How Many Gumballs Do You See?

We practiced writing our numbers again today in small groups.  We then counted out the right number of gumballs to match our number and glued them inside our gumball machine!  Tracing numbers aids in our fine motor development and proper pencil grip.  It trains our hand to feel comfortable moving in the small movements needed for successful independent writing in the near future!  Make sure that if your working with your child at home in writing, that they are using the correct grip.  It is easier to train than retrain the brain.

Counting Candy

Counting Buttons

This afternoon during small groups, we worked on our math skills with this snowman counting activity.   Each snowman had a number on it’s belly and the kids had to put that many buttons onto their snowman.  We are getting really good at our one-to-one correspondence counting!

Fun with Graphing

Today we used our new graphing chart during group time.  Each child has their own clip with their name and picture on it which is not only good for for name recognition but also for using their fine motor skills!  The question for the day was,  “What is your favorite color?”  The children each had a turn to come up to the board and pinch their clip on their favorite color ribbon.  To end the activity, we counted how many children liked each color and put the corresponding number above each ribbon.  We will continue to practice graphing in many different ways.

Counting with Snowballs

This afternoon Evelyn was excited to play our new snowball math activity.  She is concentrating hard on counting the dots on the dice she rolled so she could put that many snowballs on her snowman!

The Number 3

This week we have been working on number recognition with the number 3.  For our arts and craft project the children were able to decorate 3 gingerbread men with glitter and sprinkle glitter on the number 3.  We counted each gingerbread man and talked about what the number 3 looks like.

Here is a good rhyme for remembering the number 3.

Round the tree,

Round the tree,

That’s how you make the number 3!

Colorful Pasta!

sensory table colored pasta

This week our sensory table is full of colorful noodles! The kids have been digging their hands in this colorful pasta and scooping and dumping it!  They have been using spoons to scoop the noodles into the bowls and pretend they are making soup!  Since all of the noodles are different colors this has been a great way to practice our color recognition as well!

Fine Motor Skills

N is for necklace

This afternoon at group time we learned the letter “N”.  For our art project today we made necklaces for the letter “N”.  Here you can see Rutva, Caroline and Connor working so hard at stringing the beads onto their necklaces.  They did a wonderful job working with those fine motor skills to make beautiful necklaces!

Perfect Patterns

children created and extended their own patterns

Our focus in math during the month of November is patterning.  The children were introduced to patterning last year during their preschool classes and this year the children are creating their own patterns and extending them independently.  The children used different types of manipulatives today to create various patterns.  Some children were still most comfortable doing a simple AB pattern based on color while some children created more complicated patterns based on size or type of animal (using the pet manipulatives set).  Using everyday objects in the kitchen are a great way to reinforce patterning at home.

Hey Diddle Diddle, the Cat and the Fiddle!

This month we are learning about different nursery rhymes.  The kids worked really hard creating this beautiful mural of the nursery rhyme “Hey Diddle Diddle”.  Each class made a different part of the nursery rhymes to create the whole rhyme.  They loved watching as each piece was added to the mural!

our nursery rhyme mural "Hey Diddle Diddle"