Rhyme time!

Nothing takes you back to those days of being a kid like reciting nursery rhymes all week!  We started the week with rhymes such as Little Miss Muffet, The Three Little Pigs, and Old Mother Hubbard. 

For a math center, we decided to help Old Mother Hubbard find her dog a bone.  To do this, we took turns rolling a die and then the dog puppets each got to pick out that many bones.  Which ever dog had the most bones at the end was the winner for that round. 

For a science center, we had a fan that was turned on high, and the fan represented the "Big Bad Wolf" from the Three Little Pigs.  We had different objects such as feathers, leaves, pom pom balls, bouncy balls, marbles, and tissue paper and we put them in front of the fan to see which objects could be blown away.  The children loved reciting "I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your leaf down" (or whatever object they were holding) and they watched whether the objects were carried away by the wind or not. 

For a reading center, we had sentence srips with the rhyme "Little Miss Muffet".  The pocket folders had the whole rhyme written out, and then I had a second copy of the rhyme that was cut up.  The children looked at the words and found their match and placed the word over-top of the sentence strips.  This was a great word and letter recognition activity.  You can also do this by replacing some of the words with pictures of the word and have the children match them up as well.

We also built the "Three Pigs" houses out of brick (blocks), sticks (craft sticks), and straw (drinking straws) to see which one was more sturdy and if we could blow them down or not.  The brick houses were definately the strongest.

And, for a take home craft, we recreated their houses too!

The latter part of the week, we focused on rhymes such as "Hickory Dickory Dock", "Baa Baa Black Sheep", and "Jack and Jill".  We also talked about opposites.  For a craft, we made a black sheep like the one in "Baa Baa Black Sheep" and its opposite, a white sheep.  We made them using our handprints stamped with black and white paint, and added cotton balls to make them soft and furry. 

For a sensory center, we played with our "pails" in the water table and pretended to be Jack and Jill.  The object of this center was to fill our pail with water, and as we did we also picked up letters of the alphabet that were also in the water.  I had a letter strip of each letter of the alphabet that the children would then take their letters over to and match them up until they had found the whole alphabet. I put holes in the bottom of the pails (cups) so that the water would leak out (just like Jack's water dumps out when he tumbles) and they could see what letter they had caught.

We played with flash cards that helped us learn about opposites.

For another letter recognition center, we talked about straight and curvy lines.  When showing the children how to properly write their letters, I refer to the lines as long straight lines or short straight lines, and long curvy lines, and short curvy lines.  For this center, they said the letter, and placed it in its category according to the lines that make up the letter.

In honor of "Hickory Dickory Dock" I made a math center with a clock and some mice.  As the mice ran up the clock, they found the cheese that had the same amount of holes in it as the number they had on their belly, and the children matched the mouse with their cheese.  Great for both counting skills and number recognition.  I made it more challenging by not putting them in the correct order.

For some free activities at home, start saving up those bottle caps. You can do many things with them including writing the letters in your name like the kids did at school. 

Our stars of the week this week were:

Evy!

and Mark!

It is so fun to learn new things about our friends at school!

Happy Birthday to Kynlee this weekend!  She didn't want to smile for the camera (taken while we were singing to her), but she is so cute that we didn't need the smile :)  Happy #5 Kynlee!

Let's Make Music!

And music we did make! We marched and sang and banged and clanked all week. We even made our own paper plate tambourines to bring the music home to you. But, we didn’t only PLAY music, we learned a lot about it too.


For a math center, we reviewed the numbers 12-15. To do this, we played the chimes below.

These chimes were numbered 12, 13, 14, and 15. We had the music for “Mary had a Little Lamb” and as we hit each chime in the order the song displayed, out came the song. The children did really well with this activity. You could even tell what song they were playing! They did this both in teams, and individually.

We also made mason jar music. I first showed them how when the jars are empty, they all make the same sound. But, as we fill each jar with a different level of water, they will all make a different sound.

Of course, for a dramatic play center, we each had the opportunity to play many different instruments, including the drums, triangles, cymbals, keyboard, bells, tambourines, rhythm sticks, maracas, and guitars. We even made our own marching band.  Our keyboard, like most keyboards, has the option to record your song and then play it back to yourself.  The kids loved making up their own song and replaying it for their friends!



We talked about an expressive form of dancing called feather dancing and how music and dance can really be personalized. We even made our own expressive music notes with tissue paper.

To practice our letters this week, we took our magnifying glasses and became super sleuth detectives. We displayed 3-letter words, one letter and a time and tried to guess the word at the end by blending the 2 sounds.
                                     

For a fine motor activity, we practiced tying our shoes this week. We started from the bottom up and even laced them.

We practiced our numbers 16-20 with our playdough mats. We made playdough snakes and covered the numbers with them, then we counted to that number by placing a bean on each of the stickers on each sheet.

This week we spelled the word hop , and continued to count by 2’s.

I’m excited to start our Star of the Week activity next week and can’t wait to see your children talk about themselves and their families!

We love pets!

This is Finny. Finny is our new class pet. The preschoolers named him, and they love him. Finny is a Beta fish, so he breathes air. He loves to rest on his “hammock” which is a fake leaf suctioned to the side of the bowl. He sits on our book shelf with a lamp over his head to keep him warm.


What a fun week about pets. We talked about what pets we have at our homes, and we now have one at school. Some of the centers we did this week to go along with our pets theme were:

For a drama center, we played veterinarian. The kids were able to doctor their pets with bandages, band-aids, tools, and shots.

We also practiced our sequencing with our dog manipulatives. They even counted all 50 of them!

In the sand table, I had some dog bones hidden, and the children got out their digging paws and dug for the bones. The bones were 4 different colors so once they found them, they sorted them by color. We also sang “Doggy, doggy, where’s your bone?” while we looked for them.

For a math center, we had a brown dogs that were missing their spots. I had dogs that had numbers from 1-10 labeled above them and the children were to color that many spots on their dogs. (Another printout from prekinders.com)

For a craft we made shrinky dinks! The children colored their dog and cat shrinky dink and then we took them up to the oven for baking. Here is a comparison of the before and after on size. The kids enjoyed watching them shrivel up in the oven.

Our Tues. and Thurs. class (M-W was off for the holiday) also made this cute dog puppets.


We talked about what different sounds animals make, and what the difference is between a domesticated animal, and a wild animal. We decided that we don’t want to have a lion for a house pet. :)

We are continuing to practice the correct form to hold our pencil, and practiced writing our letters. We spelled the words paw and cat this week. We also started to count by 2’s!

Another song we learned this week was sung to the tune of “The Farmer and the Dell”

One verse that we sang goes as follows:
The cat says Meow
The cat says Meow
She likes to purr
And run and play.
The cat says meow.

Each child went around the circle and told about their pets at home, and we sang a verse for each child’s pet.