Family and Friends

We had a fun 2 weeks talking about our families and friends. I really can't emphasize enough how much these kids love talking about their families! They go on and on, all at the same time, and don't even realize 7 other kids are talking at the same time. And they only say good things too. :)
We had fun talking about family trees. The one I sent home was found here for anyone interested in printing another one. It's a great family lesson at home. We made one in our classroom tree too. As we talked about the word, relative, we added other relatives besides grandparents like aunts, uncles, cousins, and siblings. They were all talking and talking about their uncles, cousins, brothers, etc. and really excited about it all. We talked about how some kids in our class have step parents too, and they're so lucky to have more moms and dads and siblings in their family trees, so some kids have a really full tree. I really tried to celebrate our great families because it's important that all kids love the family they come from, even if it seems different from others.
We also read the story The Turnip. I have a Russian nesting doll (matryoshka) that tells this story and they had a lot of fun retelling the story with that. We also had it out to play with the next 2 days.  Their reading comprehension is impressive and I'm so proud at how well they listen to, and remember the books we read.
We read The Relatives Came the second day and we talked more about their relatives, especially cousins. It was pretty much a repeat of the above-mentioned chaotic sharing of family stories.
We had our grocery store and kitchen back for dramatic play. It's amazing how much better they are at playing together, compared to when I had it out at the beginning of the year. Instead of fighting over the register, they actually took turns on it without much prompting by me and were content to do something else, like shop for groceries or play in the kitchen, until someone was done with the register.
 
Other fun things we did:
Wiki stix. We started making numbers, and ended with a table of spiders.
Play dough. Each day we cleaned up art early to have some play dough time. They ask for it almost every day. We did the lowercase alphabet stamps again and it's a challenge to find the letters they want since they know their uppercase letters better. It's great letter practice mixed with play.
Puzzles. Today I had 6 of the 8 kids help with an ABC floor puzzle and that's rare. I usually only have 1 or 2 who have been interested in puzzles all year.
ABC lacing beads. How did I not get these out sooner? Huge hit. They were naming letters as they practiced the fine motor skill of lacing. Win win.
 
Pattern block magnets. I loved pattern blocks as a kid, and they're even better as magnets. We had some way cool designs made and I grabbed my camera to snap some pictures, and the battery was dead. Boo. We'll have to do it again.
Played outside. They love it and miss it! Glad we got out again!
Growing paint. Found the idea on pinterest here. And here are the directions.
Ours looked even better, I thought. At least they looked like a 3 year old did them. :)
 
They were so amazed by this process, and enjoyed the stickiness and messiness of the painting. They loved seeing and touching them after they were microwaved too. It was pretty much like cooking a pancake in the microwave, and they all wanted to eat them. I told them no, although it was all edible ingredients. Just flavorless I guess. I'm only disappointed in how the paper folded as they dried and cooled.

 As I was racking my brain with what else we did, I remembered we celebrated Valentine's Day! We started the group celebrations with conversation heart graphing. I was super impressed by their graphing skills and self-control! 2 of the older kids got it right off the bat, and the other kids just checked theirs, had a little prompting from me, and they all figured it out. I asked super hard math questions like, which color did you have the most or least or same? And they knew the right answers! May not seem super hard, but this is a Kindergarten-level skill, so be impressed that your 3-year-olds can do it!
We then used our hearts we hadn't eaten yet to play Don't Eat Pete and they thought it was so funny!
We handed out Valentines and it was a bit of a challenge because we weren't all excited about handing out the treats we brought, but with some prodding (and pointing out treats received), we all shared with our friends. We even fit in show and tell that day. I got the graphing page here and game here.

We worked really hard on sharing when we talked about friends. My daughter's new favorite show is Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, and I have to admit that I love it too! We watched a 1 minute clip with a song about taking turns. Find it here. (You can take a turn, and then I get it back!) We then role played taking turns, and watched it again. We played Memory and practiced taking turns some more, then watched it again. I was really trying to drill that song into their heads! I think it worked because they were singing it when they came back the next week. I'm singing it with them as I help them take turns in real play, because that's when it counts. It's one thing to role play and practice, but one of the most important skills children learn in preschool is socializing, and that includes sharing. We will be using this song lots the rest of the year!

Igloo

I just realized I never posted the completed igloo photos, so here they are!!

A little lopsided on one side, but surprisingly sturdy. They way the kids run in and out, I'm shocked the doorway is still standing. And now I stare at it each day and wonder when I'll just have to rip it all back down.   :)

I love me!

We're starting out our week of love, with talking about loving ourselves! We talked about the word respect, and role played ways we show respect to things, each other, and ourselves. We did start out the school year with a week about ourselves, but we're doing different activities and have a more in-depth focus. The first week was about getting to know each other. This week was more about having pride in ourselves.

Dramatic Play
We had a Doctor's Office. They'd played with these tools before when we had a Vet's Office, and they loved that. This time the focus was on people and they got right into their roles! Especially on the 2nd day. I have some great pics of your kids (which I'll get you on a cd at the end of the year, btw) playing in this center. We had lots of patients with broken legs and arms that had to be bandaged, and these doctors sure gave a lot of shots! No tears, though. We had sick babies that were loved and taken care of, and given lots of shots too. One "doctor" was walking around scribbling in her notebook, and kept talking about knowing everyone's diagnosis. Not sure where she learned that word, but she used it all day! The office even got busy enough, we always had patients in the waiting room. Good thing we had books to look at, and the classic dr's office toy to keep them occupied. It cracked me up, watching them sit and wait, then have the dr call the next kid in. It's all so realistic. This is the great thing about dramatic play. They get the opportunity to act out and play with real-life experiences they know. It's the great part about a play-based school.

Art
We did spin art, and I can't believe I waited this long in the year to do it. I have salad spinners I found at the DI for $2 each years ago (they can be $20 new). They drop in paint, spin it, then repeat. We did it with the normal paint, then watered it down to see if it worked better. Both worked well and it was fun to compare the 2 versions. We had a lot of color combining and I love that they are learning what the primary colors make when mixed together by actually seeing it happen.
 
We also played play dough, which we hadn't for awhile. We had the rollers and small letter alphabet stamps. It led to some great discussion because they were looking for the first letters of their names, so we talked about small and capital letters, and looked at our ABC posters in the rooms to find the small versions of the letters they knew. Great learning through play here.

We also played blocks, and more puzzles this week. They also used the scissors and glue more in the Writing Center, now that they've been reminded they're there. I like to supervise scissor use :) and they're doing really well.

We read The Little Engine that Could on Monday and they loved it. They had mostly all read it before. We read the e-book version on my computer, and for some reason, the same story seems more mesmerizing on a computer (and there were no graphics or anything). We retold it with a flannel board story, that was also out Wednesday for them to play again. We were stuck inside with gross air again, so we watched part of The Little Engine that Could video I found online. It was a cute cartoon version. They all knew what was coming next since we had just read and re-told it, yet they were still so nervous that the train might not make it up the hill in the end! I heard "I think I can" over and over during their play time on Wednesday.
Wednesday we talked about feelings in large group. Their faces were hysterical as they showed me what they would look like when scared, happy, sad, nervous, etc. I loved it. We role played what to do when someone makes you angry too. I think it's important for kids to understand that all the feelings they feel are ok, and not bad. It's your actions that can be bad. We talked about it being ok to be angry, but we practiced saying "I feel angry because..." instead of screaming and hitting. Let me know if I've cured any temper tantrums. :) My daughter still has them. We also talked about feeling proud, like the Little Engine did when she got to the top of the mountain, and talked about different reasons we feel proud. All this talking and such was done in smaller chunks between different activities. Really stretching these inside days!

Nursery Rhyme week

What a fun follow-up to Fairy Tales!

Dramatic Play
We had a puppet theater here. It included the stick puppets and masks from Fairy Tale stories we read, plus their books to help the kids remember the stories. I also had a variety of animal puppets that were a huge hit both days!

Art
On the first day, we also made puppets in art. We made paper sack puppets and stick puppets. The kids loved cutting and gluing. I hadn't realized how much help we needed with scissors because I hadn't realized how little we'd used them. They've always been available in the Writing Center, but having them in art brought more attention to them. I had to offer a lot of help, but it was great cutting practice and small motor skill building!
It was fun seeing the kids take their puppets to the theater and play with them. They were all so creative.
 Day 2, we painted with cotton balls for all the Nursery Rhymes with sheep and wool in them. They could use their fingers to hold it, and some chose to use a clothes pin. I told them the different rhymes with sheep in them as they painted.

Small and Large Manips
I have 4 nursery rhyme puzzles which were all a hit. The kids learned to work together and we did all 4 puzzles several times, with different groups of kids. Puzzles are such a good small motor skill, and also good for logic and reasoning!
We used the rhyming puzzles too, after using them on Monday for large group.
We also played with some awesome flannel boards. It seems old-fashioned, but they don't know it! I have about 30 different Nursery Rhyme flannel board stories, so I had different ones out on different days, plus every rhyme we told in large group, we also told on the flannel board. They really enjoyed telling the Nursery Rhymes on the boards during self-select time. They'd often point out one of the Nursery Rhyme posters, and I helped them find the stories for the board.

Here are some other activities we did, and rhymes we read:

Little Miss Muffet
We ate curds and whey for snack (cottage cheese). It wasn't as big of a hit as the porridge, but they all tried it. They liked dipping crackers in it the best. This was a favorite rhyme to retell on the flannel board all week.

Georgie Porgie
We had pudding for snack and this was definitely a hit, and we even dipped graham crackers in it. We'll have to do this one again!

Hickory Dickory Dock
We sang the Barney version, shown here and practiced counting, and what number comes next. We also used this to introduce our vocabulary word, rhyme, and find rhyming words. We found the rhyming words in all the Nursery Rhymes we read after starting with this one in large group.

Humpty Dumpty
We colored boiled eggs. I couldn't believe how much they liked this! They counted food coloring drops with me and were just mesmerized by this activity. I tried to do large group after dying the eggs (thinking they could listen and sing while the eggs just sat there), but we had to keep checking the eggs over and over! They really just loved to stare at the cups. They loved hos bright they turned out and were so excited to take them home.


And, the highlight, we got to go outside! The inversion cleared, and we had a new layer of snow! I know you all got to see your kids out there when you picked them up, and I hope they had fun. They sure were acting like it! They all took turns tubing down our little hill. They sprayed the snow with spray bottles, ate some snow, and made great snow angels. They even dug out our slide. I hope we get to enjoy more outside time soon! They really do need that chance to get outside and move.

Nursery Rhymes

Here's a video of the version of Hickory Dickory Dock we're reading this week to help us work on our counting and rhyming skills:

Fairy Tales

What a fun 3 days we had with this unit! I seriously could have done 3 more weeks, there is so much fun stuff to do with Fairy Tales. Due to a nasty inversion and gross air, we stayed inside which gets a restless. To switch things up a little, we started each day with a cooking activity, then went on to self-select time. That allows their "play" time to go a little longer, then snack and large group and we're done, and they don't really notice they're missing that time outside. They LOVE cooking and had lots of fun with the things we made. They all get so involved in it and love to help and eat. On to our week, it's easiest to share what we did with each Fairy Tale, other than by centers (except dramatic play that stayed the same), so here's a quick round up.

Dramatic Play
We had a castle that was just too much fun. Thanks to my sister for all the dress-ups! The girls loved playing princesses. There were also costumes for fairies, jesters, knights, princes and kings. Everyone loved the swords and shields and horses, and I loved that the girls used them too. We even had boys wearing high heels. It's fun to see them get creative and bend the gender rules a bit.
The mirror was a hit with the dress-ups. It even had kiss marks left on it. Sad I missed who was kissing themselves. I forgot to get a pic of the inside, but there were pictures of different characters they could be on the inside walls, with the coordinating dress-ups in a box below it. We still had the kitchen inside too, since princesses need to eat!
p.s. the cheap spray paint at Wal-Mart is cheap. I'll be re-painting this one.

Ok, now on to the different stories we read:

The Gingerbread Man
We made sugar cookie dough and cut them into gingerbread men for snack today. I just don't like gingerbread, which is why we did the sugar cookies. Then, after clean up time and before snack, we read the story together. They enjoyed pitching in with the chant "Run, run, as fast as you can. You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man!" We then decorated and ate our gingerbread men.
The next day, they did a floor puzzle of The Gingerbread Man and I was amazed at how well they remembered the story, as several of them gathered around the puzzle and re told it. I also read the book over and over again through out self-select time the next 2 days, because they just couldn't get enough of this story.

The Tortoise and the Hare
We read this story the first day in large group, and then acted it out. We did it 2 different times, so all the kids got turns. They were great at retelling it. We then learned about opposites (from the fast and slow in the story). We acted out opposites, sang a song with opposites, and put together some opposites puzzles.
The puzzle was in the small manipulatives area the next day and we reviewed a lot more opposites!

Goldilocks and the 3 Bears
Before snack, we gathered to read this story. We had porridge for snack (malt o meal hot cereal) and I was surprised that only 1 child didn't like it, but she did taste it twice to make sure, and I think that's great. Most kids had seconds and some had thirds. Who knew hot wheat cereal would be such a hit?
We also acted out this story with masks later. They loved doing the high and low voices.

Jack and the Beanstalk
This was a fun story to read because I have so many fun things to go with it. I picked up at activity box a few years ago at UEA and it was a huge hit! We read the story on the big story cards first. Then, I played the musical version on the CD player and they were dancing and singing along. They caught onto the chorus quickly! We then retold the story with wood figures and I barely had to ask what came next, they all remembered with no reminders! Some even knew the lines their characters said. They asked for the song version again, so we played it while they danced with their wood characters and said their parts. I was so impressed.
We then read a giant letter we got from the Giant! He left us some big outlines of his feet, and we used them to measure things around the room. We found things that were bigger, smaller, and close to the same size. It was a great math lesson that they really got into.
That was Wednesday, and the next Wednesday, I had this all in the small manips area. They put the cards in the correct order of the story (great sequencing!), retold the story with each other with the wood people (awesome reading comprehension!), and also just played with the characters with each other  (great socializing!). They replayed the song version over and over, dancing and singing (so much learning!). I seriously watched them do these things, with very little prodding and help from me, and was again impressed at their comprehension and memory over a week's time.
We also did bean collages for art, where they got to glue different types of beans to their paper. They sure do love playing with white glue!

The Little Red Hen
We started the day making bread, which requires patience because of all the different stages of rising. They all pitched in and helped. We learn so many great math and science skills when we cook together, not to mention learning to take turns and a little patience. Before snack, we gathered to read the story of the Little Red Hen.  I had wheat and wheat flour for them to feel (and they all had to smell it) and we talked about why it's important to help. We then ate yummy wheat bread I made before since ours was still rising, and most tried it with both jelly and honey. Can't have too much sweet, I guess.

3 Little Pigs
For large group, we read the story, then acted it out again. The kids all loved huffing and puffing and blowing. We only had enough time to do it once, but it was perfect because we had roles for everyone, as some kids were the houses.


I'll talk more about this in the next post, but during Nursery Rhyme week, we had a puppet theater, so I added the stick puppets and masks we had used to retell most of these stories (Tortoise, Jack, Bears, Pigs and Hen), and it was fun to see them retell them again. I said it too much already, but I am so impressed with their comprehension as they retold and acted out these stories. That's probably why I enjoyed this unit so much.

Winter Week

We had a lot of fun the last 2 weeks learning about winter. Too bad it was so bitterly cold and nasty outside that we never actually got to go outside and enjoy some snow. Oh well. Here are some of our Winter Week highlights: 
Art
Epsom Salt Painting
 
The kids drew snowy scenes on black paper with white crayons, then painted over them with an Epsom Salt/water mixture. They were so excited to come back and see their crystals. They turned out pretty cool! They were all so different since each bowl on the table had a little different amount of salt in the water.

Frozen Paint 
 
They LOVED this! We had talked the days before about things being frozen, then melting, and they loved having frozen, cold paint. It kind of colored like a crayon on the first few pictures, then as it melted, turned more into a liquid. They were talking about why it was melting and changing and it was a great integration of science in art. As the sticks fell off, most of the kids lost interest and went on to play elsewhere, but I had one girl stay all day! She turned it into finger painting, and I got her some regular brushes. Soon, the kids saw how much fun she was having and joined back in. We had some messy messy kids, but it was great fun and I was glad to have it be extended since we haven't had outside time. :(

Insta-Snow
I brought this back from our Arctic Animals week and it was a hit!

Math
Snowman Button Counting
 
I had these snowman cards 1-30 from Kinder, and pulled out the 1-10 for these kids. Their hats have a number and the kids place buttons on the snowman to match the number. I added the dots on the snowmen to help them count since they need more help with tracking at this age.

Snowflake Flyswatter Game
 
We did this game for large group, then it was out and the kids played it on their own the next 2 days. I showed a card with the number, and they had to find it and hit it with the fly swatter. Pretty easy, but the fly swatter part makes it a lot of fun for them. It was fun watching them play it on their own and taking turns being the teacher and showing the cards.
 
Pegs and Puzzles


I think it's pretty self-explanatory for how cool these puzzles are for teaching numbers and their meaning.   
The boys used the pegs to make light sabers and fought instead. Oh well, at least they used them.
Mitten Clothesline
Didn't get pictures, but I had paper mittens that are laminated and have numbers and letters on them, each set is a different color. The kids put them on the clothesline in numerical and alphabetical order. It's great practice in number and letter recognition and ordering, plus great small motor exercise, using the clothespins.
 

Other
Vocab
We learned the word "coniferous" and sorted pictures of trees by coniferous and deciduous. They are understandably not great at pronouncing the words, but they know what they mean!
We also reviewed our other vocabulary words from the past 3-4 weeks and added them to our Word Wall. They are great at finding the letters where the new words go and love helping add them to the wall.
Science
We did a lot of science this week in talking about winter. We talked about frozen solid things, and liquid things. We collected snow outside, made observations about how it looked and felt (and tasted because we're 3 and have to still taste things I guess). We then made predictions about what would happen to it in front of our heater. We also let some melt in our hands and noticed that our warm hands made the snow turn into water. Our can of snow also melted into water, due to heat. These lessons seem so simple to us, but it's so fun to see these discoveries through the eyes of 3-year-olds. They were seriously impressed with this lesson, and then stoked to see frozen paint and were just sure it would melt in our warm classroom. These scientists are smart!
We also did another Venn diagram, comparing summer and winter. They sure are looking forward to some warm weather fun!
Music
We sang a lot of fun songs too! We threw snowflakes all over and sang "Snow is Falling" and did their favorite one over and over, "Once There was a Snowman." Here's the lyrics to both in case you need them:
Snow is Falling
Snow is falling all around,
on the rooftops, on the ground.
Snow is falling on my nose,
on my head, and hands and toes.

Once There was a Snowman
Once there was a snowman, snowman, snowman,
Once there was a snowman, tall, tall tall.
In the sun he melted, melted, melted,
in the sun he melted, small, small, small.