two dice.  One with numbers from 1-6 and the other die different colors of fish.
When they rolled, they were to put the number of the color of fishes into the fish bowl.  They wanted to put as many as they wanted and the colors, but we finally got them to count the number, then one by one the fishes went into the bowl.  I think this is one game we will play again and again.

We played bingo matching pictures beginning with the letter "C" such as camel, cookies, corn and cat

And to quiet them down at the end of our day, we read the book Copy Cats

An other fun day at preK.  Sorry this is late, but my camer needed to be recharged and I totally forgot when that got done to post.  It is fun to watch the kids interact now and friendships that are happening.
Another reason I love teaching these kids!

Letter C and Curious George

We are beginning, now to start recognizing the letters of the alphabet.  Our first letter is "C" and so I put together some things that will help them.

First we started out the day by putting their tiles in order to spell their name with upper case and lower case letters.  Each one did that very well, with just a little help.  Soon I will not have to do this as they will know how to spell their name by themselves.
Each one was given their number for the week.  This is to help them learn that number by sight and to help them each to have a turn with our helping hands, which I mentioned before are: prayer, line leader, calendar, weather and pledge to the flag.  You will see here a little stuffed monkey at the base of this cute monkey to represent our Curious George theme for the day.

 You can see that Lily did a super job of recognizing her letters.

As did Janaye

 Sammy

 and Joey

Then we got out our salt trays and were able to make their own designs, as well as the upper and lower case "C"

 This always gets a little messy, but they have a good time with it

 And all did very well with our letter for the day

Each was give a Curious George mask

They are still struggling with their use of scissors, but each time they use them it gets easier for them

 Sam is very good at it and helps some of the others by showing them how to hold the scissors and paper to make it a little easier.

 Joey would rather do it with both hands, but he will get the swing of it

This was a real challenge and I apologize to those who have messy hands , but I thought they would have a fun time with the stamping of various Curious George faces

 Hyrum's really turned out well and I don't think he got much of the ink on himself.

We had a bean bag throw at Curious George.  On one was the upper case "C" and the other a lower case "C" which I would call out and see if they could recognize each.  This was another way to help with their motor skills.  I put a piece of tape on the floor for them to stand on so they could  hit the mark and they all did very well with each throw

We ended our day with the first book written about George and how the man in the yellow hat found him in the jungle, and how his curiosity really got him into trouble. And yes, this group of kids are very curious!!
Another fun day at preK

Taste, feelings and safety

This group of children love to put puzzles together and listen to stories.  Now that we have been coming to school for three weeks and after finding out about families, home, our bodies, our emotions and our feelings, we will be moving on to learning more about cutting, tracing, our alphabet and numbers.
Today we started the day by looking at a puzzle with all the emotions on it from happy to sad, embarrassed, scared, to bored, angry and just plain silly

 I gave them each a mirror and as we looked into it they were to make faces for each emotion.  This is our "silly" face

 They can never contain themselves on "show and tell" day and Lily brought her pretty pink sunglasses with the tiny little stones around the rims

 Joey and his family went camping and there were pine trees in the forest  He found a "baby" pinecone

 Janaye brought her cute little stuffed puppy

 And Sammy brought his "star wars" coloring book and he and his brother hummed the music from the movie

 We traced different lines today.  This is Sam and he is really getting it down right  You might notice the salt containers.  Two had salt inside, one of the others was beans and the other rice.  They had to tell me by listening which two were the same.  And yes, they got them right!

 Hyrum is taking his time and doing well

 Lily is getting the feel for it,but she loves her circles

 Janaye does very good

 Joey makes his lines with a zig zag.  Very interisting

 When we finished our tracing we moved into the kitchen table where we got to taste some foods.  they liked the grapes, but only Hyrum liked the raisins.  I explained that raisins are dried grapes.  No way!!, Yes, I Used to make raisins by putting the grapes in the sun on hot days and they turned into raisins.

 fruit loops  sweet and crunchy

 pudding, smooth and chocolate

 banana needed to be chewed   had a sweetness and was smooth

 candy kisses had to be unwrapped, placed in mouth, either held on tongue til it melted, or chewed.  It was smooth and good  they also tasted salt and sugar

 Play time!!

 they are all intrigued by the hula hoop

 Kitchen--always gets out the phone and believe it or not, Lily did not call Mya today

 Then we were at the kitchen table again to feel different objects.  They had plastic bottle, feathers, carpet piece, sand paper, cotton ball,

 Janaye and Sam thought the feathers to be soft and tickled on their faces

 Sam traces with his fingers on the sandpaper which was rough on the skin

 We also smelled things   They did not like the smell of vinegar but did like the lemon juice  They also smelled some of my vanilla body lotion,and some cloves

 Our choice of books today "Why can't I fly"

 We were given some safety rules by Safety Sam

 And their new favorite "Parts"

 Another busy day!!  I hope some of this sticks with them, but it was fun watching the expressions on their faces!!  A fund day and lots of learning.
You are wondering when we start our letters--why next week and letter "C" will be our first letter