Oceans

This was a short theme, but I think one of the kids' favorites so far! We had 1 day spent on our field trip to Seaquest (thanks to a great preschool mom for getting us passes!), and then another short week because of Thanksgiving. Here's the fun things we did:

Dramatic Play

An ocean! And beach!




It changed a bit each day. The first day, we had the blue blanket for the ocean with lots of big and small ocean animal toys. There were beach towels, floaties and goggles for kids on the beach. The highlight is the sensory table with kinetic sand and seashells.


The next day, I added a few more dress-ups.


The last day, my son had requested pirates, since pirates sail on the ocean, so I added pirate costumes and a treasure chest. They had a lot of fun with it! Also, the small ocean animals were now in the water on the art table, but we happened to find another awesome bag of ocean animals at the store this weekend, that had a few animals we didn't have yet. So, more ocean animal fun!






I think my favorite part of their play at this center this week was wanting to learn all about the animals they were playing with. They wanted to know their names, what they ate, etc. So we spent a lot of time checking out the reading center to find books about their favorite ocean animals, so they could learn more about them.

Blocks

The sensory table was in the block area, but we had all these fun ocean-themed puzzles and games too! They're really starting to like puzzles and get them out often.

Art

I forgot a picture, but I have seashell rubbing plates they used the first day, before we left on the field trip.

Ocean animal sponge painting


Tub of water with toy fish


Small manipulatives

Folder game and book


Ocean animal lacing cards

Flat marble animal pictures from totschooling


Magnet board



Writing table

Ocean stickers


Ocean stamps
I made these with foam stickers and milk lids and they've held up great for 6 years now!


Snack

We had Jello from ocean animal molds, with some blue "ocean" Jello

Of course, Goldfish crackers!

Large Group

Our song was 5 Little Crabs from Dr. Jean. We focused on the counting and numeral recognition.

Our word was ocean and we talked about the difference between oceans and lakes on our big world map.

Day 1 was our field trip to Seaquest aquarium.

Day 2 we chose ocean animals from dramatic play and sorted them by their beginning sound. This is new to them, so I was really focusing on them isolating that first sound and hearing what their animal started with. Then I'd tell them which letter card it went by that makes that sound.


Day 3 we read Rainbow Fish and made our own Rainbow Fish by gluing sequins on a fish picture.

Small Group

Week 1, my group played an ocean treasures counting game. The other group played ocean dominoes.

Week 2, my group worked on counting and putting our ocean 1-10 puzzles together, while the other group drew their favorite ocean animal in their journals.

Farm Animals

Fall is the perfect time for farms, as we had just learned about fall being harvest time. Here's what we did these past 2 weeks:

Dramatic Play

A farm of course! There's a small garden and a variety of farm animals (stuffed, puppets, and hats), plus a few costumes, so the kids have many different opportunities for playing farmer or animal. They had a lot of fun and were surprised to find non-typical animals like mice and an owl.
Thank you, Target, for all the cute felt veggies and costumes from the after-Halloween sales! I'd been waiting a whole year to get out this tractor costume, and it was a huge hit!
 



 

 



Blocks

Barns, animals, tractors






And a variety of puzzles (which they are really liking and getting into this week)


Art

Feather painting


Finger painting

We used the art table to make butter to have for snack, then played play dough

Glue and collage materials


Small Manipulatives

Farm counting puzzle
(I loved that once it was finished, I did the search and counting with the group who did it, then many others came over to search for and count the animals too)




Farm animal magnets

Farm animal dry erase cards from Totschooling 


P is for Pig dot page and flat marbles, lacing cards


Farm words and pictures for silly sentences on the magnet board. They could match the words to pictures since the pieces fit, but they'd have me read the words so they could make silly sentences. I also watched some move the words around and just make up what they said, which is great because they're making a connection of spoken word to written word.




Writing

Farm stickers (requested out more than 1 day)

Farm stencil

twistable crayons

Sensory Table

Cornmeal and farm animals. They ended up adding cups from the playhouse for scooping fun.


Large Group

Our word was domestic and each day we talked about the difference between domestic and wild animals. We learned the song Down on Grandpa's Farm.

Day 1, we read At the Farm and matched puzzles of what products come from farms (ex. milk from cow, wool sweater from sheep, honey from bees, etc.) We also sang Old McDonald had a farm.

Day 2, we read Barnyard Hullabaloo and played animal sound bingo. I had the bingo cards out the next week and they played over and over the next 2 days! I was surprised at how much they enjoyed the game!


Day 3, we read From Egg to Chicken and learned the names of baby animals on the farm. We played a game where the kids had a picture of the baby animal, and they had to find its matching parent picture that I'd hid in the room.

Day 4, we read Cock-a-doodle-Hooooo. We had a big pile of toy animals and sorted them by wild and domestic.

Small Group

Week 1, my group played a harvest counting game from Kelly's Kindergarten. We worked on counting and matching the numeral.
The other group colored a barn animal page.


Week 2, my group counted and graphed farm animals on a page by Totschooling. We used dry erase markers and they marked off each animal they counted to help keep track. Then more counting as they graphed. Then they worked together on 1-10 farm puzzles.
The other group drew their favorite farm animals in their journals. I wrote their words as the other group did their puzzles.

Happy Halloween!

Dramatic Play

We kept out the pumpkin patch from last week, but added pumpkin buckets and dress ups! The dress ups were a huge hit and I spent the whole hour helping kids change in and out of every costume. Then they'd "trick or treat" around the room for toys and things.

On Halloween, they came in their own costumes, so it was just the pumpkin patch without costumes.

Blocks

Alien counting puzzle


Sensory Table

We had record low temperatures this week, and since we don't go outside when it's below 20 degrees, I bought the table in! It was our fall mix from last week, with some added Halloween surprises!


Art

Beads and pipe cleaners


Halloween collages


Small Manipulatives

Spider lacing cards


Bug counting puzzles


Witch magnets




Writing

Halloween stamps


Halloween stickers

Snack

Mummy dogs (hot dogs they wrapped with strips of crescent dough)

Pumpkin oranges and banana ghosts for a healthy Halloween snack


Large Group

We sang 5 Little Pumpkins and learned the word "spooky." We talked about spooky things at Halloween just being pretend things, so they could remember something they're afraid of is not real.

Day 1, we read There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat, and retold the story using character headbands.

Day 2, we read The Spookiest Halloween Ever, then did our Halloween centers
(thanks to my parent volunteers for running the centers!)

Center 1: My group read Spiders Spiders Everywhere, which is an awesome math book that covers counting to 10, and position words. Then we made our own counting spider books up to 5, and had to count as we stamped spiders in their books.

Center 2: The kids at the block center used all the blocks to build a gate for the 5 pumpkin buckets. Our dad helper also encouraged them to build the tallest towers that could hold a pumpkin on top-awesome large motor and problem solving skills!

Center 3: My husband played "potion master" and used test tubes to help the kids make baking soda and vinegar potions. They only had primary colors available and had to remember how to mix them to make secondary colors if they wanted them.

Center 4: Our parent helper read 5 Spooky Ghosts and had the kids count the ghosts on each page. Then they did a ghost shape worksheet, where they colored the shapes she told them to find, to help review shape names.

Small Group

We only did this on day 1, since on Halloween we had several small group rotations!

My group played a pumpkin counting game and did a pumpkin dot to dot to practice counting to 10.

The other group made pictures with Halloween stickers.



***Counting! Do you see a common theme of counting here, and during fall week? It's because it's an important skill we're working on now. Rote counting, which is just repeating the numbers in order, and mostly, one-to-one correspondence, which is counting objects or pictures. We are practicing using our fingers and touching each thing that we count, or using our fingers to move the objects we are counting, to keep track of what's already been counted. We are working on numbers 1-10. We are also working on matching those to their corresponding numbers, or the concept of numeracy. This is a lot for 3 year olds! But they can do it, and we'll be practicing lots and lots in many different ways, in every theme, so they are on their way to becoming amazing mathematicians!
Here's an excellent article on the subject: https://www.education.com/magazine/article/preschool-number-recognition-counting-easy/