Dr Seuss Week

March is Dr. Seuss month. His birthday is on March 2nd and so whole month of March is all about him. However we stuck to having a week on him :D We read a lot of his books- luckily I had 6 of them on tape so we listened to them. My kiddos love listening to books on tape and these have music and sound effects to go with the words. 

Rhyming Words:
Since Dr. Seuss books are all about rhyming we listened for rhyming words. After we finished reading the book, we tried to recall rhyming pairs and write them on chart. We did this throughout the week, every time after we read the book.

Rhyming Sentences:
Let students think of rhyming pairs and help them make sentences. As this is new to them, it will require some probing to get them thinking. 

 
Goldfish Graphing:
A fun graphing activity. Provide students with a handful of Rainbow Goldfish and the graphing sheet. Students will sort the fishes according to the color and color in corresponding boxes. 

The graphing sheet is from Oopsey Daisy and can be found HERE

One fish two fish game:
A counting game, this is a fun game to play that goes with Dr. Seuss's One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. I found the game on Mama Miss website and can be found HERE. This game can be used for color recoginition, counting, one to one correspondence or addition. We used it for adding by rolling 2 dies and putting equivalent fishes in our bowl and finding the total. 

Foot Measurement:
This idea is from Oopsey Daisy's Mommy school packet S is for Seuss. It goes with the Foot Book. We traced students foot on a paper and gave them unifix cubes to measure their foot. They wrote how many unifix cubes long their foot was and compared whose was the longest in the group. 

Puzzles:
I created clothes pin game to go with our theme. It can be downloaded from HERE.  
In Pre-K students should be able to number order upto 10. So I created puzzles that require the kiddos to put them in number order to put the puzzle together. 
Horton Puzzle
Lorax Puzzle
Thing 1 and 2 Puzzle
I also found green egg and ham clipart by searching on google. I wrote numbers on the eggs and put dots on the ham. Kiddos had to match the eggs and ham. 

Word Wall Words:
WE created simple words that we chose from Dr. Seuss's book. Click HERE to download them. 

Of course we had a Wacky Wednesday and Crazy Sock Friday. Made the whole week fun :))


Until next time,

Cheers =) 

Valentine's week

Our theme was "All about Love" Our activities rotated around "Hearts"

Story Retelling:
We read the book "Marley Looks for Love" and students had to retell a scene from the story by drawing a picture.

Student Work

Student Work

Heart Addition:
I punched out some hearts to teach addition to my friends in small groups. This was our first time doing addition. I started by asking them to count hearts I placed in the middle. Then I tell them I am going to add 1 more and ask them to count again. I explained to them that they had just done addition and showed them the addition sentence on white board. We did a round of working with a partner and an individual round.

Student Work

Student work

Valentine Number Match:
This a cute little matching game that students can play individually. You can download it from Confessions of a Homeschoolers Blog by clicking HERE

Valentines Flower Number Match:
Another game we used for our independent table is from this free download on Teachers Pay Teachers.           

                                                                   

Alphabet Match and Sound Recognition:
PreKinders has this wonderful Alphabet mats to use for Letter matching on their Valentine Theme page. She has Upper and Lower case mats as well one for beginning sound match. They are pretty with cute little hearts. 


                                   

The Heart- Emergent Reader Book:
I also downloaded this Book from Pre-K Pages. It is a cute little book with simple sentences that we choral read. It uses sight words the and is and is on colors making it easier for kids to read on their own once you have read it together. (Scroll down to the bottom, the book is a freebie in the printable at the bottom.)

Ofcourse we had to have our class Valentine's Exchange a cute little party. Fabulous time after missing school for a week due to snow!!

Until next time,

Cheers =)

Dental Health

February is Dental Health Month. Through out the week we talked about importance of brushing and take care of your teeth and mouth. Following are some of the activities we did.

Teeth Counting Game:
(For small group)


This idea is from From the Hive

We made mouth using pink cardstock, cutting it in oval and folding it in half. We drew 10 circles on each half (Children have 20 teeth). The game was to roll the dice, read the number, put equivalent marshmallow teeths on their mouth mat.

Find the "T" words. 

(for Large groups)

This idea is also from From the Hive

 

We printed some words that begin with /T/ sound and some that did not. Students had to identify the picture and then tell if it begun with the /T/ sound or not. We glued those pictures on the Tooth, the others were discarded. Click HERE for the pictures we used.

Brush Brush Game:
(For small group)


This game is from Pre-K Pages

Brush Brush Game. Picture from Pre-K Pages

This game could be used to play with sight words, letters or numbers. We did alphabet recognition. We took a teeth clipart, expanded it to full page and printed off 5 copies to make 5 different bingo like mats and made copies of each of the mat. This way each child in the small group would have a different mat. I am sorry I do not have pic of it :(( I promise will become better about it :) We printed small teeth and hand wrote alphabets on them and Brush! Brush! on 3 cards. They sang Brush your teeth by Raffi if they picked that card.

Counting Cavities:

(For Small group-Independent, Math Center)

Idea from Sorting Sprinkles

Counting Cavities, Picture from Sorting Sprinkles

We took tooth clipart and printed 20 teeths. On each tooth, I made cavities (small black circles) and laminated them. Students had to count the cavities and write the number on it using Expo Marker. I also provided them with copies of number as they are still learning how to write them. 

Sorting Sprinkles also has a link to "Brushing Your Teeth" sequencing. This is another large group activity we did for students to understand sequencing, how activities happen in a certain order.

Good or Bad for my Teeth Sorting

( For Large Group or Small Group)

Idea from Creative Preschool Resources

The blog linked about has PDF file of food items which can be sorted into good or bad for teeth. We created 2 tooths-one happy, one sad. Then we looked at each food item and decided if it was good or bad for our teeth. When we came to citrus foods, we talked about how it has something called acid and it removes the enamel layer of our tooth. 

Whose smile is it Book.

 (for Phonological Awareness)

Again I am not sure where I saw this idea and apologies to the person who originally shared this for being unable to mention you here. But we do thank you for this awesome little book. Click students pictures, just their smile and teeth. I got them printed and glued them on sized construction paper. Put all the pictures together to make a book. I then wrote "This smile belongs to _________." During PA time, we looked at the pictures, and kids immediately guessed who smile it was. I then wrote the names. Then we choral read the book.

Ms. A. created a Smile Book too. For her book, she just cut out the mouth area and in cute lip shape :)) I forgot to click a picture of her book.... but it looked super cute!

For Phonological Awareness, we also did a poem, "Brush Brush Your Teeth" from Alaboon. It is sung to Row row your boat. It is a super cute song and Pre-K 4 enjoyed singing it and we sang it everyday twice a day ;)

Ms. S from Pre-K 3 happened to have a video on brushing your teeth, so that was something exciting to watch. The video was by Colagate and is for children. Students loved watching  Dr. Rabbit who showed the right steps for brushing teeth.

Dental Word Wall Words-Click HERE

This is all for this week.

Until next time,

Cheers!

The Mitten Reenactment

 In Pre-K, "Retelling a story" is an important standard. Retelling can be done by simply recalling scenes from the story, or drawing a picture or reenactment using props. We decided to reenact "The Mitten".

The Mitten by Jan Brett is a very good book to read and is perfect if your theme of the week is "Winter". It is a story about a little boy who looses a mitten in snow and some animals make that mitten their home until the mitten stretches and pops. It is a cute little story about winter animals trying to get ready for their long sleep! There are few versions of this title.... and most of them have similar animals. 

We got our masks from Jan Brett's website . All you have to do is print them, laminate for longevity and use them. Pre-K 4 kiddos enjoyed it..... We did not have Jan Brett's version. Our version had just 5 animals, so we had to do this reenactment several times in order to give everyone a chance. 

Our version book came with CD. So we listened to the story during large group time. At this time we retold story by sequencing the events in the story. 

Later in the day, we did reenactment. We sat in a circle, and the 5 masked animal friends waited while Ms. J read the story.

As the animals were called, they got into the mitten (Blanket for us).

 We insisted they hold their masks up.... just for fun!! and the picture too ;)

As the mitten popped.. all the animals jumped out of the blanket and went back to their spots.

Kiddos loved waiting for each animal to get under the blanket and then for all 5 to pop out.... for them that was the most exciting part. However, 5 rounds later...... all kiddos could retell the story :D

A simple thing like reenactment makes learning so much fun. Lucky for us it was super cold that day, so this was perfect activity to keep us busy during our outside play time. 

Besides masks, using puppets or pictures glued on popsicle sticks make retelling fun!!

Until next time,

Cheers =)

Instant Snow Experiment

The past week one of our small group activity was Instant Snow Experiment. The idea behind this experiment was to understand how adding water changed the powder into something new. Now ideally Insta Snow by Steve Spangler would be ideal...as the reaction is instant and the powder actually doubles very quickly. However, the brand I got was not Insta Snow...I bought mine from a local teacher supply store. Like I said, our key was for them to understand how adding water changed the original substance. 

For this experiment I had:
Instant Snow Powder
2 clear plastic cups ( 1 with water and 1 empty)
2 Bowls (1 lined with paper towel and the other empty)
Spoon
Measuring cup-1/4 cup
Recorder (optional)
Recording sheets - 1 per student. 

In the empty bowl we scooped out some powder for them to touch and see. I encouraged them to think about the color, what it looked like, how it felt. At this point I give them few seconds to draw out what the powder looked like before we added the water. After they drew, I asked them to describe what they drew. I wrote what they told me under the picture.

Next, I told them we were going to mix this powder with water. This snow powder required mixing 1/8 tsp of powder in 1/4 cup of water and stirring. I added a little more than 1/8 tsp so that the snow would form faster. (1/8tsp required for a longer stirring). 

As you start stirring, the water starts to slush up...

 
At this point, I ask them if they see any change.....most of them said they could see something floating in there.

As you keep stirring, this thing becomes thicker and thicker. However, this stuff did not turn into snow...it remained more like ice :(

So we scooped it out in the bowl... again I encouraged them to think about what happened to the powder, the color, and the texture. I asked them to draw how the powder looks after adding water and wrote what they told me under the picture. 

Some of the things they told me were:
Before: "It looks like salt", "It is crunchy", "It is white and soft", "It looks like soap powder."

After: Most of the students understood "the powder has become big", "It looks like Ice", "It is still white", "It looks like frost that we scrap from the car in the morning" 

Overall, the students could observe the change and see how adding water changed the powder. So I thought it was a pretty good experiment. However Insta Snow would have been more fun! (will be more proactive next year :D)

Our recording sheet was a simple sheet that Ms. A made and we made copies. We did this activity in small groups. So I used a recorder to record the whole conversation/experiment so I could go back and make notes to see who understood the concept.

Recording sheet:

Successful week for us :))

Until next time,

Cheers :)

Hershey Kisses 100 day Counting

Today was 100th day of school for us :)) It was exciting....

If you teach Pre-K in Georgia, you know that technically students are not required to know numbers beyond 20... however as a substitute I have seen teachers try and teach students numbers beyond 20 and students understanding the concept. Well so since this is my first year teaching Pre-K or celebrating 100th day of being in school... I really did not plan much or think of it much. 

We read 100th Day of School 

 

Next we talked about how what 100 looks like and that it is a big number. I pulled out my Hundreds Chart to show them how we start at one and count until 100. We talked about how long it would take to say all those numbers. 

Our Large group activity was Hershey Kisses Hundred's chart -idea from Kindergarten Happenings  I was going to make the hundreds chart, could not get to it. Instead bought hundreds chart from teacher supply store ($2.99) I had some colored circle stickers, wrote numbers on them and stuck them on the Kisses. 

 

We sat in a circle on the carpet and I called 2 students at one time to come to the carpet. Each one picked a candy and told us what numbers they had.... since my friends are still learning to recognize numbers 1-20, it was hard for them to tell what number it is, however they can recognize individual numbers- like 6 and 4 in 64 ( at this point I tell them this is number "64").

 

 Some of my friends could find the numbers easily and some needed the extra help. However, trying to get 21 Pre-K kiddos to sit is not an easy task. Infact after each one took turn, one of my friends asked "are we going to fill in all the numbers?" (my kiddos crack me up all the time). So we decided to stop. 

 After 24 turns, we were done. It was fun for them.... BUT there is a reason Pre-K kids sit at the carpet for only 15-20 mins a stretch!! Overall, the idea of Kisses with numbers was exciting for them, 100's chart however, too big for them. 

Happy 100th Day if you had yours today :))

Cheers =)

Fake Snow In Sensory Table

This is Winter themed Sensory Table idea.... super easy... not to hard on pocket.... Absolutely doable... whether 22 kids are playing with it...or just 1.... It is a wonderful idea. 

So I got the idea from Modern Parents Messy Kids via Pinterest!

All you need is:

2 boxes of cornstarch
1 can of foaming shaving cream

if making at home then a container or box that will hold it. 

 

Just dump the cornstarch in the container (sensory table in my case) and spray the shaving cream over it. Mix it (if you are doing this with your child at home, letting them mix would be fun. I just couldn't have 22 kiddos wanting to mix).

 While I was doing this Ms. S could not just watch.... so she started to help me (she was as excited about it) :D As you start mixing, it might feel it is not mixing, but keep working... it feels soft and crumbly. 

When I told my piglets about the fake snow....they were sooo excited. My sensory table can only have 2 friends at a time playing in it. We are on day 3 of using it and they love it. 

They have been scooping and trying to make sand castles out of it :))

Yes it holds its shapes pretty well.. just like Snow :))

SUCCESS!!! 

It is the best indoor snow experience to provide in a classroom or home I think. I hope it last for all my 22 piglets to play with it. I have another box of cornstarch and shaving cream to mix in, just in case ;) 

Until Next time,

Cheers =)