Are you ready to kick off an awesome year?

Welcome everybody to a new school year!  This one probably looks very different than your usual, and just about everyone I know is feeling the overwhelm.  It's a lot.  Whether your schools are open, have a blended or distance learning plan, or you're home schooling, parenting is a a huge job - and this year everything is just MORE.  

My own children are grown, and I'm not teaching in a classroom right now, but with almost 30 years in early childhood education I have a few resources to pull from.  That's why this year I'm offering a virtual preschool / kindergarten supplement right here on my blog.  If you're looking for some easy ways to add a little more learning to your days, you're in the right place!

Each week I'll focus on one letter.  You can expect to see songs, rhymes, crafts, science and math activities, sensory play, cooking ideas, handprints, directed art projects and more - although maybe not every thing every week.  There will be links to my YouTube page where you can find parenting and teaching tips as well as songs and rhymes.  Expect links to tried and true activities I've blogged about before, mixed in with new ideas for you to try.  Sometimes there will be links to my TeachersPayTeachers store where you can find both free and paid resources.  I'll post a lot of this to social media too - so if you know another parent who might like what I offer please share! 

                                                                                            Let's get started!

                                                                                            Ms. Paula

 

                                                 Click here to get started with the letter Aa!

Reviewing H - J

This week we are still reviewing letters, while also enjoying spring.  We did two hippo art activities one day, painting plaster hippos, and making paper ones too.  They are both very cute, and worked our fine motor skills.

 

I found the inspiration for the paper hippo here, and modified it to be made with construction paper instead of paper plates.  The children loved it.

There are plenty of good hippo books to read to introduce these crafts.  We really love The Hiccupotomus by Aaron Zenz, and Hiccup by Mercer Mayer.

For the letter I, I considered sampling ice cream again, but decided my friends were already excited enough by our ice cream pretend play.  I've saved a couple of empty ice cream containers, bowls and spoons, and put those out with colorful pompons, what a hit!  I really like that the pompons are easy to pick up once they're done playing, but must admit, they do seem to get spread about a lot!

We also improvised a snow cone shop for the letter i - I'm thinking icy snow.  The cash register was very popular, more than the foam balls, bowls, and empty snowcone syrup bottles we had out for our pretending.  It was interesting to observe the children using the cash register, and to see how they used numbers in their play.  They asked their "customers" for their phone numbers to enter on the register, as well as entering prices, swiping credit and debit cards, and using the scanner on bar codes.

For the letter J we reviewed a fun Spanish language song on youtube.com : Jugo de Naranja.  I made a book from the lyrics a long time ago, and we like to sing the song as we turn the pages.  It's a good review of some basic Spanish vocabulary: me gusta, no me gusta, and lots of food words.

After we sang along with the song, and read the book, I offered each child some orange juice.  "Te gusta jugo de naranja?" I asked each child in turn.  "Si, me gusta jugo de naranja," they answered, and then got some to drink.

We read a book that featured a jellyfish while we drank our jugo de naranja (o.j.) and then made a jelly fish art project, which I found here, and did a jelly fish finger play, which is from here.

This was a particularly busy morning, as we also got to practice our hand writing - on a plate of jelly!  Each child got a plate with a smear of strawberry jelly on it, and practiced forming the letter in the jelly.  Correctly made j's resulted in a tasty lick of their fingers.  Yes, we washed hands before as well as after!  This was literally a sticky proposition, and well loved. 

For any readers who have school aged kiddos, this is also a great way to get them to practice writing their spelling words.  When I taught first grade, I suggested that parents make one evening's spelling practice be writing words in something yummy: jelly, chocolate syrup, peanut butter... I'm sure your children would love to suggest other tasty treats.  No licking fingers until you can write the word or letter correctly - talk about motivating!  Yum!

Z is for Zebras and Zoo

 We're at the end of the alphabet, and like the other last few letters, there's not a lot that starts with Z.  Fortunately, zoo and zebra do, and we live near a great zoo, so we can include a zoo visit in our learning activities this week.

We started the week with Animal ABC's, and a sensory box full of plastic zoo animals.  After we read the book, the children dug in the sensory box for the animals, and then sorted them by initial letter.  This was a fun, sensory activity that engaged the children, and let us review our letters all at once.  After we completed this activity as a class, I made it available for free play too, and the children used it all week.

 

To follow up the whole class sorting lesson, the children made their zebra striped uppercase Z craft.  Teachers prepared plain white paper with lines to show where the children would need to cut, and the kiddos glued torn black paper stripes onto the other side.

 Later in the day, once the glue was dry, they cut out their letters.  Our Z's stripes were all unique, just like zebras'.

On Tuesday, we read two class-made books.  One was an alphabet book illustrated with photos of a previous class at the zoo.  (A is for aviary, B is for birds, etc.)  The children helped me brainstorm lots of zoo animals, and what letters they start with.  I wrote them all down, to prep for our field trips to the zoo, and for making a new photo alphabet book about the zoo with this year's kiddos.

We also read a copy of The Zoo Book by Heidi Butkus which we've been singing along with all week on YouTube.com.  After we read the one made by last year's class, we illustrated a new one - OUR copy.  The children love reading books that they helped to make!  

We also made our lower case z craft, once again cutting out the letter z, and adding stickers and cut paper zoo animals.

 Here are some of our completed letter crafts.

On Wednesday, I took 2 trips to the zoo.  Boy, was I tired that afternoon!  It's nicest all around to take a small group of kiddos, so I divide the kiddos into three groups of 4, take one group at a time, and leave the others at school with Ms. Julie.  Next week, I'll take the final group!  

The kiddos back at school made their z page for their individual alphabet photo albums.  This page is a bit sparse looking, as I couldn't find clip art, stamps or stickers for zucchini, zither or zig-zag, and the zero looked like a letter o, so I didn't want to use it.

To prepare for the zoo field trips, and to make sure we get a picture for each letter of the alphabet, I made a list of animals for each group to look for.  The first group went to the Museum of Living Art, and the birds, penguins and kangaroos, all located towards the middle of the zoo.  The second group went to the far end of the zoo, to Texas Wild, and the last group will go to the African Savannah and Asian Falls areas.  There isn't time to see the whole 64 acres of zoo in one trip, not with little legs that get worn out easily, so we try to see different areas on each trip.

 In case you would like to make a similar alphabet book on your trip to the zoo, here's how I divided our search.  I've included some letters in more than one area, and of course, there are many other possible choices!
MOLA and central areas of the zoo: C (cobra or crane), D (diamond back rattlesnake or ducks), F (flamingo, fish), I (iguana, insects), K (kangaroo, komodo dragon), N (newts), P (penguins, python), S (snake, scorpion), U (underground snake - the Louisianna Pine Snake), V (vulture, venemous vipers)
Texas Wild: A (alligator, ammonites-fossils in the Texas map near the entrance to Texas Wild), B (bald eagle, bobcat), J (jaguar), L (longhorn cow), M (mountain lion), O (otters), Q (quail), U (sea Urchins - touch tank in the Gulf Coast display), W (white tailed deer, wagon, wolf), X (in Texas, or in exit), Y (Yellow Rose Express train).
African and Asian animals: B (sun bears), E (elephant), G (gorilla), H (hippo), I (ibex), L (lion), M (monkeys, meerkats), O (ostrich, orangutan), R (rhino), T (tiger), W (warthog), Z (zebra).

On Thursday we read More Life Size Zoo by Teruyuki Komiva, but again, there are many choices of zoo themed books to choose from.  Here are some others I have available for the children:

We followed up with a cute craft, creating our own zoo pictures with foam stickers.  Simple, easy enough for the smallest kiddos, but still working fine-motor muscles for the preschoolers, and of course, the children had to write their name.  It's hard to see from these photos, but they wrote "My name's Zoo" in the center of their picture.

On Friday, we made our zebra hand print crafts based on this one, and zucchini muffins. We used this recipe, because I was fairly sure that having chocolate chips in the muffins would convince everyone to at least try them.  The ingredients looked yummy!

 I had 3 small zucchinis to grate, and 12 kiddos to help, so I cut each zucchini into 4 pieces.  One of the kiddos exclaimed, "Hey, that's in quarters, just like when we cut up bananas!"  I love when they remember concepts weeks after I introduce them - it means they are really learning.

 Each child got to put a piece of zucchini in the food processor to grate it.  This was their first time to use the food processor, so they were very excited!

 We all took turns adding another ingredient, and of course smelling the spices and chocolate chips.

 At snack time we got to try them!  They looked so good!

I had the children predict whether they thought they would like the zucchini muffins, and to graph our predictions.  After tasting we checked to see what the actual results were - we are scientists, after all!  The final veridct?  Well, there were 48 mini muffins to start with, and here's what was left:

Only one child didn't like them, everyone else ate 2 - 5 muffins each!  We will definitely make this recipe again, and next time, I'm going to add a cup of applesauce to the mix, to moisten it a little more.  Yum!

Our Morning Routine

Today I'd like to share our morning routine with you.  My school is in my home, and I've created a combination preschool, kindergarten, and home child-care.  Children arrive any time after 7:30am, we eat breakfast around 8 am, and by 8:30 we're ready to learn.  This is how we start the structured learning part of each day.

We sing and dance!  Children love to move, and they learn best when they are moving, listening, looking at and joining in with engaging activities, so we start each day with 20-30 minutes of active learning with youtube.com.  I've created a play list for each week of the school year, so it's super easy for me to pull it up on the computer.  Each playlist starts with something energetic!  Here the kiddos are enjoying I Like To Move It, from Madagascar. 

 I always include songs that focus on the letter of the week, and our favorites are the StoryBot songs, and Sesame Street Podcasts.  There is always something about counting, and most weeks I try to include some Spanish language activities - El Perro Y El Gato is a fantastic, kid appropriate series.
Other, really useful channels to find learning songs include Heidi Songs, Harry Kindergarten Music, Dr. Jean and The Learning Station.

When singing and dancing is finished, the kiddos sit on the carpet, and I draw them back together with an alphabet activity.  Some days we recite Chicka Chicka Boom Boom as I point to the letters on my Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree, other days we chant the alphabet, and sounds.  Here the kids are pretending to eat an apple as they say, "A is for apple, a a a."

 D is for dog, d d d...

 Their favorite is V is for volcano, v v v, because they use big voices and big arms.  Even sitting down, we're incorporating music and movement.

 Next we stand up, ready to jump and count to 20, and to follow along as one of us points to the number line.  We jump to emphasize the move to the next number, as working on 1-1 correspondence is important at this stage.  Of course, jumping also gets our wiggles out, and even younger children who may not be able to say all the numbers to 20, can jump and participate, whilst hearing the numbers, and perhaps learning their sequence.

I ask 3 kiddos to tell me something we have zero of (lions, sharks, and unicorns today), and then let everyone else whisper their idea to a friend.  Then we jump and count!

 We sit down quickly when we're done, so we can count by 5's to 100, raising 5 toes as we say each number. 

 We sit up straight and put 10 fingers up in the air for each number when we count by 10's to 100.

 Then we quickly stand up, and reach high into the air to be rocket ships, and count down. 10, 9, 8...

 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...

 0, blast off!

Next we sing a counting to ten song in Spanish.  I wish I could provide a link to it, it's one I learned from Sesame Street a looooong time ago, but I can't find it on youtube.  It might seem like a small thing to include in our routine, but I know it's worthwhile.  Just last week a parent asked me if I had been teaching her son to count in Spanish, because he was walking around at home singing the Spanish numbers song!  Music really does help children (and adults) remember things!  

While we're standing up we do the pledge to the flag, standing tall and proud, showing respectful body language.  I made up a little rhyme to help the kiddos remember the names of our flag:

The Red, White and Blue,

Old Glory too,

The Stars and Stripes,

We respect you!

We sit back down, and look out the window, and on the count of 3, everyone whispers what our weather looks like, so we can graph it.  Thr child in the next picture is signing "equal", because we've had 0 snowy days and 0 rainy days so far this month.

I ask questions about our graph, from easy (How many ___ days?) to challenging (How many more ___ than ____?)  We always notice what has the most, and what has the fewest!

The last thing we do is look at the calendar.  I use a picture pattern for the calendar numbers, and we always start several days back, and count-on to find out what number we need.  We don't start counting at 1 every time, because counting-on is an important pre-addition skill, and one preschoolers might not otherwise experience.  We say the pattern too, starting several days back, and continuing the pattern to discover which picture we need.  This month our calendar numbers have shamrocks on one side, and rainbows on the other. 

We finish by singing and dancing to Dr. Jean's Macarena Months song, and the Days of the Week song.  With that last dance, the children are ready to sit down for a quick story and lesson, or whatever we have planned for the morning.

As you can see, our "Preschool" time is very active, and very musical.  We include a lot of things!  Over 20 years of teaching, I've found that daily repetition is key to students remembering.

Next time I'll tell you more about what comes after our preschool routine!