So impressive!

As we start to get settled in to a school-like rhythm, the preschoolers may amaze you already :)

We are practicing school ready skills, like sitting "criss-cross applesauce" with our eyes looking, our ears listening, our mouths quiet and our hands to ourselves showing we are ready to learn at circle time. We are raising hands tall and confidently to show we have something to share with the class. We are taking turns, lining up straight, being a line leader, working with a partner and even pouring our own cups of ice water from a pitcher at snack time.

What else is there to learn? Well we are working on phonics, pre-reading readiness and even some students are already learning reading skills. These students are learning how "every letter makes a sound" and then sounding out short 2 letter or 3 letter phonic words in our reading lab and then practicing it at school and at home on their letter rings. Our reading lab will grow as we add more letters, sounds and words. Today many students learned by sounding out m-a-p they could read the word "map." It was very exciting!

We also explored marbles, playdough and lite bright art which are all great fine motor skill practice, but shhh don't tell the preschoolers that!

We also had math lab where students had a job to organize mats from 1 through 6 in order and then place the correct group of animal math counters on eat mat to represent the number.

Last week for Spanish circle time, we read Eric Carle's "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" book in Spanish and did a flannel board activity.

Today during final circle time we read Eric Carle's "The Mixed Up Chameleon" story. Afterwards, the each student had a turn to choose between 2 written words to put up on the pocket chart. So for example, a picture of a fox was on the pocket chart, then a student was asked to choose between the written words: fox or giraffe. I was impressed how most of the time the children chose the correct word. They sometimes explained they heard the first sound of the word or knew one word was longer than the other. A few times, they shrugged at how they knew the correct choice with a sweet smile. It was a really neat activity.

Our letter of the day today, was "m" as in monkey. Please check out the you tube link to the kvetonpreschool page to listen to the m sound. I also added a video clip of the "hola amigo song," the "red is rojo song," and the "days of the week" song.

http://www.youtube.com/user/kvetonPreschoolpage

a new link

http://pbskids.org/lions/games/

a new link under my favorites... a great online game topractice the lowercase phonic with a multiple choice of words where the child listens and then picks the phonic sound to go with a word that starts with the same phonics sound.

So far, we have practiced "a" and today we added "p"

If you wish to do a craft at home, you can have your child make a
lowercase "a" ( http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/category/lowercase-a )
or lowercase "p" ( http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/category/lowercase-p )

As you are out and about try coming up with words that start with the a sound: apple, alligator, am, at, ask, ant, etc... do the same for the "p" like penguin, peacock, pajamas or pizza.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVseA_Q9BtI


We will be adding some color songs next week: jump start with red!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z42JXHZbTU0

process learning - an art and a skill

Sometimes, just the process of learning is fun. Students in general enjoy cutting, gluing and art just because it is inherently fun. While doing such tasks they work on fine motor skills and feel a sense of pride, independence and accomplishment.

Students completed the work which they started at the Open House and the first day of preschool. They had met new friends and worked on the skill of how to make friends by finding a classmate with the same color yarn and gluing it onto a poster board. All the colors of the rainbow had been reperesented.

The first day they started with a single color whole piece of paper. each one cut it into pieces small enough to fit it in a ziploc sandwich bag. Today they glued the pieces onto another piece of paper.

We read a favorite story, the Rainbow Fish and talked about how friends share. We practiced sharing and even used puzzle pieces to pass around the table and then put them together to spell out the word: f-r-i-e-n-d-s

During outside time, we sang ABCs to help take turns and practiced using words to show respect when asking for turns.

Tools to explore color

Students got to explore color using a prism, a flashlight and white paper. They enjoyed making rainbows and we got our fill of "oohhs" and "aahhs" as students remarked in wonder at the rainbows that seemed to appear magically.

For more color mixing fun, students tried on glasses with lens that can be overlapped to create a world of red, yellow, blue, orange, green and/or purple. Many were very savvy as to which colors they needed to created the color they desired.

Finally, they observed a colorful disk, colored in sections and predicted if they would see the separate colors if the wheel was spun.

Exploring color - TINT

One activity today involved talking about tint... a color + white = a tint

Students painted with red and white to make pink or with blue and white to make light blue. They were challenged to have areas of more color and less color by adding more white. As I encouraged last time, we also worked on using the entire paper.

An exciting first day!

Today was a very exciting day. It was the first day of preschool for 2011-2012 school year. Together we are starting a very important stage of your child's development. Your children are wonders; filled with curiosity, delight and energy. They were eager participants today and I want to start the year by thanking you for allowing me to be a key role in shaping how they feel about school and learning.

Routine:

*Every preschool time, children will be practicing their writing.

*I will also meet individually with your child to introduce the phonic sound of the day. This sound will be written as a lowercase letter and will be added to your child's letter ring. Please practice it at home a few times during the week with your child. If it is important to you that your child learn the phonics he/she will need practice at home. I also have a you tube page to help with practicing the phonic and under my favorite links http://www.youtube.com/user/kvetonPreschoolpage#p/u/9/qFXLRVIh1fo,

there is a link to a quick phonic sound page. http://homepage.mac.com/ashleya/villa/spaldingmp3.html

(note if there is more than one phonic sound for a letter I am teaching the first sound given which is the most common phonic sound, unless you have told me individually you wish for me to teach your child individually multiple phonics at one time)

When practicing the sound, say it together 5 times. If your child still seems interested, use the Montessori 3 period lesson to reinforce and teach this concept http://www.montessorimom.com/three-period-lesson/ (I also have this information in an earlier blog post on MY blog)

* Read at home. I will send a pre-reader book home for you to read with your child. Remember to keep reading and phonics positive and fun. If your child is struggling try again another time or another day when he/she is ready.

* Other learning that takes place EVERY preschool time:

calendar: month, day, year, days of the week.

ABC chant with ASL sign

Spanish

Perceptual Motor Skills Development

School skills: lining up, raising hand, taking turns, cleaning up, washing hands

Now on to some of the special parts of today. We began our color theme. Students learned about the color indigo and how scientists use the word violet when talking about a rainbow's colors.

In lab time, each student completed a math/art activity on the easel mixing the primary colors to result in a secondary color. Other students used a muffin tin to find matches of colored objects and gave each pair a spot. They sorted color-coded clothes pins and used fine motor skills to clip them and then unclip them around a container. They sorted magnetic color images in a book about color. They used 7 colors from the crayon box to color a paper full of all the rainbow colors. They also began a project where the first task was to use a scissors to cut a piece of construction paper into pieces so it would fit in a sandwich size ziploc bag.

During our motor skills time we played Simon Says. Each child had colored craft sticks where Simon told them to put the red stick on your head or the orange stick on your knee. One child suggested Simon tell everyone to balance on one foot and put the green stick on your thigh of the foot that was in the air. Another suggested to balance the blue stick on your back and pretend you were a puppy.

Then after washing hands, the children had time for a snack, individual phonic time and the ever popular playtime. Some went grocery shopping, others took babydolls for walks, and some played at the train table. I heard children inviting a new friend to play with them and others making plans for a future playdate at their house.

We got back to circle time for our Spanish time, singing our "Hola, amigo" song and our color song in Spanish. Children listened to book called "Color." They all took turns saying ALL seven colors of the rainbow to earn a rainbow sticker. Finally we ended with a silly game of colors that can easily be played in the car or grocery shopping... it goes something like this: apples are red, strawberries are red, stop signs are red, the sky is red, NO!!!! haahaa then the sky is BLUE! blueberries are blue, the pool is blue, a blue jay is blue, pumpkins are blue, NO!!!! haahaa etc!

Next week will explore color with some fun glasses, a prism and light and more! I can hardly wait :)

The first day of preschool for 2011-2012 is almost here! Are you as excited as I am?!

Monday is our open house and then our official first day is Tuesday. We will start the year with a color theme.

We will learn about ALL the colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.

We will explore how the primary colors: red, yellow, blue can be mixed to make green, orange and purple. We will also learn how adding white is a "tint" and adding black makes it a "shade."

We will use a prism and light in a science discovery on how rainbows are created. We will sing some songs about color and read some beautiful books about the topic as well.

During Spanish time, we will also be singing some color songs as well as listening to a favorite story on the flannel board, Brown Bear by Eric Carle in Spanish.

see you back in August!

We finished up an exciting theme exploring water/oceans and change.

Thank you parents for allowing me to be your child's teacher. It was a joy to watch their wonder when the blue bead floated in the salt water, or to see them filled with amazement when their sea creatures grew in the water. In science, they learned about states of matter, reversible change and buoyancy. In art, they practiced using the whole canvas, painting with paint brushes on an easel and stamping. In Math, we practice one to one number correspondence (1-6), writing the numbers, working on a variety of puzzles, and even geometric tangrams. In Reading we learned phonics s, a, m, p, t, n. We also started BOB books pre-readers. We read many stories including Commotion in the Ocean, Rainbow Fish, Max the Minnow and a nonfiction kids Ocean book. We sang the Slippery Fish song, Row your Boat and clapped in the Sailor Went to Sea song. In writing, we worked on stencils, tracing letters and even writing in the sand and pouring beans. We also worked on days of the week, saying the date and a morning message. We sang in Spanish our Hola Amigo song. We practiced our ABC / ASL phonic chant. We practiced, balancing, catching, landing and jumping on 2 feet and other motor skills.

We practiced raising our hands, lining up in a straight line, washing our hands before we eat, serving ourself our own snack and pouring our own drink (and even clearing our place!).

I look forward to our year starting back up in August!!!

Outside Playtime

Every class we have a structured outside time. During this time, I have a perceptual motor skills curriculum. These are basically skills that are age appropriate that children can learn to enhance coordination. A few examples of specific skills we worked on this week were catching a ball using hands and not your body and jumping from and landing on 2 feet. Sometimes we teach concepts, like moving across the grass forwards and "in reverse" to help understand the concept of reversible change. Or moving with holding hands, like a liquid; moving all over the grass like a gas, or not moving at all huddled close together like the solid molecules of ice. we also learn group games - like when we played "Octopus, octopus, may we cross your ocean?"

We also have a short free play time. Children may play on the swing set, dig in the sandbox, scooter around the path, pedal around on the big wheels, jump individually on my small trampoline, play with the megablocks, or even write with chalk or play with bubbles.

Exploring Buoyancy - will it float?

Last week, we discovered adding salt to water can affect buoyancy and even make a blue bead that sunk in water float in salt water.

This week, we explored clay. Could we make it float? If we did not change the water, was there a way to change the object to make it float?

Students saw the clay sink to the bottom. Then they were asked to test out if they could make it sink. One clever student said "float like a boat." Another tried to flatten the clay to make it float. Others surprised me with their determination, breaking the clay into little bits to see if maybe smaller pieces would float. Another wowed me with her imagination, deciding maybe her clay was a submarine and therefore at the bottom of the ocean.

I demonstrated then how to flatten my clay, make edges pinching corners and then carefully placed my clay in the water. It DID float. Students eagerly returned to work on making their own boats of clay float on the water. One child further tested her boat's buoyancy by placing a few pieces of clay in her boat to see if the extra weight would make it sink.

It was so much fun to see the children very engaged in the activity. Hopefully in the end, they learned a little bit about buoyancy.

Oceans have salt water

We continued to explore water and oceans today.

In art lab, students worked on adding sea creatures to their ocean painting and making the letter "t" with a paint brush on an easel. In writing lab, they traced star and fish stencils and carefully and with much precision and concentration they filled in their tracings with lines as a pre-writing skill.

For science lab the students learned that ocean water is salt water. We had 2 large bowls of water. They poured one cup of salt into a container, poured it into one of the bowls and then mixed it in. This bowl became our "ocean" salt water. They sampled the water with a tasting spoon. Then we had many items to explore. They felt each one and made a hypothesis (an idea you can test) about if it would sink or float. We took turns placing each item into the water and then into the sea water to check our predictions. One item, a blue craft bead was extra special - almost magical really! They watched as it sunk in the water bowl. In the salt water bowl though, it floated! We talked about how items floated better in salt water and introduced the word buoyancy. We will review this concept again in another exciting science lab yet to come.

Then we placed the items that floated in one basket: a wooden block, a craft stick (like a Popsicle stick) a feather, a Lego, a sponge, a plastic stencil-ruler tracer.

Items that sunk went into another basket: a quarter, a shell, a rock, a plastic gingerbread cookie from the kitchen center.

The special blue bead did not go in either basket since it sunk in the water but floated in the salt water.

Outside we played "Octopus, octopus may we cross your ocean?" They also played with moon sand today in the outside moon sand table.

At end circle time, we saw row, row, row your boat with partners and I introduced the hand clapping song "a sailor went to sea" Here is a video clip of Gabriella & Savannah trying to do the "Sailor went to sea" song.

Reversible change, states of matter - they "get" it!

We have been studying change. Well, reversible change to be specific. In our first science lab, the students independently used food color to dye water and then poured the water into ice cube trays. The trays were set outside, inside the house, in the refrigerator and in the freezer. Next class, they observed the ice cube trays and colored a sheet which helped them explain their conclusions. They had also put sea creatures into tubs of water and then next class, observed with amazement and delight that they changed- grew quite large. We took them out of the water to see if they would change again.

So that brings us to today. The children excitedly noted that the sea creatures did change - they got smaller, changing back to their original size. We re-discussed the ice cube trays and how water could change into a solid (ice) or back to water or even evaporate into the air (gas). During our movement time, we practiced being molecules. As a solid we huddled so close we couldn't move. As a liquid we held hands in a circle and moved a little bit together changing shape ever so slightly. Then we warmed up and broke apart and ran throughout the grass taking up lots of space like a gas molecule. We repeated this a few times since water has "reversible" change.

Then we lined up on one side of the yard and had a "race" across the yard. Children listened and followed directions such as forward, reverse, freeze until they all reached the other side.

During snack time, talking more about change and the concept of reverse one child mentioned we all used to be babies. I asked if we could "reverse and be a baby again?" They all laughed and one verbalized that we did not have reversible change. It was a great moment!

a sound

here is a video clip of the a sound:

m sound

Here is a video clip of the m sound:

S sound

Here is a video clip of the s sound and the ASL sign: