#10 and a Number's Party

Hooray for numbers! We counted and counted then counted some more. We counted, feathers, buttons, starburts, suckers, Legos, blocks, little pet shops, and coins! Each of the children brought 10 items to count. After counting the items, we sorted them into colors, shapes, and sizes, then made patterns with them. ABCABCABC etc.

We then learned one of my favorite songs, "This Old Man." This song is long but fun because of the actions, plus it's always fun to sing a silly song. We glued small pictures to the song, onto our our #10.

For snack we made #10's with pretzels and fruit loops. Some of the children tried making other numbers too.

Number games are always fun. We bowled with 10 pins, naming the numbers that fell. We played a matching game by matching the dots to the number,and "What Number is Missing" game. I'm very proud and impressed that my little ones could recognize and name the numbers. My older class have been practicing naming and printing the numbers the last few weeks.

Let Me Help You!

My little preschoolers are already great helpers, however this is such a fun story and great lesson, that I make sure we go over "helping others" every year! I got out my farm animal puppets, and each of us had a part in the story. It's fun to see how the children will alter their voices to represent their particular farm animal. "Not I", said the____, is the traditional response in the story however, before the story was done, the little smarties were saying, "I will! I will!" Although the story got altered, they got the true meaning of the story. For our snack we had bread and butter, and took home a tiny, home made, loaf of bread.
#9 was the number today. We sorted, dug, scooped, spooned, poured and played in different types of beans. We pretended to make bean soup then glued 9 different types of beans onto our #9.

Let's Be Friends! #8

8 Preschool Friends

Today I showed pictures of Martin Luther King and then and now pictures of children in a class room, drinking fountains, and buses. I am so grateful to live in a time where children are not segregated. I think it broke my little class hearts, to think that not everyone was treated kindly long time ago. We talked about what a bully was, and how important it was to to be kind to everyone. We played a game that pointed out things that were different and the same about all of us.

In the kitchen today we made cookies. Cookies are a fun way to make friends, or to let friends know you care about them.

#8 was our number today. It worked out nicely to talk about friends today, and that we have 8 friends in our preschool class. We sang songs about friendship, our favorite friendship song was "I have a friend who's name is..." (tune to "Bingo").

keeping Healthy #7

Harry is a dog who hates to take baths. Harry hid his bath brush, then went out to play. He played, and played, and played. When Harry returned home, his family didn't recognize Harry. His family thought that Harry was a strange dog. Then Harry ran and got his bath brush. His family washed him, and were surprised that this dirty dog was actually Harry.

Today we talked about the importance of keeping hands, face, and our bodies clean. Another great thing for our bodies is exercises, sleep and eating healthy foods.

Sometimes our bodies get sick so doctors and medicine can make us feel better.

For a craft, we painted a Harry the dirty dog, and colored and matched healthy food on to a plate. We then passed around the plate and named our favorite "healthy" food or snack.

The number for today was #7. I introduced another time challenge called a "week" A week has 7 days. We go to preschool 2 days of the week. Time is a little hard to comprehend for little ones. However, I taught them the week song, (sung to the Adams family theme), and that seemed to help along with the familiar calendar they see in their own homes.

Our Bodies Can Move and Groove!

Today was a movin and groovin day! We didn't even use the table today! We were up and moving different body parts. We looked at a large body poster and found our matching body part with that of the posters. We played "Body Bingo", and did the "Hokey Pokey" a couple of times. Along with what our bodies can do, we also talked about our 5 senses, and the important jobs of our, eyes, ears, nose, hands, and mouths. For snack, we saw, heard, smelled, and tasted POPCORN! Some parts of popcorn is smooth, while other parts are ruff. What a silly day! A funny book was read about having body parts in the wrong places, and what we COULDN'T do. Don't be surprised if your child comes home walking, or talking funny, the book really got them silly!

Winter is Here! #6

We Played all sorts of dice games today. We took a good look at game dice. I have dice with numbers, and dice with dots, and dice with pictures. We matched, counted, and rolled the dice. We talked about winter weather, and how there is snow and ice and it gets cold outside. Although it is winter, we found out there are still fun things we can do in winter time. The most important thing we must do is to keep warm, especially if we go out side. We practiced duplicating by decorating left and right mitten to look the same. Then a game of mitten match and songs and poems about putting on our winter clothes. One of my favorite stories, "The Mitten", by, Jan Barrett was read, and for snack we made winter trees with pretzels, frosting, and Honey Combs as snowflakes.

It's a New Year!!

Back to Preschool today, after a 2 week Christmas Break. All the children were excited to see each other, and tell about the fun things we had received for Christmas. Each took a turn to tell about the toys, gifts and activities we did. We talked about the New Year. Together as a class we took down the classroom Christmas tree, and put up snow flakes on the preschool tree. I introduced January as our new month, and 2010 as our new year. We talked about how a new year is a time to celebrate and sometimes have parties. We learned a new year's song, made a 2010, new year mask, and ate party finger food for snack, (cheese and crackers, and little smokies).
During December our class was busy with practicing for our Christmas program and making fun Christmas crafts, that we put our numbers aside. However, today we reviewed our numbers 1-5. We traced our hand and painted dots on top of each finger that represented a number. We played games that matched numbers and dots. And of course sang 5 little monkeys, and 5 little ducks. Our 4-5 year olds practiced printing 1-5, cutting, and matching numbers with pictures.