Jeff Pre-K January

Week 16 (Jan. 7, 8, 9)

The kids had been showing an interest in learning about unusual shapes after I read a book with the word hexagon in it. So we listened to a hexagon song/video (thank you Youtube!). Each preschooler had their own hexagon and they counted the sides, and angles, and then we folded them up and cut out snowflakes! Perfect winter activity, even if we never see real snow here in Texas! 

Since we had to be inside for recess (because of the rain and bitter cold), we got out all the Mega Blocks. The boys build garages, and castles, and were completely into it. Thank goodness we have so many! 

Rescue Bots and baby dolls don't usually have a whole lot in common, unless you're in preschool. Then they go perfectly together. First the Rescue Bots were saving the baby dolls from one disaster or another, then they were the dads and the dolls were the moms, and they kept on going.

Our new classroom workbench has become a new favorite toy. The boys have been building and fixing and creating things all week! I love when playtime tricks them into doing really intricate fine motor skills.

Another team activity was this snowman game. Each team had a pile of hats with different numbers on them and they had to dress their snowman with the coordinating number of counters. That one-to-one correspondence is understood here as they see that the number is the same as the amount of objects. Once their pile of hats were finished, they were allowed to have more free play time, but both groups just wanted to repeat the game a few more times. Fine by me!

The addition of the trampoline was QUITE the exciting thing for the preschoolers. There is a net surrounding it, and the kids may only jump alone or with one other friend. I monitor closely too. Everyone is safe. There were piles of leaves on it when we decided to jump (it was too cold and rainy the other days), but the kids didn't mind. They were extra sleepy at the end of preschool, and I think you can guess why, check out these action shots!

Week 17 (Jan. 14, 15, 16)

Playing with salt dough is a favorite sensory activity for this class, especially when they get to create something that they can KEEP and bring home. They take a lot longer creating and building when they know it's going to be a special take home thing. We have been talking lots about animals that live in winter all the time, like penguins, and polar bears, but they really just wanted to build snowmen. They used plastic knives to cut their pieces just right.

The next day, after I baked them all, to turn them rock hard, they colored them. The details are adorable. Stick arms, and carrot noses.

The kids watched an online art class. It was SO perfect. The artist, and his son, talked us through how to paint a penguin. We set it up for small group time and the kids LOVED it! We will certainly be doing this again.

I did not help one bit, and these turned out SO SO GOOD! Really, I think they are gorgeous! What amazing little artists! I tried to find frames after realizing they were going to be keepers, but the paper was an odd size, so I'll leave the hunting to you.  Really though, look at these masterpieces!

We have been talking about "word families", which is different than sight words. Sight words don't always follow the rules when you try to sound them out, like 'as', that word should be spelled "az" if you spelled it the way it sounded.  Word family words are ones that are related in some way. The "at family" are words that all end in 'at', like 'cat', 'bat', etc. You get the picture. Those words are easy to sound out when you know what to do. Everyone loves when we do a new word family during circle time.

Our schoolroom is now rearranged too. The kids were surprised when they came on Friday to see the transformation. There have been even more changes since then, so Wednesday will be an interesting day to see if the new layout is as good as the old one.

Week 18 (Jan. 21, 22, 23)

Days when we have inside recess I usually put out some pop-up tents for the preschoolers. But I wanted to try something new, and luckily, they all loved it. I put pieces of tape on the floor with each letter of the alphabet on it. I did upper and lower case together, since that made it easier to figure out each letter (in case they were looking at the letter upside-down). We have been doing lots with letter sounds. Not just listening for the beginning letter sounds, but also the end. So I would call out a word and they would run to the beginning or ending letter sound that they heard. Sometimes it was very tricky and different kids went to different letters, which made for the perfect opportunity for peer teaching. The kids on the right letter would call out to the others, and repeat the letter and sound so they would come to the correct letter as well.

I try to mix up the groups when I call the preschoolers to the table or a certain area of the school room for "small groups". I want each pair or trio of kids to be a strong team. There are some obvious strong friendships, but I want them ALL to feel wanted and needed by each friend. Thankfully, they are all such sweet kids that they love each group I set up, and incidentally end up continuing to play with the groupings later on in the day.

The creativity in the group is pretty impressive. I love seeing them imagine and then bring to life what they are thinking about.

We played with "Flarp" and it was (not surprisingly) a fast favorite. It's gooey, but not sticky. It holds a shape, but then seems to melt in your hands. And, the BEST part, it makes silly noises when you push it back into the can that it came in. They were giggling and making quite the scene. It was SO funny.

When the preschoolers are finished with their lunches, they clean up their space and have "quiet reading time", which they have gotten better and better at. Quiet is a hard thing to come by, but at the end of the day, they slow waaaay down and really enjoy this time.

A just-for-fun worksheet I made for them was this ABC dragon maze. The dragons are friends and want to be together, so the top dragon has to follow the ABC's to get to his friend. I love it when after a silly simple idea of mine comes to light, I get 4 happy little boys asking for more and telling me how fun it was. It turned out to be a LOT more challenging that I thought it would be, but perhaps that's because I wrote it myself, instead of typing it and printing it out. Easy or not, they loved it.

Week 19 (Jan. 29, 30)

The snow globes, which we had talked about making for a loooong time, finally were made! Finding the tiny arctic animals was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I glued them into the lids before preschool, so when the kids came it would be ready for them. They added scoops of glitter and baby oil (it makes the snow flutter more slowly than water), then I glued the lids on, and they finished by painting the lids white.

One day later, they started to leak a bit, so I added more glue to seal the edges. It should be fine now. But they were all very worried that I wouldn't let them take their amazing creations home if they were still wet, so I set up a fan, and everyone was pleased. You can't come home from preschool empty handed. :)

Trying out this new game. I had one as a kid called "Perfection", but this double version is called "Scramble" and they loved racing the timer to see if they could make all the shapes fit before it popped up.  This is also a tricky way to work on their fine motor skills, shape recognition, and spatial awareness.

The block creations were amazing again this week. These preschoolers are so creative!

I found two great sight word games on Starfall.com that the kids learned to play this week. In the first game, they click a gear which says a word, then they search for the correct word from the list below.   Here is Jeff showing off his new found skills. He was very proud of himself. In the background, Logan and Ryan are working together on an alphabet magnet game. Teamwork is so good to see!

We tried another fun new game, "Silly Sentences". They got to choose three cards; one subject card, one action and one adverbial phrase or location card. Ryan is a great reader and when the kids couldn't guess what their silly sentence said based on the picture, Ryan would read it for them. They covered the whole table in silly sentences.

I set up the arctic in the sensory table outside. It was such lovely weather this week, I felt okay letting them play with ice. :)  One side had warm water (just for fun), and the other had ice. They played and played and played with this. I had no idea this would grab their attention as much as it did.