Our PreSchool Blog

This week we continued our water theme with a focus on the ocean!

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This group used watercolors to paint over painter’s tape to make their initials. They used their fine motor skills to brush the watercolors all over the paper during this art experience.

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In this group, the children had to close their eyes, reach into the bag, and pull out a crab {keeping the ocean/water theme} with a letter on it. They had to identify it, say the sound that it made, and come up with a name of something or someone that starts with that letter. The objective of this activity was to practice letter recognition and letter sounds.

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This was a two part group…at the beginning of the day, the children made “sand” with sandy colored paint and a stringing sponge. After it dried {just in time for small groups}, the children made handprint crabs!

Our theme this month is WATER! This week we are focusing on ponds and pond life. We have read two books: “10 Littler Rubber Ducks” and “Wide-Mouthed Frog” {pop up book}. Today we did a lot with frogs:

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In this group, the children were handed a certain amount (from 1 to 10) of frog erasers; they counted them; then they had to jump {like a frog} onto the lily pad that had the corresponding number on it. This activity’s objective was to promote their counting and number recognition skills.

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In this group, the children made hand print frogs! We read the book “Wide-Mouthed Frog” pop-up book today, so this art experience went right along with it!

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Mother’s Day surprises 🙂

Last week we finished off our bug theme with some fun small groups:

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In this group, the children worked on their fine motor skills and transfer skills. They had to be “bees” putting honey (colored water in a cup) into their “honeycombs” (bowl) using little droppers.

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In this group, we kept our bug theme by having the children review their letters via swatting bugs. Ms. Diana would tell them a letter to look for, and when they found it they had to hit it with a fly swatter.

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This group did not follow the bug theme…but it helped the children practice their number recognition skills. Ms. Kate would say a number, and they would have to locate the number and stamp it with the dot stamper. There were multiple prints of each number, so they would have to locate them all and stamp them all with the same color stamper.

Today in our whole group time, we talked about bees, pollination, and honey. I had the children cup their hands and pretend to be flowers. I put a bee puppet on my hand and showed the children how the bees go from flower to flower to collect nectar… but in the process they pollinate the flowers. Our new big word for the day was “pollination.”

I used colored water and a turkey baster to show the children how the bees suck up nectar from the flowers turn it into honey and put it into honeycombs (an egg carton for my illustration).

The last thing I showed them in group time was a dead bumblebee I had found yesterday. I wanted them to get a good, close (safe) look at what a bee looks like. They noticed how fuzzy bees are!

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In this group, the children made number caterpillars with glass gems. They had to choose a card, identify the number, then make a “caterpillar” using the corresponding amount of gems.

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This group was focused on prewriting and fine motor skills as we worked on writing our names with rainbow pasta wheels. The children would spell out their names as I wrote them on the butcher paper for them. If they needed help, I would write out their name while saying each letter. The children, then, had to use their fine motor skills to place the pasta on the lines of the letters.

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This was a very hands-on group as the children got to try out what I had demonstrated during whole group time. They pretended to be bees putting honey into the honeycomb. They used their fine motor and transfer skills to complete this task. They squeezed then released the top of the turkey baster while it was inside the bottle, sucked up the water, and transferred it to the egg carton.

Today in Early 3’s we continued our bug theme and worked on “writing” our names. Check out how~

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The children used their fine motor skills to write their names with dot stampers. I wrote out their name. If the child knew how to spell their name, I would have them tell me how to spell their name as I wrote it on the butcher paper. If they didn’t, I would say each letter as I wrote out their name. After I wrote out their name, they had to follow the lines and curves of each letter with their stamper.

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In this group, the children used their fine motor skills to make fingerprint ants. During group time we watched a video of ants moving a large item, then we discussed how ants’ bodies have three parts (head, thorax, and abdomen).

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This group worked on counting and sorting as the children counted the legs on each bug, then used their fine motor skills to pinch the bug with their tweezers and transfer it to the correct cup (either 8 legged bugs or 6 legged bugs).

On Monday during our whole group time, I had the children watch a video of a butterfly coming out of its cocoon. After the video we discussed different aspects of the video, and I was able to elaborate a little more to build their knowledge on this subject. The children were so fascinated they wanted to watch it twice! The link to the video we watched is posted here:

http://youtu.be/R5QH3bGF4uU

In small groups we worked on our alphabet book:

V is for Vase, W is for watermelon, and X is for X-ray.

The children used their fine motor skills to draw and glue.

Small Groups:

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These two groups were basically the same concept/activity just with different material. This month I am trying to emphasize number recognition and focus on correctly counting out the corresponding amount of an item according to the number displayed. In these two groups, the children had to count out the correct amount of bugs to correspond with the number on their jar or leaf (depending on which small group it was).

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In this group, the children glued on umbrellas and raindrops for “U” is for Umbrella. They had to use their fine motor skills to pick up the little raindrops and glue them onto the paper.

Today we continued our theme of BUGS and introduced our shape of the month: OVAL!

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In this small group, the children used their fine motor skills to stamp a variety of bugs on a mounted paper.

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In this group, we discussed the difference between a circle and a square. I drew an oval and showed them what it looked like. We talked about various things that are an oval shape. The children each got a marker and practiced drawing ovals. This activity helps develop writing skills, as well as fine motor skills.

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The focus of this group was number recognition. The children had to locate a certain number then slap it with a fly swatter.

Last week we did a whole group activity to go along with our story of the week: The Very Hungry Caterpillar. After reading the story, we counted all of the food that the caterpillar ate throughout the story. Each child, then, got to “feed” the caterpillar (taped to a brown paper bag) a piece of food that he ate in the story. We talked about how a caterpillar eats then makes a cocoon. We discussed how he breaks through the cocoon and pops his wings out to dry.

{Ms. Sarah}

This week we introduced our theme: bugs! We are also beginning to work on lowercase letters. Check out our small groups from Wednesday:

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We discussed uppercase and lowercase letters. I showed them what an uppercase “E” looks like then showed them what a lowercase “e” looks like. We talked about how some uppercase and lowercase letters are the same –the lowercase letter is just a smaller version. In our activity, the children spun the spinner, and whatever letter the spinner landed on they had to find the corresponding lowercase letter cookie. We would discuss which letter it was and whether or not it was the same/different than the uppercase letter.

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This group was focused on our theme: bugs! Ms. Diana talked to children about different bugs  ~how they look and what each bug is named. The children had to match their bug to the bug on the board.

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This small group was our art small group! The children painted VERY colorful butterflies with their hands to go along with our book of the week: “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”. At the end he turns into a beautiful butterfly, so we made our own version of the butterfly!