Tuesday, April 17, 2012

March Preschool

I've been busy with so many other things, I have really neglected this blog.  Luckily I take pictures of some of the stuff we do in preschool, which helps me to remember it!! Let's see what I can remember from last month! 

M is for Mouse (Dr Seuss week)
We celebrated Dr Seuss's birthday (March 2) with learning about the letter m - some things we found that start with m-
 I thought it would be fun to have the kids pull objects out of a bag and then we could say words that rhyme (after reading Green Eggs and Ham of course!).  They pulled out mouse.  I tried to encourage some rhyming. They all looked at me like I was nuts then my own daughter told me "this is boring and I hate it." Maybe next time!
 We practiced our cutting skills and made green eggs and ham out of foam sheets.
 We also played a fun stick game outside where we counted how many sticks we could find in my yard, then tried to find the biggest, smallest, etc.
 We threw the ball at x's and o's on the fence.
 We read some books and wrote down the opposites that we found in those books.
 More Dr Seuss books!
 We made hats like the Cat in the Hat.  I tried to get them to do a pattern, but they wanted to be more free spirited.  Whatever.

 We played opposite memory.
 D is for Dinosaur
 We painted letter Ds with dots.
 Threw the ball at letters and numbers on the fence.
 Hid from the dinosaurs.
 Practiced our own writing/scribbled on the fence.

 Played dinosaur spinner/graphing (from 2 teaching mommies)
 I found these dinosaur hats at the dollar store back in August and knew we'd study dinosaurs so I could use these hats.  We danced to a dinosaur song by Sandra Boynton.  They had a blast!!
 Some things that start with D-



 We tried stations again.  They do ok with these, but by the last rotation, they are tired and ready to be done.
(All printables from 2 teaching mommies)
Dinosaur letter match turned out to be a little too tough.  I need to stick with the puzzle cards until they are better at identifying lowercase letters.
 Dino size sort

 This is one of the favorite ones - dinosaur spelling.  I use letter beads and they have to match the letters to the word and then put it on a pipe cleaner.
 Dinosaur patterns - some kids do good with these, some really struggle.  But I think it's good practice!

 Stations in action!

 Then we looked at animals that hatch from eggs and animals that don't.  They really enjoyed this, so we did it again the next preschool day and I changed some of the animals a bit.

N is for Nose (5 senses)
 We learned all about our senses!
 Found things that started with n.  I have to confess that I actually put a toy knife in the bag and totally didn't think about it not starting with "n" until the kids pulled it out.  I was just so focused on finding "n" things I didn't think through very clearly- oops!
 We used our senses to explore these touch and feel books.
 We listened to the sound instruments make.
 We went on a walk and collected things we like to look at (most of which consisted of handfuls of dirt).
 We made a book about our senses  - things to touch, pictures of things to taste...
 .....drawings to see
 and sprinkled some spices on glue to make a smelling page.  We also spent time smelling spices and voting which ones we liked and didn't like.  They had a blast with that!!