What is happening in Small Group?

Look at what we did during Small Group this week!

Miss Jeana's class read the book Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh.

Another group did playdough birthday cakes.  They put craft stick candles in them.  Then they counted them and decided who had more candles and who had less.  Of course, we had to sing "Happy Birthday" many times!

Another activity was throwing beanbag toys into boxes.  The children then counted how many landed in the box and charted totals.  They determined who had more and who had less.  

In Miss Jen's class, we fit lids onto containers and talked about big/little.  We traded sizes and problem solved to find all the lids to put on the right containers.

Another Small Group activity was looking at rocks through magnifying glasses and describing them.  Smooth or rough?  Big or little?  Same or different? What color? Everyone had fun looking through magnifying glasses.

One more picture, this one from Work Time.

Small Group Activities: Counting and Measuring

Here are some fun Small Group activities that have been happening in both classrooms.  The activities provide a lot of opportunities for vocabulary expansion as well as back and forth conversation.  First up is Miss Julie's class.

From Miss Julie: This is a group that focuses on developing one-to-one correspondence. We started with pre-made dot cards and listened for observations from students such as counting, pointing and counting, noticing there are different numbers of dots on each card, etc. After our discussion we introduced noodles (or other small items) and asked the students how we can use them together. Some students covered the dots with all of the items, others covered dots with a single item, and others counted the dots and items. Students demonstrated various levels of skills counting with one-to-one correspondence. Blank cards and markers were given to students so they could make their own dot cards. Lastly, glue was introduced to allow students to add items to their own dot cards to take home. 

Next up are some activities from Miss Jeana's class.

From Miss Jeana:  This is working on measurement.  We were making color recipes - using the three primary colors to create all different hues.  

From Miss Jeana:  Fill it up!  Here we were used different sized cups to fill a larger bowl and talked about how many scoops it took to fill the bowl.

Blocks - more technical than you thought!

The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) posted an article in 2015 titled Ten Things Children Learn From Block Play.  Among the 10 - problem solving, mathematics, creative play, and science.  Click on the article title to see the whole thing.  It is a quick read.

Parenting Science posted an article titled Toy Blocks and Construction Toys: A Guide For The Science Minded.  This one has references and tips on how to get the most out of your block play.

The American Journal Of Play (for those of you who like research articles) has an article titled Building Blocks and Cognitive Building Blocks: Playing To Know The World Mathematically.  It includes ways on how parents can support block play and learning (play with your kids!).

Block play is a great way to build language - provided you are on the floor playing with your child. There is a lot of vocabulary from concepts (big/little, long/short, etc), prepositions (front, back, top, under, next to), Wh- questions, and more. Blocks aren't vintage toys - they are STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) toys. Our preschool kids love to play with them.  Plastic, wooden, cardboard, painted or not, blocks are fun.