Week 3: Yummy Yucky Holiday Edition, Hot Chocolate, and Caroling

Date:  December Week 3

Title:  Yummy Yucky Holiday Edition

Phoneme: /m/

Pre-Literacy:  Trace the Letter M.  “Draw up the mountain. Go back down. Draw up the mountain, and down to the town.”  Talk about words that have the /m/ sound.  Merry. Moo. Mouse. Me. Does anyone have a name with the /m/ sound?

Materials required:  Laminated Letter M, Laminated Santa parts, Yummy Yucky Book, Feed the Woozle Game, food items from our preschool kitchen and nonfood items such as sequins, glue, playdough, books, and toys

Concepts: What Questions, Foods, non Foods

Transition activity:  Song:  Must Be Santa, by Raffi

Discussion:  We’re going to discuss Yummy holiday foods (candy canes, cookies, hot chocolate with marshmallows) and yucky nonfoods (ornaments, tinsel, ribbons, pine needles, markers, paint, glitter).

What foods do you like?

What foods do you not like?

What should we NEVER put in our mouths?

At snack time, I will bring my hot chocolate maker and provide hot chocolate with marshmallows!  The kids are also building marshmallow snowmen in Miss Julie's classroom.

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We're feeding the Woozle.  He likes foods that are yummy I'm adapting the game specific for today's activity).  The nonfoods will be put into a box.  The kids loved taking turns feeding the Woozle with the big blue spoon.

Activity: Caroling at the front office to sing our Must Be Santa song and Jingle Bells.  The children did so well singing and shaking their jingle bells!  The ladies in the front office and our principal thanked them for coming and singing so well.

December Week 2: MAD!!! (and other Emotions)

Large  Group Activity

Date:  December Week 2

Title:  MAD!!! (and other Emotions)

Phoneme: /m/

Pre-Literacy:  Trace the Letter M.  “Draw up the mountain. Go back down. Draw up the mountain, and down to the town.”  Talk about words that have the /m/ sound.  Merry. Moo. Mouse. Me. Does anyone have a name with the /m/ sound?

Materials required:  Laminated Letter M, Laminated Santa parts,

Song: Jim Gill “You’re Face Will Surely Show It”'

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Book:  How Do Dinosaurs Say I'm Mad? By Jane Yolen and Mark Teague

Concepts:  Emotions, What /How Questions.

Transition activity:  Song:  Must Be Santa, by Raffi

Discussion:  Let’s talk about MAD!  Show me your mad face.  Look at my mad face.  How do you know that I’m mad?  Can you do a happy face?  Look at my happy face.  How do you know that I’m happy?  Can you make a sad face?  Look at my sad face.  How do you know I’m sad?  Go through scared, sleepy, cold, surprised, silly too.

Is it okay to be mad?  Sure it is.  Is it okay to throw toys, kick chairs, pitch a fit, or hit our friends?  NO!  We want to be careful with our friends and the things in our classroom.  So what can we do when we're mad?  In this book we learn we can count to 10 and take a deep breath.  We practiced doing this along with the dinosaur in the book. We can also say "STOP!", be a problem solver, or ask a teacher to help us solve the problem.

Play Jim Gill’s “You’re Face Will Surely Show It” song.  Point out how there are ways everyone acts the same and there are ways everyone acts differently when they are mad, sad, or happy.  

After note:  I asked every child to pick a face to show the rest of the class so we could guess.  We had a great range of happy, sad, scared, mad, sleepy, surprised, and silly.  They thought it was great fun, especially silly faces.

Feeding Activity from Pre-K Jabber!

My colleague, Stephanie, over at Pre-K Jabber has a fun activity called Feed The Woozle.  I can see doing this at home by coloring a monster face and putting it on a box with an open mouth and feeding the monster  what is good to eat and "trashing" what is not good to eat.

I love this idea so much that I am going to try it in our classroom soon.

Go see it by clicking here.

December Language Calendar

The Moog Center puts out a fun calendar full of ideas to help you work on increasing your child's language at home.  Here is December's calendar.  You can download a print a copy by clicking here.

At my house, with my 13 year old daughter who has Down syndrome, I am teaching her how to cook.  We are talking about measuring, pouring, stirring, cutting, cleaning, and wiping.  We're talking about fractions, and narrating actions.  Her favorite part?  Yelling "HOT BEHIND!" like a chef when she passes behind someone with something hot in her hands.  She also likes to tell everyone at the dinner table what she prepared and give them a play-by-play narration of how she did it.

Modify the calendar as needed for your child. 

December Week 1: Soft/Loud and Slow/Fast

Large  Group Activity

Date:  December Week 1

Title:  Music

Phoneme: /M/

Pre-Literacy:  Trace the Letter M.  “Draw up the mountain. Go back down. Draw up the mountain, and down to the town.”  Talk about words that have the /m/ sound.  Merry. Moo. Mouse. Me. Does anyone have a name with the /m/ sound?

Materials required:  Laminated Letter M, Laminated Santa parts, classical music, movie sound tracks, lullabies, rhythm sticks

Book: Quiet Loud

Concepts:  Music, Fast/Slow, high/Low, Loud/Soft, Who questions

Transition activity:  Song:  Must Be Santa, by Raffi

We're practicing to go caroling to the front office later this month.  We're singing Must Be Santa and Jingle Bells.  We're putting together our own Santa as we sing (see picture at the top). Don't forget to clap-clap right before "Must be Santa" in the chorus!

Discussion:  listen to the Santa Song.  Do we sing loud or soft?  When do we sing high?  When do we sing low?

Now let's listen to other songs.  We listened to Star Wars, Bridge Over The River Kwai, As Time Goes By, Libertango, Sing Sing Sing, and Taylor Swift's Shake It Off. (but I'm linking this Disney parody because it is hilarious.)  Use rhythm sticks to keep the beat.  Is the music fast or slow?  Is it loud or soft?

Now use your voice like a fire engine to go high and low.  Whisper, Inside table talk voice, Outside loud voice.  Ouch, Outside voices are too loud inside the classroom.

What voice do we use in the classroom?  Inside voice?

What voice do we use in the hallway.  Voices off.

What voice do we use on the playground?  Outside voice.

November Week 4: Thanksgiving Foods

Large  Group Activity

Date:  November Week 4

Title:  Thanksgiving

Phoneme: /t/

Pre-Literacy:  Trace the Letter T.  “Top to Bottom.  Now Back to the Top.  Left to Right and now we STOP.”  Talk about words that have the /t/ sound.  Tongue, Teeth, Toes, Turkey, Tomato. Tickle, Two. Does anyone have a name with the /t/ sound?

Materials required:  Laminated Letter T, Gobble Gobble picture binder

Book:  Yummy Yucky by Leslie Patricelli

Concepts:  What is food and what is not food.  What is good to eat.  Trying new foods

Transition activity:  Song:  Gobble Gobble (What Does The Turkey Say) by Nooshi.

Discussion:  Thanksgiving is a time where we eat a special meal.

Let’s talk about what is yummy and what we shouldn’t eat.  We're reading the book Yummy Yucky by Leslie Patricelli and talking about what is good to eat and what we shouldn't eat.  Then we will segue to Thanksgiving foods and find out what the children like to eat and what they don't like.  Thumbs up if you like the food - thumbs down if you don't.  Guess what? Miss Heather doesn't like potatoes of any kind (she gave a thumbs down)!  Miss Suzanne likes sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top (thumbs up!).  Miss Carrie doesn't like marshmallows on her sweet potatoes (thumbs down!)

We looked at pictures of turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing/dressing, cranberry sauce, grapes, hot rolls, sweet potatoes, green beans with almonds, pumpkin pie, cherry pie, and a plate loaded with all of these foods for Thanksgiving.

Ask the children what they are excited to eat at Thanksgiving.

View From A Child's Perspective

So this week we've been talking about toes.  I was running through the Large Group activity with Miss Jeana's class.  When it came to their turn, each child would pick a body part to add to the verse.  We ended each verse with "Everybody knows I LOVE MY TOES!" (See activity in previous post).

The kids were having great fun and trying not to shout in their excitement.  After a few verses, I started the final line "Everybody knows I LOVE MY..." and then paused, waiting for the children to finish the phrase "....TOES!"  One child, who is usually reserved and quiet, called out:

"MYSELF!"

This was well received by the children so we started to end each verse with "Everybody knows I LOVE MYSELF!"

How many of us would say this as an adult?  How many of us could say this out loud?  This was one of those moments (and they happen more often than you would expect) where the roles of teacher and student were reversed. We, the teachers, marveled.  What a fantastic response - completely innocent, trusting, and natural.

Now, when I'm starting to feel self-critical, I find myself chanting "I love myself" although not as loud as we did during Large Group.

But I'm learning.

November Week 3: TOES!

Large  Group Activity

Date:  November Week 3

Title:  Toes

Phoneme: /t/

Pre-Literacy:  Trace the Letter T.  “Top to Bottom.  Now Back to the Top.  Left to Right and now we STOP.”  Talk about words that have the /t/ sound.  Tongue, Teeth, Toes, Turkey, Tomato. Tickle, Two. Does anyone have a name with the /t/ sound?

Materials required:  Laminated Letter T, mirror, Gobble Gobble Picture Binder

Concepts:  Toes, Who/What/Where questions, Rhyming, Counting, body parts, predicting, alliteration

Transition activity:  Song:  Gobble Gobble (What Does The Turkey Say) by Nooshi.

Discussion: Let’s talk about Toes!  Who has toes? Let’s count them.  Take off your socks and shoes and we’ll count.  Where are your toes?  What can your toes do?  Can your wiggle them?  Can you walk on tippy toes?

Song:  Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes.

Fingerplay:  Everybody Knows I Love My Toes

(This is one of my favorite large group activities!  Be sure to wear the craziest socks you can find, especially if they have the toes knitted separately so you can really wiggle them.  Or just take off your shoes and socks.  I like to have the kids all take off their shoes - but make sure you leave enough time to put all of those shoes back on.  Oy!  I like to treat this as a rap with some choral recitation thrown in. EX:  Everybody knows I LOVE my toes! {have children repeat this phrase}.  Recite the first verse as written.  On the remaining version, have children suggest body parts and add them in.  Be sure to use great inflection and enthusiasm.  Clap a beat on your toes.  Point out the body parts.  Point out the rhyming words.  This is a lot of fun!)

Everybody knows I love my toes.

Everybody knows I love my toes.

I love my nails, my knees,

My neck and my nose.

But everybody knows I love my toes!

Everybody knows I love my eyes.

Everybody knows I love my thighs.

I love my legs, my lips, my neck, and my nose.

But everybody knows I love my toes.

Everybody knows I love my feet.

Everybody knows I love my seat.

I love my skin, my chin,

My knees and my nose.

But Everybody knows I love my toes.

Every body knows I love my toes.

Everybody knows I love my toes.

I love my nails, my knees,

My neck, and my nose.

But everybody knows I love my toes!

What about your eyelashes?  Wrists? Shins? Belly/Stomach? Cheeks? EARLOBES?! (We learned that one a few weeks ago and all the kids thought it was a hilarious body part.  Go figure.)