NOTE: We sing just the first verse, clap on each letter H-E-A-R-T while we singing an repeat it a second and sometimes a third time.
Vocabulary and Basic Concepts: over/under, hide/hiding, descriptive words,
locations vocabulary pertaining to the classrooms, first/next/last, Where questions, Who
questions, He/She/We/They
This week we read the book Hiding Phil by Eric Barclay.
Phil is an elephant. The kids want him to stay but they need to hide him under things. It didn't work! It was so much fun to see where Phil hid. It was fun to find the dog in each picture. Wait till you see where Phil hid last! We decided to play hide-and-seek and hid under tables, chairs, coats, blankets, and stuffed animals. Miss Carrie counted to 10 and then came to find us. When she found us, she took our picture! Then we looked at the pictures and talked about Who was in the picture and Where they were hiding.
DO THIS AT HOME: play hide and seek and take pictures. Talk about who is hiding where. Talk about hiding under objects. Laugh at the pictures and show them to your family. Get everyone involved.
(Note: we do not bounce on bouncy balls, but we do bounce our legs, knees, elbows, noses - that is hard! -, shoulders, heads, and whole body. The children pick what to bounce next.)
Materials: music, laminated letter B, glitter, sheet, sanitizer, hand washing items
Vocabulary and Basic Concepts: clean/dirty, top/bottom, up/down, front/behind, First and Next, fingers, thumbs, rub, wash, rinse, bounce, knees, shoulders, toes, head
Pre-literacy: Let's look at the letter B! First we found the top and the bottom of the letter be. We noticed straight lines and curved lines. We practice the bouncing sound b-b-b-b-b-b. We shared words we knew with the /b/ sound: banana, baby, bubble, Boston Baked Beans (seriously, one of our preschoolers threw that one out there!), bounce, bathroom, back, behind. Then we practiced tracing the letter B with our fingers. Miss Carrie handed everyone a letter B to practice. "Start at the top and draw down. Go back to the top and bounce around."
Practice this at home. What objects can you find that have the /b/ sound?
Next we talked about germs. Germs are like little bugs, too tiny to see. They get on our hands if we put them in our mouths, if we sneeze or cough into our hands, or if we use our hands to pick or wipe our noses. We did an experiment to see how germs spread. Miss Carrie pretended to sneeze and her hands were covered with glitter! We pretended that the glitter was germs. When Miss Carrie high-fived everyone, the glitter spread to their hands.
Then we learned how to wash our hands. We practiced with hand sanitizer and washed the tops and bottoms of our hands (the backs and palms of hands), in between our fingers, and then rubbed them all over. Afterwards we practiced with soap: FIRST wash hands with soap all over. NEXT put hands under the water to rinse germs away.
Miss Carrie DOES NOT want to get sick so it is important to learn to wash our hands. Miss Jen and Miss Jeana do not want to get sick, either. We learned a song to the tune of Frere Jaques:
"Tops and bottoms
tops and bottoms
in between
in between
rub your hands together
rub your hands together
now they're clean
now they're clean."
And just for fun, here are some of the activities chosen during Work Time, which is really play time. For children play is work. Learning through play is the interesting topic for another time.
Playdough
Building car ramps
Gluing, cutting, and drawing
Building tall structures
The sensory table is very popular in Miss Jeana's room. Right now it is full of beans.
Playing house is serious business.
We have a lot of animals.
Someone decided to make a dinosaur zoo.
Miss Jen wanted to demonstrate to the children what could happen if they ran in the classroom. She planned and performed the most glorious, epic prat fall ever seen. Unfortunately, her demonstration did cause an injury. So if you children are talking about Miss Jen's owie, it wasn't serious but still painful.
In Jeana's classroom this week, she has two activities that will rotate during Small Group.
The first one is looking at numerals, describing them, recording, and tallying which ones have straight lines, curved lines, or straight and curved lines.
The children learned the definitions for straight and curved. They've learned about recording and tallying in previous Small Group Activities.
Each child received several numeral to explore. They named them (if they knew them), and traced or copied the numerals onto their own papers.
They also talked about whether all, some, or none of the numerals had parts that were straight or curved.
Try this at home: look for numerals while you are out and about or on packages and boxes at home. Do they have straight lines, curved lines, or both? What about the numerals that make up the ages of the people in your family? What about the number that defines how many are in your family?
The other activity in Small group involves the ever-popular playdough. We're making snowmen!
Not just any type of snowmen. We're making snowmen out of all kinds of shapes.
Vocabulary: circle, square, triangle, oval, rectangle, big, little, more, less, squish, roll, top/middle/bottom, next to, "I need", "I want".
Check this out. The red snowman is 3-D. The green snowman is made out of stacked shapes. How avant-garde is that?
The purpose of this activity is to describe, record, count, and compare the type and number of shapes we used to make snowmen.
Do this at home: Get out play dough, or cut out shapes from paper or other materials. What kind of shapes can you use to make snowmen?
Transition Song: H-E-A-R-T by The Kiboomers
Materials: laminated letter D, cardboard boxes, book
Vocabulary and concepts: loud/soft, fast/slow, drum, boxes, big/little, experiment, sound, voices, breathe in/breathe out, inside/outside, mad.
Pre-Literacy: Let's explore the letter D. Who has a name with the /d/ sound? What words have the /d/ sound in them? Round, drum, loud, sound, inside, outside.
We're repeating this Large Group for two weeks since they are short weeks. I wanted to make sure that everyone had a chance to participate in this one. First we read a book about voices.
(FYI, Elizabeth does a series of Best Behavior board books, including Pacifiers Are Not Forever, Feet Are Not For Kicking, and Teeth Are Not For Biting. There are many more. She also has tips for parents at the end of the books.)
We learned about inside voices and outside voices. In the book, it talked about how to calm our voices when we are mad by breathing in and out. We practiced breathing. We learned that it is hard to understand our words if we yell. In the book we also noticed that there was a problem to solve (children fighting over a firetruck - just like preschool!) and a teacher helped to solve the problem (just like preschool!)
Then, because we can't yell in school, we found another way to practice loud and soft. I brought in A LOT of sturdy cardboard boxes. Big boxes and small boxes. We practiced drumming softly. Then I called out "Hands up!" and everyone put up their hands. Then I said "Show me LOUD!" and we drummed LOUD! Wow, that was a lot of noise! Some of the children put their hands over their ears because it was so loud.
We did an experiment. I said "I wonder if we could hear our teachers voices if we were drumming loud?" So, we drummed LOUD while I sang the ABCs. Hands up! What was Miss Carrie saying? No one knew, because we were too LOUD. Then we drummed LOUD again while Miss Jeana or Miss Julie sang something. Could we hear them? No! We were too LOUD! Can you hear Teacher when we drum softly? Yes, we can.
The children had great fun with this one. Everyone had plenty of room to drum. Some children wanted to share a big box. The ones who wanted one to themselves had a small box.
We walked through the halls with quiet, inside voices. When we went outside to play on the playground, all the teachers demonstrated LOUD outside voices. The kids then demonstrated their LOUD outside voices.
(We are not eliminating a letter the way the song does. We sing each letter and clap for each one.)
Materials: Laminated letter D, crayons, large sheet of white butcher paper (big enough to nearly cover the Large Group rug), map of the classroom.
Vocabulary and Concepts: top/bottom, long/short, big/small, house, sign, road, tree, car, trampoline, swimming pool, park, swings, rail road track, train, stop/go, library, street (add more specific to your neighborhood), Where, Who, What, tall/taller/tallest, more crayons.
Pre-literacy: Let's explore the letter D. Look, it has a line that is straight, and a line that curves. Draw the letter D: "Start at the top and draw down. Go back to the top and draw around." What sound does it make? D-d-d-d. What words have that sound in them? Daddy, dinner, down, draw, diaper, dog.
Large Group Activity: Miss Jeana and Miss Julie each have a map they have drawn for their classrooms. We looked at the map. The children identified each area (House Area, Block Area, Puzzle Area, Art Area, Book Area) and which table was the table where they sit. They recognize this map well because the teachers use it to ask the children where they would like to play during Work Time. I told the children that I wanted to draw a map of the area where we lived. I unrolled a long piece of white butcher paper on the floor with the children surrounding it. Then I showed the children, using crayons, how I drew my house (it is a long house with a door and windows) and that my yard has very big trees and looks like a park. Then I handed out plenty of crayons and encouraged the children to lay on their tummies and draw their house and what was around it. See the pictures ( I will add more pictures of each class map). I have a McDonalds near my house so I drew the McDonalds sign and asked if anyone recognized it (logographic skills). Some children drew parks, pools, trampolines, flowers, cars, a railroad track, and the street in front of their home.
Talk about WHERE things are. WHO lives at your house? What is TALLER than your house? WHERE do you play? WHERE do you eat?
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.
Transition Song: Wake Up! Daily Routines by Dream English Kids
Vocabulary and Concepts: hygiene, healthy, clean/dirty, clothes, body parts, washing machine, bathtub, bath time, spin, scrub, wash, rinse, water, soap
Materials: Laminated Letter H
Preliteracy: Draw the Letter H
Start at the top and draw straight down
saying ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Go to the right and do the same
saying Hey-hey-hey-hey-hey-hey-hey
Now in the middle, left to right
saying hee-hee-hee-hee
Just like me
Discussion: We're talking about a new word. HYGIENE
What does hygiene mean? It is all about keeping yourself clean. We wash our hands before snack (or if we cough or sneeze or if someone gets caught with their finger up their nose). We do that so we can be healthy and not sick. We wash our bodies and hair to be clean. We also wash our clothes. It is important to be clean so we don't get sick.
We sang a song about taking a bath. This was a great way to review body parts.
We talked about how funny it would be if we took a bath in a washing machine. The washing machine spins around and around near the end of the cycle. As we pretended to take a bath in the washing machine, we spun around and around at the end. Jim Gill's song was fun to dance and sing along. (sorry, the best video I could find was of some dance recital, but at least the music is clear.)
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.
This question comes up all the time during Parent Teacher Conferences: "Shouldn't my child be able to say that sound?"
Not necessarily. This speech sound chart from TalkingChild.com is a great reference. Speech sounds are acquired like any other developmental milestone. Some happen sooner. Others happen later. I strongly recommend that you check out the full link here.
