C is for Candy Cane!

I am so excited to begin our Christmas preschool activities! I have lots of ideas, and I hope we have lots of time to complete all of our projects!

Today Lily and I did the following:

Practiced writing the letter "C" and talked about the sound it makes and how the word "candy cane" starts with "C."

We read the book "J" is for Jesus (a little confusing for her since we talked about "c" but it is a wonderful story that tells the meaning of the candy cane.

Made Rudolph candy cane ornaments by using hot glue (I did this part) to attach a red bead for a nose, black beads for eyes, and a pipe cleaner for antlers.

More to come tomorrow!

November - Week 2 - Day 2

I See A Turkey!

L.A.

I made a book for Lily today using some of the vocabulary from the preschool Dolche word list. I used clipart turkeys for the illustrations (printed in black and white and then colored in by me). Here are the words to the story:

Title: I See A Turkey!
p. 1 - I see a red turkey!
p. 2 - I see a blue turkey!
p. 3 - I see a yellow turkey!
p. 4 - I see one, two, three turkeys!

This book is simple but Lily enjoyed reading it. I am hoping to post a picture soon-my camera batteries are not working at the moment and need recharged!

Math

I'm going to have Lily help me passing out some gummy snacks (give one to each person, count how many there are, etc.)

Craft

We are going to make a fairly large turkey body out of construction paper and then use a paper chain for the legs. We're going to cut out feet to glue to the bottom of the paper chain. Again, sorry for no pictures! I know it would be so much easier to explain with a picture! I hope to post them soon.

November - Week Two - Day 1

Today was a really fun learning day!

Art/Language Arts



I cut out two turkeys from thick paper and Lily helped me glue on the eyes, legs and beak. I cut out a variety of "feathers" in different colors. I asked Lily to tell me one thing she is grateful for. She said "crayons" so I wrote it on a feather and glued the feather to the turkey. We are going to continue this activity for at least a week, gluing on one feather per day and writing what she is thankful for on that feather.

I wrote her name, the date, and her age on the back of her turkey. I'm planning on keeping this for a decoration for future Thanksgivings!

Math



I want Lily to start learning to read her numbers while she's counting so I decided to write the numbers 1-12 on the inside of muffin papers and then to draw the corresponding number of dots inside the papers. For example, on the first muffin paper I wrote "1" and then drew one dot. I put the papers in a muffin tin. Lily's job was to fill each of the 12 tins with the right number of beads. So for the first tin she saw the number "1" and one dot, so she knew to put in one bead. I really had to help her with this activity. I think after a while she will do just fine on her own, but for now be ready to provide lots of support!

Language Arts - continued



Lily is doing a great job learning her letters so I decided to add the letter "G" for "grateful" this week.

We made a "sound basket" and searched her playroom for objects to place inside the basket. We found grapes, a girl doll, a goat puzzle piece, a green crayon, a photo of Grandma, and more. She really liked looking for all of the objects.

We also practiced writing the letter "G."

November - Week One

I apologize for not getting this posted sooner. I am a week behind so I'm not going to be extremely descriptive here.

For history we really focused on the first three standards, using the language of time (today, tomorrow, yesterday), labeling days by function (ballet, church, AWANA), and using vocabulary such as next, before, soon, after, now and later.



If you look closely at the picture you can see the ballet slipper stickers we put on Monday's squares, the little pictures of our church we cut our for Sunday's squares, and the Puggles pictures we cut out for AWANA on Wednesdays. We have also marked special holidays and birthdays.

Lily LOVES the calendar we have up in the play room and we've added pictures to it so she knows Sunday is church day, Monday is ballet, and Wednesday is AWANA. We talk about how yesterday was Sunday, tomorrow is Tuesday, today is Monday, and we have ballet today, etc. The calendar has really improved her vocabulary. I highly suggest making or buying a calendar and using it every morning. It takes less that a couple of minutes to update and she is learning so much from it. If you consistently use a calendar and talk about the calendar then I think you will sufficiently teach these first three social studies standards.

For math we worked on counting. We counted little items, food, etc. We sang silly counting songs like (One little, two little, three little turkeys, four little, five little, six little turkeys, seven little, eight little, nine little turkeys...ten little turkeys going "Gobble, gobble! Gobble, gobble! Gobble, gobble!"

For language arts we worked on the letter "t" again and talked about turkeys and Thanksgiving. We read Thanksgiving books.

November

I apologize for the delay of getting these goals and activities up!

Here are the major goals/standards we are working on for November:

Math - Number, Number Sense and Operations

Week 1-

1. Count to 10 in the context of daily activities and play (e.g., number songs).
2. Touch objects and say the number names when counting in the context of daily
activities and play (e.g., counting cookies on a plate, steps on a set of stairs).

Week 2 -

3. Demonstrate one-to-one correspondece when couting objects (e.g., give one cookie
to each child in the group).
4. Determine "how many" in sets of 5 or fewer objects.

Week 3 -

5. Construct two sets of objects, each containing the same number of objects (e.g.,
5 crayons and 5 blocks).
6. Compare sets of equal, more, and fewer and uste the language of comparison
(e.g., more, fewer, and equal).

Week 4 -

7. Group and regroup a given set in the context of daily activities and play (e.g.,
5 blocks can be 2 blue and 3 green or 1 blue and 4 green).
8. Represent quantity using invented forms (e.g., child's marks to represent a
quantity of objects.)

Social Studies - History

1. Begin to use the language of time (e.g., day, night, yesterday, today, tomorrow).
2. Label days by function (e.g., school day, stay home day, swim day, field trip
day). For our family we use church, ballet class, AWANA, etc.
3. Begin to use or respond to the langage of time such as next, before, soon,
after, now and later as related to daily schedules and routines.
4. Share episodes of personal history from birth to present through personal
memorabilia or connected stories.
5. Arrange sequences of personal and shared events through pictures, growth charts
and other media.
6. Share personal family stories and traditions (e.g., photo album put together by
family members).

Pumpkins - Day 8

Math-Pumpkin Patch Subtraction

I found this poem at the following website: http://www.preschoolexpress.com.

You can use the little Brach's pumpkins for this, or a felt board like they suggest. We don't have a felt board so we're sticking to the candy!

FOUR LITTLE PUMPKINS
Four little pumpkins
I can see.
______picked one
That left three.

Three little pumpkins
With nothing to do.
______ picked one
And that left two.

Two little pumpkins
Out in the sun.
______ picked one
And that left one.

One little pumpkin
All alone.
It looked lonely
So I took it home. Jean Warren

L.A. - Alphabet

This really has nothing to do with pumpkins but I've been wanting to do this for a while and today's the day! When I subbed in a kindergarten room we helped the kids learn their letters with flash cards. As I've said in the past, I'm not a huge fan of flash cards because I love active learning, but flashcards can be useful every now and then. I'm going to find pictures on the web and make my own set to practice with my preschooler. She is starting to take in interest in learning the alphabet and the sounds the letters make, so that's why I'm choosing to do this now. Here's an example of the type of set I'm making:

A - apple
B - boy
C - cat
D - dog
E - elephant
F - fish
G - girl
h - hat
i - igloo
j - jump
k - kite
l- lion
m - mouse
n - needle
o - octopus
p - pear
q - quilt
r - rabbit
s - snake
t - tiger
u - umbrella
v - violin
x - x-ray
y - yo-yo
z - zebra

It is helpful to do different motions with some of the letters such as pretend to sew for "n for needle," and really jump for "j" for jump.

The way the kids learned the letters were by saying "A for apple, a for apple, ahh, ahh, ahh" (the last part is to say the sound the letter makes). Another example would be "B for boy, b for boy, buh, buh, buh."

I would recommend that you find out which type of alphabet flash cards your child's school disctrict will use, because it may be difficult to learn one whole set and then switch to another when they start school. If your child is use to saying "b for boy" and the school says "b for bear" it might make them a little confused.

Pumpkins-Day 7

Pumpkin Math!

I used a mixture of Brach's pumpkins and candy corn to do a variety of math activities with my preschooler.

A few ideas of how you can use this candy for math:

Capacity-Use pumpkins to fill various containers. See which container requires the most/least pumpkins.

Counting-line up pumpkins and have your child touch each pumpkin as they count them (this helps develop one-to-one correspondence).

Patterns-create a pattern using the candy such as pumpkin, candy corn, pumpkin, candy corn...and have your child extend the pattern. If this pattern is too each make it more diffcult like pumpkin, pumpkin, candy corn...

Graphing-give your child a handful of candy. Have your child sort and line the pieces up on a piece of large graph paper. Color in the graph.

Sorting-Hand your child a small amount of mixed candy pieces and let them practice sorting them into groups (all the candy corn in one pile and all of the pumpkins in the other).







Language Arts-Pumpkin Writing

OACS-L.A., Writing Process, 5. Dictate or produce "writing" to express thoughts.

You can choose from a whole variety of activities for this lesson. Here are a few ideas:

-Watch the Charlie Brown Halloween cartoon and write about what you would do if you saw the Great Pumpkin.

-Add sentences to photos from the trip to the pumpkin patch to make a scrapbook.

-Write a story about your visit (pretend or real) to the pumpkin patch.

....anything else your child might be interested in!

Craft-Pumpkin Jars



I saw this craft in Family Fun magazine. We took mason jars (accidentally just recycled all of our spaghetti and peanut butter jars right before this craft) and glued long strips of tissue paper to them. We cut out shapes (tying in math) to make a silly face. We used a real candle, but I would definitely suggest using a battery powere tea light to make this silly pumpkin jar light up. This would be a great craft to also do for Thanksgiving center pieces or for Christmas gifts. I will warn you that it can be a little frustrating for the preschoolers because the tissue paper rips easily when it's wet with the glue, and the preschoolers little fingers can get sticky easily, adding to the tearing paper problem. My little one loved this craft, even with the minor annoying parts!