It's Ellie Elephant!

This week went by very quickly! I can't believe we are already 5 weeks into the school year!

Here are a few pictures from our adventures with Ellie Elephant!
On Mondays (during Circle Time) I introduce the animal/signal/sound we will focus on for that week. While the children are playing in centers I will work individually or with a small group talking about the letter again, the animal, its sound. We will look at how the letter is formed and depending on the ability of the child we may look at some words that have that sound in them or the child may practice identifying the letter. I encourage them to take the paper home and share with their family the sound and signal of our weekly animal. If the sound is an easy one to detect(and again if the child is ready) I will encourage them to look for words at home that have that sound in them. It takes time for a child's ear to be trained to hear certain sounds in words.

Here the children are exploring an egg. We looked at a book about a duck coming from an egg. We talked about what might come out of a chicken egg. Then I gave them each an egg and a magnifying glass. We talked about what the shell looked like. Then they cracked their egg into their tray so they could examine it. Afterwards we made a venn diagram write down their observations.

We used the leftover eggshells(plus the ones you all sent in....THANKS!) to break into small pieces and cover an "e".

Ellie Elephant's signal is her grabbing a peanut with her trunk and putting it in her mouth. So when we signal /e/ our arm is the trunk and we pretend we are bringing a peanut to our mouth while saying /e/. We did some math work using peanuts as counters.

Since we were on the number 5 I introduced 5 pennies = 1 nickel. Here they are looking for different letters and numbers on their coins.

The children created their own "Ellie Elephants" using paper plates. We talked about how to get the color grey by mixing black and white together.

The finished Ellie...complete with a peanut!

learning objectives: begins to demonstrate part of and whole with real objects; enjoys listening to and responding to books; becomes increasingly sensitive to the sounds of spoken words; counts concrete objects to five or higher; shares observations and findings with others through pictures, discussions, or dramatizations

Scholastic Book Orders

I have set up an account so you can place your Scholastic Book Club order on-line. You may still order them using the paper form and giving me a check. After all orders are placed the books will be shipped to the preschool and I will distribute them when they arrive. Our class gets points for every order that we can use towards free books for the classroom!

Click here to get started.
Our class username is : learningadventures08
password: preschool

I am going to create a link to this post on the side so if you decide to place an order you can locate our username and password from there.

Thanks!

fun with dee-dee deer

This week I didn't seem to take as many pictures as I normally do! We had a great week filled with lots of learning opprotunities so maybe we were just too busy to stop and smile for the camera!

The children made a drum this week. First they painted the outside and then added dog, dinosaur and dot stickers. They used a dum-dum succor as a drumstick to drum the syllables of words with the /d/ sound.

The children each picked out 4 dinosaurs. Then they were to trade with their friends but had to use descriptive words when asking for a certain dino(i.e. the one with a long neck or 3 horns). I tried to get them to think of other descriptions besides colors. On Thursday we made towers from the unifix cubes that were 4 blocks high(last week they were 3 blocks high). The children were really getting into making patterns with their 4 cubes and also making a pattern from the colored cube that was on top as their cubes were lined up side by side.

To review the animal sounds I laid the large animal cards on the table. I would give a child a stuffed animal and they had to match it with the card and then tell me the sound it made.

Another concept I introduced to the children was time. Specifically what is a day and the days of the week. We started singing a song to learn the days of the week and read some great books about what happens during the day. This is a concept that we will be talking about every week.

Ask your child to sing the song "Today is Monday"....you may have heard them singing part of it already:)

learning objectives: begins to understnad simple number sentences; begins to distinguish between words with similiar sounds; begins to use descriptive words to describe objects; begins to understand the concept of time

Catina Cat week

This week we learned all about Catina Cat's sound. C is a tricky letter since it has a hard (cat) and soft(circle) sound but we will just focus on the hard sound of each letter. it is so fun to hear them recognize words with the "catina cat" sound at the beginning of a word and especially in the middle or end!

Here the children are practicing their "3" and they drew 3 objects on their paper.


The children created their own calico cats. We looked on-line at different pictures of calico cats to see their black, brown and white coloring. Then I gave the children those 3 colors to create their cats. After the plates dried, the other features were added.

I got out the unifix cubes for the children to make groups of 3. We counted, measured, and compared our blocks to our neighbors. One child was creating a whole row of 3's so we all joined her to make a "wall" of 3's!

Here the children are waiting for their "c" cookies to cool off. They each had some cookie dough that they shaped into a "c".

Each week there is a math rhyme that goes along with the letter and number. I would like for the students to create a mini-book with these rhymes so they can share them with their families. For the students who were ready I cut the rhyme apart and they put it back together.

learning objectives: matches objects that are alike; recognizing shapes; attempts to connect words to use a variety of forms of writing; begins to make size comparisons between objects

Jobs

Last year the only classroom job we had was a leader for each day. That person was the helper and did various tasks during the day. This year we created enough jobs for each person to have a turn helping! They change jobs every week and take their responsiblity seriously!

Weather Watcher- this child will look outside and determine what the weather is so we can mark it on our graph

Leader- this child will be the first in line and lead us to and from activites outside the classroom.

Table Washer- this child cleans the table before snack and lunch

Caboose- this child is the last in line and makes sure eveyone lines up in front of him/her.

Bell Ringer- during transition times(before snack, clean up time, lunch time, etc) this child will ring a bell and announce what "time" it is.

Snack Helper-this child gets the "snack bucket" off the shelf and passes out the plates and cups to the other children.

Substitute Helper- The subsitute helper does anyone's job that may be absent.

bubba bear week

We had a fabulous time with bubba bear's sound this week. Each day we review all 26
animals/sounds/signals and the children are really picking them up! It is wonderful when a child can recognize "bubba bear" at the beginning of a word or even in the middle....all on their own!

Here are some activites the children completed this week....


glueing beans on "b"


Each child decorated a paper birthday candle using glitter for our bullentin board. After Nolan's candle was finished he wanted to make a new picture. He looks very serious about his glitter!

The children made binoculars to help them find words with bubba bear's sound. I gave them different shades of blue and some white to mix together for painting their TP rolls.

After they dried the children glued "b" 's on their binoculars.

Last week I had the children trace over the letter "a" using applesauce. This week we used banana pudding to trace over our "b".

We also talked about big and bigger using various sized balls and this cute book "I Am the Biggest Thing in the Ocean".

learning objectives covered this week: understands and follows simple directions; begins to clap along with each syllable in a phrase; begins to recognize words with the same initial sounds; reproduces simple patterns using concrete objects

Meet Bubbles

This week we are focusing on the sound "b" with Bubba Bear.

This is his brother Bubbles and he will be spending the night with different children. He has his own backpack with his bottle, brush, books, and a blanket. The children are to take care of Bubbles-feed, bathe, read books, brush hair and put to bed. When they bring Bubbles back to school they will tell the class what they did and draw a picture for a class book. The children are excited to have a sleepover with Bubbles and so is he!!