August/September Week6: Bus, Boat, Bikes (and other things that GO!)

Theme: Bus, Boat, Bike, and Other Things that GO!
Phoneme: /b/

Materials:  SoundTouch App, Stop and Go signs  

Vocabulary and Concepts: Stop/Go, Fast/Slow, Bus, Boat, Bike, Train, Airplane, Tractor, Vehicles, Fire Engine, Helicopter, drive, Wh- questions.

Beginning: Transition Song - Bouncy Bouncy Bouncy

This week we are talking about Things That Go and learned a new vocabulary word: vehicles.
We are listening to the different sounds that vehicles make on Miss Carrie's SoundTouch App and guessing what vehicles are making the sounds. This activity is always very popular!

We are asking What is it?  Where can we find them (on the road, in the water, in the air)?  Who has ridden in an airplane?  A train?  Who rides a bus home from school and who rides in a car?

Then we are picking our favorite vehicle and pretending to drive it all around the room.  Miss Carrie, Miss Jeana, and Miss Suzanne are the traffic cops and hold up signs to tell us when to STOP and GO.  We are beeping, honking, tooting, and sounding like fire engines, airplanes, motorcycles, busses, and cars.

At the end of Large Group we drive our vehicles to our tables for the next thing on our schedule.

The Power Of Play: Let's geek out on some awesome research!

Ever wonder why our preschools are play-based?  Check out the National Association for the Education of Young Children's site for a write up about some great research here.

But if you really want to see the actual research, go check out The Impact of Pretend Play on Children's Development: A Review of the Evidence.  You can find the link here.

Here is a reason to pull out the wooden blocks, get on the floor and play with your child. Why Slowing Down Stimuli to Real Time Helps a Child’s Brain by Eric Westervelt on KQED.  Here. 

More articles will be coming in the future along with some guests posts from Miss Jeana and Miss Julie.  In the meantime, turn off the electronics, get on the floor, and play with the kids.

August/September Week 4: Bouncy Big Balloons

Theme: Bouncy Big Balloons
Phoneme: /b/

Materials: 3-4 balloons (not blown up).  I used red, yellow, and blue 15" balloons.

Vocabulary and Concepts:  high/low, empty/full, big/bigger/biggest, blow, bounce, hands, head, finger, hard, soft, "My turn", predicting, sitting, standing, turn-taking, stop/go

Beginning: Transition song - Bouncy, Bouncy, Bouncy

Today I told the kids I had something in my back pocket that was little but would get bigger.  I took it out and held it in my closed hand.  What is it?  The children made guesses before I showed them a balloon.

Miss Carrie:  What color is the balloon?

Children: (red, yellow, blue)

Miss Carrie: What do I need to do to make it bigger?

Children: Blow in it. (One answered "Put water in it!"  Hmmmmm, not today.)

Miss Carrie:   How many times should I blow it in to make it big?

Children: (predicted that I would need to blow 3 times, 10 times, A LOT times.)

I started to blow and the children counted how many times I had to blow in the balloon to make it big.  The first time it took 7 breaths.  I pulled another balloon out of my back pocket and repeated the process.  Then I pulled out a third balloon and repeated the process.

Miss Carrie:  How many balloons do we have?  (3)  What can we do with these balloons?  (pop them, play with them, hit them in the air)

We stood up and bounced or hit the three balloons to each other.  The kids were laughing and having a great time.  After 5 minutes I asked for the balloons and we sat down.  This time I gave instructions that we would remain sitting on our pockets with legs crisscross or out in front, and hit or bounce the three balloons to our friends.

The adults in the room would model the vocabulary, concepts, and description of the balloons during the activity.  If a balloon popped, we would laugh very loud before throwing the broken balloon away.  When it was time to move onto the next part of our schedule, I told the children that the balloons would be on my chair and that they could choose to play with the balloons during Work Time.

September Language Calendar

The Moog Center For The Deaf puts out a fantastic language calendar every year to give parents ideas how to promote and expand language at home.  You can download and print that calendar here.  Thanks, Moog Center!

Great article on raising a non-picky eater

Here is a great article titled:

How To Raise A Kid Who's Not A Picky Eater (Tricks That Actually Work).  

Every so often I will post articles and tips for picky eaters.  This is a great place to start.  Click on the title of the article to zoom to that page.

August/September Week 2: Germs

Phoneme: /b/

Materials:  Laminated Letter B, glitter, lotion, sheet to catch the mess.

Transition song:  Bouncy, Bouncy, Bouncy by Rachel Arntson

Vocabulary and Concepts:  Soap, water, germs, wash, inbetween, hands, fingers, thumbs, bubbles, sneeze, cough, elbow

Preliteracy:  practice tracing the letter B.  "Start at the top and draw down.  Go back to the top and bounce around."  Practice sound and CVC and CVCV words that have that sound.

Today we learned about germs.  Germs land on our hands when we cough or sneeze into our hands or if we put our fingers in our mouths or noses.  We can keep our hands clean by sneezing and coughing into our elbows.  We practiced sneezing and coughing the right way.

We can take germs off our hands by washing them with soap.  We can not put soap bubbles on our hands and then immediately put them into the water.  We have to rub our hands all over for a little while so the soap bubbles can work.  We learned to sing this song (to the tune of Frere Jaques):

Tops and bottoms, tops and bottoms (wash tops and bottoms of hands)
In between.  In between (lace fingers together)
Wash your thumbs.  Wash your thumbs (wash each thumb)
Now you're clean.  Now you're clean. (Final rub all over hands)

NOW we can rinse those soap bubbles off.

Miss Carrie, Miss Jeana, and Miss Julie do NOT want to get sick so we wash our hands A LOT!

We pretended that glitter was germs.  Miss Carrie rubbed a little lotion on her hands so the glitter would stick.  Then she pour some glitter in her hands and pretended to sneeze into her hands.  Look at her hands!  WHAT A MESS!  Miss Carrie high-fived the teachers and they got glitter on their hands!  Then Miss Carrie high-fived all the children who wanted to try and they got glitter on their hands!  Everyone went to the sink and practiced singing the song while they washed glitter off of their hands.