Posts Tagged ‘LOW’

Preschool–Letter of the Week 6/7

Monday, January 28th, 2013

When we found out we were pregnant in October I immediately got sick.  I was struck with some intense morning sickness (really all day sickness) that made it difficult to sit down for structured learning time with Mikayla.  So, I opted for occasional learning time throughout the day and put our regular school schedule on hold for a bit.  Then Christmas came and even though I was feeling better, we were pulled in too many different directions and again our regular preschool schedule got put on hold.  However, once we got settled back into a routine in January, I immediately started back up with our school time (with a few minor interruptions).  For the past three weeks we have been covering the LOW curriculum for weeks 6 and 7 as well as learning all about the ocean!  Here are a few things we did over the course of our learning time.

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Learning Poster LOW Week 6:  Letter – F, Number – 6, Color – red, Vocabulary word – waves, NR – Humpty Dumpty, Theme – Ocean

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Learning Poster LOW Week 7:  Letter – , Number – 7, shape – star, Vocabulary word – twinkle, NR – Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star, Theme – Oceans

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She glued little fish onto the letter Ff.

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She sorted pictures that started with F and those that didn’t, then she glued on the F pictures to a fish.

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We went fishing for letters.  When she "caught" a fish she said the letter name and the sound.  She did really good with this for the first 10-15 letters and then just wanted to play.

**To make the fish I just cut out fish shapes from construction paper and added letters.  Then I attached a paper clip to each fish.  For the fishing pole, I tied string to a magnet and then to a small dowel rod.

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We made a Humpty Dumpty Egg (hardboiled) and then reenacted the Nursery Rhyme.  She got a big kick out of having the egg fall onto the floor!

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She drew a self-portrait of her family.  Usually she adds more details to her pictures, but on this particular day she wasn’t feeling very artsy.

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She put Humpty Dumpty together again!

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We went fishing again, but this time with numbers!

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We played a "How Many Fish in the Ocean Game" courtesy of  Jolanthe from Home School Creations as well as a few other of our ocean activities.

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We made a Girl wearing goggles using the letter G for the goggles.

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She used her stamp pads and fingers to make fish in fish bowls according to the number on the page.

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She used cranberries to match up correct letters of beginning sounds on a picture.

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She rolled an ocean animal dice and then colored in squares on her graph to match.

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She put star stickers on numbered squares.

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This activity was a bit complicated for multiple reasons.  One – I didn’t have any lowercase stickers, which I thought I did when I planned in out.  Two – it took a long time and she lost interest.  If I were to do over again, I would only do a few letters at a time.  For letters that fly in the sky like b put in sky, for letters that are regular like a float on water, and for letters that go below the line like g put in ocean.  Since I didn’t have lowercase letters, I wrote them all out in her journal and then pointed to them.  Once she identified where they went on the picture I gave her the capital sticker.  Like a said, a little complicated!

Our journal activities for the two weeks included:  practicing writing her name, cutting out pictures of red things from a magazine and gluing in, stamping letters we were studying as well as matching letters that were written on the page to her stamp, a free writing story about the ocean, and drawing and writing fish.

We also made a beautiful ocean mural that I failed to snap a picture of.  I will try to get one soon and post it.  We painted a sheet of chart paper to look like the ocean one day and then the remainder of the weeks we worked on different ocean creature art projects to include.  I think it turned out pretty good.  Another fun thing we did was read the book The Rainbow Fish (if you have never read it go read it today!).  Then she colored a fish to look just like the rainbow fish.  In the story the rainbow fish has these sparkly scales, so I decided to allow Mikayla to earn sparkly scales for her fish.  I chose an activity that she really struggles with, staying at the table and eating during meal times.  So, for each time she stays put and eats she gets a sparkly fin!  When I taught kindergarten I did the same thing, but the kids could earn a sparkly fin for any good deed that they did at school or home.  I had some science activities planned that we never quite got to.  I still might do them in the upcoming weeks because I am sure she will love them.  I am sure we did other fun things over the course of the two weeks, but that is all I can remember for now.

Next week we will move on to LOW Week 8, where we will be studying the letter H, the sun, and Hickory Dickory Dock!  It should be fun.

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Preschool–LOW Week 3 (Cc)

Sunday, November 4th, 2012

This week we moved onto the Letter Cc.  Here is our learning poster for the week:

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And here are some activities for the week.

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Here is a picture of her number book we add to each week.  The number and number word is at the top with space to put the correct number of stickers.  At the bottom I have made lines for her to write/trace the number.

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Acting out our Nursery Rhyme Three Little Kittens

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Letter C cat – I used a C for both the body and tail.

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Shape cat – I gave her different shapes that we stared by sorting and then putting together to make a cat.

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We made a Jack-O-Lantern bag for our trick or treating.

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She matched up crayons based on color.

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She used two triangles to make diamond shapes.

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Mitten matching activity.

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Special Halloween lunch – mummy juice, apple jack-o-lantern and hard boiled egg ghost with raisins for eyes and mouth.

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Number matching with stickers.  She did so good with this!

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Color by letter Cat

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Jack-O-Lantern coloring book.  Each page had a different color you were supposed to color the Jack-O-Lantern.  She worked really hard on this and it took most of our school time for that day!

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Stamping letters.  I had found this sheet at 2 Teaching Mommies website and she loved it.  The pictures had beginning sounds letters next to them and she stamped that letter across the blank space.

Next week we will move onto the Letter D!

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Preschool–LOW Week 2 (Bb)

Monday, October 29th, 2012

This was our second week of the Letter of the Week curriculum.  It is still going really well.  Although I will admit that some of the themes are a little strange.  Like in two weeks the theme is eyes…I think we might be switching that one up a little!  Here is our learning poster for the week:

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Letter – Bb, Number – 2, Color – green, Theme – jungle, Vocabulary Word – vine, and Nursery Rhyme – Little Bo Peep

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We practiced dressing her baby doll for a practical life activity.  She still gets very discouraged if she can’t do something right the first time, but we are working on gaining confidence and independence!

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I started implementing a sticker chart last week to help with her independently completing activities.  She is always wanting me to do some part of the activity for her.  For each activity she completes on her own (for the most part), she earns a sticker.  When she completes a row of five activities she gets a piece of candy.  If she fills up her chart she gets a sucker.  So far it is working out well.  Although, if she doesn’t earn a sticker then she tends to give up for the day!

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Shape race.  I laid out green shapes on her desk and then would call out a shape for her to race and get and place on the blanket.  She would choose which action she wanted to get from place to place (i.e. run, hop, skip).  She did so good with this!

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We practiced writing the letter B all over a balloon. 

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Bird and nest letter match – she matched capital letter to capital letter.

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I gave her a sheet with different pictures on it, some starting with B and others not.  She had ot choose the B objects and color them.  Then we cut them out and glued onto her butterfly.  I was really impressed with how she was able to determine the correct sound the words began with.

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On this worksheet with her nursery rhyme she colored to B’s with a purple marker and the A’s with a yellow one.  This required a little assistance and we had to go line by line, but she did great!

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She glued white pom poms onto a cut out of a sheep.  Then we talked about what you would see around the sheep.  She said she would see green grass, a red sky and a yellow sun.

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She practiced stringing letter beads onto a piece of string. As she would string the letters she would say their names and sometimes their sounds.  (Helpful tip – place a piece of string on the end they will be stringing the beads or objects onto to decrease string from fraying.  Also tape down to the surface you are working on to keep it steady for little fingers!).  Please take note of the collection of "objects" watching her during learning time!

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Sheep number match.  The sheeps bodies had certain number of dots and she had to match up the heads with the correct number.  We did the same game with some capital and lowercase letters later in the week too.

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Letter B bear!

We also played with her blocks and babies a lot this week.  I didn’t do much with the theme this week because I ran out of time to research it!  We did make a rainstick though out of a paper towel tube, toothpicks and rice.  She has enjoyed making music with it this week.

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She also enjoyed playing teacher this week and walking through our calendar time, which includes going over our learning poster!

Here were her journal words for this week:

  1. Name – we continue to practice this and get her writing it at an appropriate size.  She writes so large right now it covers the whole page and is all over the place!
  2. Green – she found pictures of green things in a magazine and I cut them out for her to glue in her journal.
  3. Baby – I modeled for her how she could draw a picture of a baby on her own.
  4. Vine – she practiced drawing squiggly lines for vines.

Next week we will move onto the Letter C, as well as trying to do a few fun Halloween activities!

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Preschool–Letter of the Week (Aa)

Thursday, October 25th, 2012

Last week I mentioned that we would be starting our Letter of the Week Curriculum (LOW).  I found this curriculum here, and am using it as a springboard for our activities each week.  This curriculum centers around a learning poster comprised of a letter, number, shape/color, vocabulary word and nursery rhyme.  It isn’t a very detailed program, but I think it is great one to use as a guide and then expand on it as you see fit.  If you are looking for a cheap preschool curriculum (this one is free) then I would recommend checking it out.  We are only one week in, and I am finding it very helpful.  It also offers different levels if your child is older or younger than three. 

As mentioned above, each week has a letter, number, shape/color, vocabulary word and nursery rhyme.  I will be sharing each of those items from the learning poster each week and then expanding on them as I see fit.  Here is our learning poster from this week.

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And here are some of our activities for the week.

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This is from when I taught kindergarten.  She matched the apples (uppercase letters) to the worms (lowercase letters).  Afterwards we had to use the worms as characters and play with them for a bit!

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She made apple prints with apples halves and paint.

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We put the characters from our nursery rhyme (Hey Diddle Diddle) onto popsicle sticks and then reenacted the NR.

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I read her the story about the Little Red House and then we cut open an apple to see the star inside.

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Then we took the poem version of the story and matched up pictures for each line.  When I taught kindergarten we did this in a pocket chart.

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We graphed apples based on which color we spun on our apple spinner.

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Number spotted cows.  She used glitter glue to make corresponding spots for each numbered cow.

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We talked about real and fantasy and what fantasy in our NR and then glued pictures onto the correct side.

I was not very good with the camera this week, but here are a few more  notable activities we did.

  1. I held up shape cards and she would jump for each square and touch her toes for any other shape.
  2. Part of the LOW curriculum is to have a counting book that you add to each week. This week we placed one sticker on the number one page and practiced writing the number.  I will try to snap a picture in future weeks to show what the book looks like.
  3. Read some books about Johnny Appleseed.

I also have Mikayla doing a journal "writing" each day.  I write the word and then leave an extra line for her to write the word if she wants to.  She also has space to draw a picture or glue something each day.  Some days she is really excited about writing something and others not so much.  I only really push it on the days she is supposed to write her name (which will happen each week).  Here are her journal "writings" for this week.

  1. Name – practice writing her name on designated spaces (this did not go well Confused smile)!
  2. Cow – She glued a picture of a cow in her journal and then  colored it.  She also practiced writing the word.
  3. Apple tree – I drew the tree and then she stamped her fingerprints for the apples.  She then counted the apples as I wrote the numbers beside them.
  4. Aa – she used her letter stamps to stamp A’s all over the page.
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