Preschool Corner Archives - Page 80 of 84

The Preschool Corner: Letter F

Jan232009

January 23, 2009 by Jolanthe 1 Comment

We have been moving on in our alphabet studies, but I want to be sure to catch up with the few posts that I missed, so this week I am posting what we did for the Letter F.

ABC Book: Fishbowl

I have to say that this is one of my favorite alphabet book crafts yet. :) The little fish with his googly eyes is just too cute for words. And Zachary definitely liked the glitter. I cut out the fish and the “bowl” along with some water and he glued it all on and then used a paintbrush to spread glue around so we could add some playsand on the bottom for the sand at the bottom of the bowl. He also used blue glitter to make the water a little more sparkly.

Alphabet Activities: Fingerprint F’s

I wrote the letter F several times on a piece of paper and then Zachary had fun using some of my ink pads to put his finger print all over the letter F.

Next time I’ll buy a washable ink pad. :)

Fun Activities: Rainbow Fish

This week we made our own rainbow fish using two paper plates, a brad, tissue paper and tinfoil. One paper plate remains whole and the other one is used to cut a wedge for the tail of the fish and then attached using the brad.

We made a watered down paste using glue and water and then Zachary laid 1-2″ squares of tissue paper on the fish body and used a paintbrush to brush the glue mix over. Occasionally he used a square of tinfoil to make the fish glittery.

Movement

Zachary let the girls be a part of this time with us this week (so generous that he is). We pretended to fly like fairies, fish, fight fires, float in the water, freeze, fall like a leaf, leap like a frog….and then had fun playing a game of leapfrog together.

Letter Sheet/Collage

Click on the thumbnail to download the worksheet.

Stories and Books

Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister
Foot Book by Dr. Suess
One Fish, Two Fish by Dr. Suess

Writing

This week we used playdough as part of our writing time. We rolled out skinny snakes and then had fun forming them into the letter “F”. We also used the worksheets (similar to Handwriting Without Tears) that I made.

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Filed Under: Alphabet Time, Letter Ff, Preschool Corner 1 Comment

Tot School ::11::

Jan182009

January 18, 2009 by Jolanthe 2 Comments

Tot School was a little scattered this week since Kaleb started acting very tired and lethargic on Wednesday and then that night began complaining that his ear hurt. We’ve never had one this young actually TELL us what was wrong with them, so at first we didn’t really give it much credit. But it was so sweet (and sad all rolled into one) – he kept putting his little hand on his ear, leaning his head to the side and saying “hewrt, hewrt” in that cute little toddler voice. And sure enough he had a double ear infection.

Although we weren’t quite as focused, we did get a few things squeezed in to our days. I pulled out a bunch of my teaching supplies from years ago and actually hung them up! When I use tape on our walls it leaves a nasty residue, so I finally bought some of the 3M adhesive tabs to hold up the shapes and colored crayons. And Kaleb LOVES them. He’s been running over to the wall and naming colors, not the right ones, mind you, but at least his naming colors!! I pulled out some of the smaller crayons I had and he would hold them up to the matching crayon on the wall and repeat the color after I named it.

We also spent some time doing puzzles this week again. We’re using the 3 part alphabet puzzles and only doing a few at a time so that it doesn’t get too overwhelming for him.

He pulled out his stacking cups (Discovery Toys) and also his big buckets (Tupperware) to stack inside each other and also have fun stacking in a tall tower and then know down…or see if it would fit in his mouth. While it’s great to strap him in at the table, it’s also hard because those little arms can only reach sooooo high!

Since I don’t have as much to share this week, I did want to share what my overall goals for Kaleb were this year:

Identify basic colors
Identify body parts
Identify 3 shapes
Sing ABC song and identify key letters (K for Kaleb, M for Mommy, D for Daddy)
Identify animals and the sounds they make
Sing a few simple songs (Twinkle, Twinkle, ABC’s, Jesus Loves Me)
Count 1-5, then 1-10 if mastered
Sort items by color, type and size
Know difference between big/small
Understand prepositions on/off, in/on/under
Copy circles and lines
Put together simple puzzles

Be sure to head over to Carissa’s at 1+1+1=1 for some more Tot School posts and ideas.

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Filed Under: Kaleb, Tot School 2 Comments

The Preschool Corner: Sick Kids Version

Jan162009

January 16, 2009 by Jolanthe 3 Comments

I will be putting together some of the posts of the previous letters this weekend (for the ones that I’ve missed “E, F, G, H”). We’ve had some sick kids this week (translate to clingy/needy) and little gets done. Especially when we were at the doctor’s office instead of at home doing preschool.

Stay tuned for some upcoming posts, but please leave a link below and share what you’ve been doing during your preschool time! I am enjoying visiting your blogs and seeing the fun things that you are doing!!

About the Preschool Corner:

The Preschool Corner is a place for us to share the ideas we are using during our “preschool time” with our kiddos. You can join in the fun and record what you are doing in your house. Please link your exact post to the Mr. Linky below (if you have questions feel free to ask). Be sure to link back to this post so that your blog readers can find some other great ideas too!

The guidelines can be found here if you need them.

Share what you’ve been doing in your house this week!

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Filed Under: Preschool Corner 3 Comments

Tot School ::10::

Jan102009

January 10, 2009 by Jolanthe 1 Comment

~ Kaleb is 25 months old ~

We pulled out a few of the newer Christmas toys this week for the little man to play with, so he was rather thrilled. I apparently underestimated him when buying some of the toys (sigh), since he has already ‘mastered’ some of the puzzles. But as long as he enjoys doing them and playing with them, we’ll keep using them!

Although we have the smaller leap pad, Kaleb isn’t quite up to it yet so he has another toy that is similar and does alphabet and counting – just the basic things. Since he is becoming more interested in singing the alphabet he is more interested in this one now. Another day he lugged it around the house with him and let his sisters push him around in the laundry basket while he played along.

Kaleb is also loving his stringing beads and figured out how to get them on the string all by himself this time! He actually did quite a few and then dumped them all over the table.

He then started stacking the square blocks and building a tower. He was so thrilled with himself!

We also pulled out the colored bears for sorting this week to see if he could continue to sort the four colors, which he did! Yeah, Kaleb!

Kaleb has been having fun discovering the difference between hot and cold. We freeze our gogurts and so he sits at the lunch table saying “Cold? Cold?” while squeezing his gogurt. Then later he runs over to the stove asking, “Hot? Hot?” He’s got it down now!!

Laurianna also had fun trying to teach Kaleb how to play Go Fish. We have some great cards from Alphabet Alley that are nice and thick (you can read more about them here). Love them!!

Years ago I bought a cd from Discovery Toys called Sounds Like Fun. Every now and then we’ve been playing it and Kaleb LOVES the alphabet sounds song on the cd. Here he is at the table singing along and raising his apple in the air while singing “Apple, apple, ah, ah, ah.” (If you don’t have this cd, I’d highly recommend it!!).

Be sure to visit Carissa at 1+1+1=1 for some more Tot School posts! Have a great week!

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Filed Under: Kaleb, Tot School 1 Comment

The Preschool Corner: Letter N

Jan102009

January 10, 2009 by Jolanthe 1 Comment

This week I will say that the letter “N” was a little more than frustrating to me. Sigh. Stuck there in the middle of the alphabet with so much less to work with (it feels like). Poor “N”. Looks so much like “M” and yet…oh, well, I digress. :)

Because I felt like I was hitting my head against a wall trying to come up with ideas for us to do this week, the specific activities might be a little more vague than they have been in the past. We did do lots of other things and tried to tie them into our alphabet activities.

ABC Book: Nighttime

The creativity is overwhelming in this ABC page. Nighttime. Zachary stuck some stars in the sky and then colored it what he thought nighttime should be. If we would have done this letter before Christmas, I probably would have added some nativity stickers to make it a little more festive. :)

Fun Activities: Falling Dominoes

We pulled out our math manipulatives box this week and everyone was having great fun with everything inside. One of the little bins has dominoes, so Zachary and I worked on making a dominoes line-up that would look like the letter “N”. Pushing them over to make them cascade everywhere was too much of a temptation so it took a little time to get it all just so, but we finally did (and they all were quickly scooped up before I could get the last picture.

Math

Our math manipulatives box also has some boards that we can stretch rubber bands on to make shapes or really anything else (and the name of these is escaping me right now…). Zachary decided to make an “N” with his and then worked on different shapes and letters.

And while we had our manipulatives out, we also pulled out our numbers to 100 chart and had a little fun counting by 10’s and also from 1-30.

Letter Sheet/Collage

We did have a letter sheet collage for this week too. Here’s the document if you would like to use it.

Click on thumbnail to download

Verse

Matthew 6:24- “No man can serve two masters.”

We’re still using the book My ABC Bible Verses by Susan Hunt. I also dug out our cd called “Sing the Word from A-Z” and the same verse was on the cd, so the kids have been walking around the house singing the verse for me.

Writing

We practiced our letter writing this week using Peterson Directed handwriting. Since this has been working well for us and Zachary likes the curriculum too. Here’s a post with a little more info for you.

Rhymes and Songs

I had every intention of practicing nursery rhymes and such with him this week…and it just didn’t happen.

Next week is already in the works and I am hoping to also get a few back posts up for some of the missing letters – just need to find the time this week!

About the Preschool Corner:

The guidelines can be found here if you need them.

Share what you’ve been doing in your house this week!

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Filed Under: Alphabet Time, Letter Nn, Preschool Corner 1 Comment

Tot School ::9::

Jan42009

January 4, 2009 by Jolanthe 2 Comments

~Kaleb is 25 months old~
Quite a few of our Tot School photos this week show a certain little man wearing the same pair of zippie pjs. And while I promise that we do wash them, it is growing increasingly difficult to get him to take them off.

He loves them. And by loves them, I mean kicking, screaming and crying should we even hint at taking them off.

Good times.

Kaleb has been playing quite a bit with our Leap Frog Fridge Phonics game, so we are hearing the ABC song repeated all.the.time. And it’s sinking in because he is singing along sections of the song and even doing bits by himself as he walk around the house.

Thanks to Carissa for mentioning the puzzles she found at Ross last week! I went the next day and despite the fact that the toy section looked like a tornado had gone through, I found ONE set of the alphabet puzzles that she had gotten. And Kaleb is loving them!

Kaleb got some mini playdough containers for Christmas and he loved trying to stack them. He also loved trying to eat the playdough (nothing new), but loves all the little toys that we have to stick in our playdough too.

Everyone got a little energy out playing musical chairs together. Which resulted in much crying every time the music was turned off.

And Kaleb and I had fun playing with some of our Little People and attempting to count – but apparently he just likes to listen and won’t count along anymore.

And the biggest hit of all this week was being able to play along on the wii Outdoor Challenge mat with the big kids. He needed a little help, but it was so much fun to watch him!