Preschool Corner

Okay, so most of this is from the past week/weekend. We've just recovered from a horrible stomach bug and have finally gotten our legs back! So this is mostly last week and some of this!

Last week was spent focusing on the Earth!
Monday we went and observed Kaelyn in her dance class! She's the sweet one in black!

 

Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of my favorite craft/activity that we did, but hopefully I can "explain" it to you! We introduced the fact that the Earth was round like a ball and only looked like it was a circle. I used the term sphere, but I don't know that she's caught on yet! I showed her a picture on the internet, and we talked about how some parts of the Earth were blue and that was the oceans/water and that others were green/brown and that was land. To better illustrate this we made our own Earth using coffee filters and Washable Markers. Anna was focused on the shape of Circle and the color Blue (a word she now uses but not properly!).  Anna and Kaelyn both really enjoyed "sprinkling" the filters with water and watching the colors blend.We the continued the art craft with  a few other coffee filters to be used to make "heart fish" later on this week for our segment on Oceans as well as Valentine's Cards for our Favorite Guy-Dad.

Here is Kaelyn working hard on her Letters and the paper plate craft showing the layers of the Earth. I didn't expect her to "get" the names, just that there are layers. I really wanted to do this cool craft  where you make an Earth Layers Bowl using a graham cracker crust and different colored Jello...but perhaps when she is older!

We later purchased a mini-globe for $1 to reinforce the "sphere" concept. We are continuing with the Earth by studying the oceans! So, we made our Coffee Filter Heart Shaped fish using heart cookie cutters to trace out a design (big heart tip touching little heart tip), added googley eyes found at dollar tree and a fin! Anna worked on her fish/kissy sound, Heart shape, and blue again! These fish are also being used for Valentine's Day Cards with very cute "catch" phrases. We also colored various sea creatures to be used later on next week in our ocean collage showing where animals "should be"(sand dollars/hermit crabs on the beach/birds in air/fish in water/stingrays on bottom). All this ocean life talk prompted a trip to the Aquarium where Kaelyn was asked to place certain animals in their right habitats as well as mark off what colored fish she could spot. Here is the link for the "scavenger hunt"

For Math we worked on simple addition using manipulatives as well as number recognition. Kaelyn had poker chips with the numbers 0-10 written on them, and I had duplicates of 0-5. Kaelyn would select two numbers and then count out the appropriate chips and add them together. The chips are actually phonics tiles from Dollar tree that have been flipped over. We also play a modified UNO (just wild cards) where we have to announce the card we are laying down!

 

(please please please excuse the dirt on the table cloth!)

For reading, we started the Progressive Phonics program. I am hoping to commit to working on this more in the days coming!

I'm not going to lie, this is mostly last weeks and a few of this week! I was horribly sick! I've also decided that Anna really needs me to focus more on her (1-1) with fewer distractions, so instead of getting to clean a little in the morning, I'm taking the first hour of my day to play with her. Kaelyn is welcome to join in, but it's Anna directed play. She is responding so well to the added attention!

Go see what others are up to at Preschool corner!