PreK Days {Ms. U & U.S.A}

{Weekly Wrap Up}

I am DYING for next week to get here because Dr. Seuss week is one of my all time favorites during the year! But since I am so behind in my PreK Days posts I am going to start with our most recent week and work my way backwards. 

Last week we celebrated President's Day and learned all about the United States of America. We also met our newest letter friend Ms. U. We learned that the letter U can make two different sounds. We didn't get into the long u short, but we learned that Letter U either says -you or -uh. 

I have really gotten into creating my own Smart Board lessons because I feel like I can't ever find exactly what I want for my uber smart babies. They are only 4 and 5, but they have such a thirst for knowledge and I love  giving it to them. We of course learned about The first president George Washington and the 16th presidents Abraham Lincoln since they are the whole reason we celebrate President's Day. Then we couldn't leave out our current president Barack Obama. I love hearing my kids say his name because no one can say it right and it is just so darn cute. We also watched 3 short videos about Ole George and Abe.

Even though we had a 4 day week this week we still worked on jobs with an extra friend or 2 at each table we were able to get all 4 rotated through everyone.

We created our very own American Flags by tearing paper (great fine motor skill).

We matched Cherry Trees. This was actually a job from our Apple Lesson, but it went perfectly with this weeks lesson.

(Gotta get a picture of those)

We created Presidential Portraits of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln (I will have to make sure to take a picture of Ole Honest Abe. not sure how I forget to get a quick pic of him). Notice George's beautiful eyelashes. My kids ahve a fascination with drawing teeth and lashes lately.

 

After learning about Abraham Lincoln the next day we played a game called "What's Under Lincoln's Hat?" I showed them then hid 5 different objects under the hat and then removed 1 object and they ahd to guess what was missing.  After everyone got a turn we drew self portraits of ourselves in tall black hats and transcribed what we would hide  under our hats.

 

Part of our Presidential Smart Board Lesson was looking at the different coins each president was featured on so we Sorted Some Coins. I meant to bring real coins for them to sort along with the work sheet, but I had a true teacher fail and forgot them. I can admit when I screw up and my kids will remind me over and over and over and over and over each time I forget to do something.

We couldn't forget to make our Umbrella U.

I had everything ready to make Ole Abe's Log Cabin, but a 4 day week really cuts down our craft time. I would rather not have these random days off and just go to school because I feel like we don't have enough time as it is to get everything done as it is. I still think we should get rid of nap time. Just think of all the craft time we would have!

We talked a lot about who could be president one day and to top it off we made our own President Masks.

They were a little top heavy, but still super cute.

This week flew by, but we had a bunch of fun learning about our beautiful country. I can';t wait to share the fun stuff we cooked up for next week. Get ready for some Seustastical  Fun!! Be on the look out for my Pippy Long Stockings costume!

PreK Days {Mr. C and The Carnival/Circus}

{Weekly Wrap Up}

Once again I am late, but I am catching up quite nicely. Last week we met Mr. C and learned all about the Circus/Carnival. It was such a fun week and we topped it off with our very own Classroom Circus with Tight Rope Walking and a 3 Ring Bean Bag Toss.

We matched uppercase elephants with the lowercase letters on the peanuts

We made Cat C's

We colored circus animals, cut them out, and glued them on the correct ring with the matching number

Counted clowns and circled the correct number

We even made a Circus Mural which I keep forgetting to take pictures of, but if this little horse is any indication of how cute it turned out you my friends are in for a treat!!

I couldn't remember to turn my lesson in after 5 trys of carrying it around the school on different errands and now that I think about it I am honestly not sure if I ever actually turned it in. Thankfully the people I work for already know I am a little crazy so I think they expect it now.

PreK Days {Mrs. T & Transportation}

{Weekly Wrap up}

Once again I am behind and trying to catch up. This post should have been finished 3 weeks ago, but you know how life goes and some days life is just more important then blogging. So now we are meeting  Mrs. T and learning about transportation just a few weeks late.

We made Shape Buses and then had each student try to write the word BUS (My Brain) 

Made boats that really rock (My Brain). Each student painted a paper plate blue and after it dried we folded it in half. Next they cut out the brown bottom of the boat then cut out and colored the sail. I glued the bottom of the boat and sail onto the popsicle sticks and on to the folded paper plate (open side down) because we start running out of time before we had to head off to specials.

and Advent Wreaths because the first Sunday of Advent was December 2

We actually didn't get to do 2 of our activities because we had to practice all of our safety drills and one of our religion lessons ran way over, but some days you just cant do it all and if you can't roll with the punches you will get eaten alive by 4 year olds.

For jobs the week we:

Counted Train Cars (My Brain)

Placed the Correct Drops Of Water On The Boats

Loaded the Trucks With the Right Number Of Blocks

  

Spelled Our Names With Trains Cars (My Brain)

And Made Tractor T's

 

Pre K Days {Thanksgiving}

{Weekly Wrap up}

I am so behind on life right now! I haven't been getting all of my stuff done ahead of time and I don't like it!! Life is so much easier and you have so much more time if you are prepared and I intend to get back on top of the game.

I just relized I never posted our activities and crafts from Thanksgiving week. We were crazy busy trying to get everything ready for the following week in 2 days that I am not even sure if I snapped pictures of everything.

We didn't have jovbs this week since we only had 2 days we all completed the same activities at the same time which was a bit chaotic, but we got it done.

First I am going to start with the Precious cookies my Awesome Room Mom made. They were adorable and delicious!

We made a Turkey Glyph

A Turkey Hat

Pilgrims

And did some Turkey Math

Happy Thanksgiving!

Pre K Days {Mr. N Nursery Rhymes}

I forgot to upload a few pictures today and left the card in my school camera so I will have to for realz finish this post tomorrow, but I am so darn tired of working on it I just had to get it up and posted. I have been so busy trying to get next week {Thanksgiving} and the week after {Transportation} finished so I can be ahead of the game that I just need to get this off of my brain!

ENJOY!

{Weekly Wrap Up}

Last week Mr. N came to visit and taught us all about Nursery rhymes. Since nursery rhymes are silly poems with rhyming words I wanted to really focus on what else......Rhyming words! I feel like this is such an abstract concept for my babies to grasp that I wanted to spend extra time on it. Each student has  K.I.T.E. folder they take home everyday and in the back of their folder is a section for GASP.....HOMEWORK! Yes I give my 4 year olds homework and the LOVE IT! It is simple activities that reinforce what we are learning in the classroom and this month half of their homework has to do with rhyming. 

I was really excited to let my kids finally use the SMARTBOARD to play a rhyming game which really seemed to help them get the whole rhyming concept. Rhyming isn't a very tactile concept so being able to touch the pictures and hear the words at the same time seemed to really make it sink in. We will be spending a longer amount of time on this skill because I want them to really understand it.

Now how about some Nursery Rhyme/Rhyming activities.

This week we worked on Workbooks I have made up out of worksheets I have or activities I have made up. This is a skill they will need to have for kindergarten so every now and then instead of an Activity I will be substituting a workbook. In this particular workbook the students had to draw a line to the matching rhyming word on the opposite side.

Another rhyming workbook. This time the students had to look at the picture in the middle and draw a line to each picture it rhymed with.

I want to start focusing on drawing shapes next week so we completed a workbook on tracing shapes and matching shapes.

 And our final job we made an N nest with a little blue birdie.

I was really excited about our Nursery Rhyme activities this week. I wanted to once again show my students multiple ways you coule Tell or Read a story so we read a Nursery Rhyme Book, Watched a Video and I Used a Picture Story/Felt Board Story. On the first day we talked about what a Nursery Rhyme is and that it was a special story because it was a poem written especially for little kids and had rhyming words.

We read Hey Diddle Diddle and found the rhyming words and then the kiddos made their own Dishes and Spoons.

I told them Baa Baa Black Sheep using a picture story or felt story. Then I wrote the Nursery Rhyme on the SMARTBOARD and the students helped me find the rhyming words. Then they made their own Black Sheep by sponge painting  a piece of white paper with the sheep's body drawn on it. After they dried they cut out the body and the rest of the pieces and put their not so little sheep together.

We read Humpty Dumpty and watched a little Nursery Rhyme rap video of the story. Then the students made their own Humpty Dumpty. I meant to have them tell me what they would do to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, but we ran out of time and then I forgot.

The last story we read and then watched a Nursery Rhyme Rap was The Itsy Bitsy Spider. Then the students created their own Nursery Rhyme Book and they were the Author and the Illustrator which is something we have emphasized since we started reading books and now they got to do it themselves.

Pre K Days {Halloween}

{Weekly Wrap up}

This week has once again been CRAZY! These short weeks are going to be the end of me. I know I should love getting to have the day off, but there are so many things I want to get done and we don't have enough time in the day to get through everything! Besides being a bit crazy it has been a bunch of fun!

This week we learned all about Halloween and All Saints Day. All of the awesomeness that comes with my job gets a big fat cherry on top with all of the Catholic Holidays we get included in the Holiday Package and All Saints Day just happens to be a Catholic Holiday which is why I am at home today with my petite bebe and not at school.
We stayed pretty busy with a 15 month checkup

 Early Voting

And a little house cleaning,(no pictures because my house is still a wreck!) but all of that is besides the point.  

Back to Halloween in the classroom.

Since we weren't leaning about a letter friend this week I was able to fully concentrate on the Halloween theme. I wanted to throw a little fun in with our Jobs this week so one of the jobs consisted of eating candy corn (delicioso!). I wasn't expecting half of my kiddos not want to eat theirs! Crazy kids! We also had our classroom Halloween party which was so much fun thanks to my AMAZING room mom!!

We will start with our Jobs and finish with our Awesome party!! And just in case you are wondering what Jobs are they are our classroom activities, usually a math or writing skill, we do daily. There are 5 Jobs and each table completes 1 a day and then we rotate until every table has completed each skill. I picked this up from Mrs. Nicole our other 4K teacher. It was easy to get started and now that I have all of my Jobs made next year will be even easier. We only had 4 Jobs this week because we only had 4 days of school. That meant 2 tables completed one job at the same time which made it a little more chaotic and I needed more supplies than usual, but we got it done. One things I always try to do when I am borrowing an idea from someone else is make it my own a little. Most of the links you click on will take you to where I got the idea for my activities, but what I do will usually be a little bit different than the original.

Now on with the show.

The students measured bats wings with candy corn, blocks (I forgot the pennies we were supposed to use), and paper clips, counted how many, and wrote the number in the box. We have only just started writing numbers and I helped most of my friends write the bigger numbers, but most of them did pretty good with minimal directions.

We colored mummies by rolling dice and matching the number to the color written on our Smart Board and coloring it in.

We rolled a dice and ate the candy corn covering that number.

We counted pumpkin seeds.

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2 activities we completed as a class were Pumpkin Names and Pumpkin Sequencing. 

We watched 5 Little Pumpkins Sitting On A Fence and recreated the story by sequencing pumpkin sizes and drawing our own jack-o-lantern faces.

Then we wrote Pumpkin Names. They had to write their names in the pumpkins, find the letters that spelled their names in a pile of letters, then draw a picture of their jack-o-lanterns.

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I know I posted a picture of our paper bag pumpkins in my last Pre k Days post,but I just had to show off the precious Pumpkin Patch Mrs. Cathy made out of all of our paper bag jack-o-lanterns.

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Now onto the P-A-R-T-Y!!
I gave my room mom a few suggestions for our party and she went above and beyond! I didn't want a whole party of candy because I knew my babies would be eating plenty of that junk that night. We decided to do a Halloween lunch with Mummy hotdogs

White chocolate covered Ghost Bananas

Jack-O-Lantern Fruit Cups

and Frankenstein Juice

Yummy!

We painted Pumpkins

And decorated cookies.

Things were nice and calm (if you teach 4 year olds you know that is hard to come by on party day) and everyone had so much fun!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Pre K Days {Mr. M and Monsters}

{Weekly Wrap Up}

This week we met Mr. M and learned all about Monsters! This went great with last weeks lesson learning about things that are Real and Pretend. Monster are Pretend of course!

We made Monster M's (My Own Creation)

we read Go Away Big Green Monster, retold the story on our  Smart Board, and then each student made their own colored monster and they had to write the whatever color they colored their big monster all by themselves. I was SO proud of how well everyone wrote their color words!

(Printable for monster found Here. It was originally created for a felt monster, but I whited out the directions and created my own craft)

We also read Where The Wild Things Are and made our own  King of The Beasts. Then everyone told us what they like to do when they feel wild.

A super simple craft I came up with to assess my kids cutting skills was a zig zag monster a curved monster and a straight lined monster. I also wanted to see how they followed directions so instead of coloring first I had them cut out, glue, then color their monsters. Simple yet fun

We rolled dice and counted  Monster Eyeballs

We counted Monsters and glued the number into the box. (My Own Creation)

We followed a Monster Glyph and made Shape Monsters. If you are wondering if the dots on the monsters legs are part of the decoration it is actually something I cam up with to try to help my kiddos learn how to accordion fold. I had planned to have dots on one side and stars on the other, but when i tried to copy then double sided it came out all wonky so instead of having them fold dot to dot then star to star we used dot to dot then backwards (this whole sentence is starting to not make any sense).

Non monster related. Everyone worked with Mrs. Cathy and made their own tiny paper bag pumpkin/jack-o-lantern to add to our oh so precious Fall Mural

Now that we have had our fill of Monsters and I have completed all of my Parent Teacher Conferences I think I am finally ready to celebrate Halloween next week. I found some cute stuff on Pinterest and my Awesome Room Mama is making it happen. I just don't like filling my babies with only junk so instead of a party with just candy and cookie we will be having a lunch with mummy hot dogs, pumpkin fruit cups, and white chocolate dipped banana ghosts. Don't worry we will have candy too.