Our PreSchool Blog

Young children function best when working in small groups due to the fact that their social and cognitive skills are still developing.  The bulk of our day is devoted to small group activities to help children grow both socially and cognitively.   When children work with only a few other children, in a small group setting, they learn important lessons about cooperation, compromise and the give and take of conversation. Also, when working in small groups with a teacher, children are able to receive the more focused attention they need for completing complex tasks and activities.

We jumped right into reviewing numbers as we begin our journey into the fun world of math in K Prep!

After reading the book “Mouse Shapes”, we learned that shapes are all around us! The KPrep and Preschool classes made pictures using the 2D shapes we learned about.

Shapes are all around us!  During group time in preschool today, we discovered a secret shape hidden under our carpet circle then searched the classroom to find its match,  then we sorted them on our shape mats.  What a fun way to explore squares, ovals, diamonds, circles, and triangles.  After our hunt, we read the book Mouse Shapes and watched as the little mice used a variety of shapes to create different pictures, then we used our own creativity to create our own shape pictures!

Click to Watch the Shape Video from our Lesson Today!

The K-Prep class has been learning to measure in all different ways! We have been measuring length, height and distance using nonstandard units of measurement. We have also been measuring and comparing weight using a balance.  Lastly, we have been measuring the capacity of different containers.  We have been working hard and learning so much!

We measured our height with strands of yarn!

We measured arctic animals with unifix cubes (a nonstandard unit of measurement).

We measured the capacity of all different containers using beans!

We raced cars and measured the distance that each went…

We explored all kinds of nonstandard units of measurement!  We measured with straws, crayons, pencils and more.

How many straws is our window sill?

How many cubes is our twistable crayon?

How many straws is our academic center?

How many pencils is our class atlas?

How many crayons is our easel?

How many crayons is our manipulatives center?

How many straws is our word wall?

After we explored the classroom with our measurement tools, we made predictions as to how many cubes long new items in our classroom would be, then we tested our predictions to see how close we came.  We had a some GREAT predictions!

What a fun week of math!  We have started a new “Number of the Day” activity that we have been completing during our first whole group meeting time.  This has taught the students about different ways to make a number!

The students practiced number recognition and counting by rolling a set of dice, counting the dots on the dice and feeding their tennis ball friend a chip with that number on it!  This game is  great for our fine motor skills and is fun too!

Since it is almost October, we made spiders using our math skills!  We matched up the number of dots on its legs to the numbers on its body.

We did a fun math/literacy lesson this week.  We read the book, “Chicka, Chicka, 1, 2, 3” as a whole group.  The book is about different numbers climbing up an apple tree.  It was only fitting that the kids would be able to snack on tasty, sliced apples during the reading!  Afterwards, in small groups the students  counted certain numbers of “apples” and used tongs to place them onto their felt apple trees! Another good fine motor activity!

The K-Prep class has been working so hard on their numbers and counting! This week we were able to count using some fun materials!

We counted beads onto pipe cleaners! This helped us practice some fine motor skills!

Because our science theme has been about ponds this month, we counted frogs onto lily pads!

We also sorted and counted yummy skittles. We even got to eat a few!

This week the K-Prep class continued learning about numbers! We practiced counting (0-20), number formation, and putting numbers into the correct order.

We also read the book “Snappy Little Numbers”, which was a fun and interactive way to practice counting!

 This week in math, the K-Prep class worked on making their numbers using the correct formation!  We sang fun number poems to help us, which can be found in the students’ homework binders.  Throughout the week we built on this skill of forming numbers, while trying to accommodate many learning styles!

The students traced tactile yarn numbers with their fingers, drew numbers in sand trays, and traced dotted numbers using dry and erase markers! A dry and erase writing activity is also found in the homework binder.  You can never get too much practice!

What a fun and busy week of learning!