Five For Friday: Preschool Fun!

My goal this year is to get back to blogging! ;) Since I spend a couple days with third graders and then the rest of the week at home with my preschooler and toddler, I will spend some time each week sharing about both! On Wednesday I wrote about how we wi started our unit on informational text in third grade. You can read about it here!

Fridays will be more focused on some fun things we are doing at home, and this week I am going to link up with Kacey's Five for Friday to share 5 fun things we did this week to build letter and number sense! :) 

Race to 100! Such a fun way to practice counting to ten and then changing out the ten ones for a ten stick! First one to 100 wins! This was his first time playing, but Alex caught on right away and we had fun "collecting treasure" as he called it! Alex is definitely a numbers boy and so we have a lot of fun playing games to keep building that number sense and to let him make connections between numbers!

We love to do crafts! A while back, we started making some of the animals from Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? It wasn't something I had planned, but Alex decided to make a blue horse because of the book and we happened to have a brown bear craft, so we decided to continue the crafts and we keep them in a special envelope! This week we made the red bird, and then did some exploration to figure out how to make another bird whose wings flapped... 

that was definitely a challenge! ;)

Liam sometimes joins our game time for fun, but Alex is a big time game player! We love playing Sorry, Chutes and Ladders, Uno, Candy Land! All are great for practicing numbers, colors, etc. We slowly added in the rules of the different numbers to Sorry, but this is a fun game to practice counting {and stopping at the right number!} Playing games is not only fun but a great way to build number sense! Its fun to realize all the different ways learning can take place without needing any worksheets or textbooks! ;) 

We've had fun playing some games to practice letters and sounds! I love watching Alex's eyes dart around the pictures as he thinks about which one matches the letter he rolled! 

You can find the above set of cards here. We kind of made up this version on the spot because Alex wanted to play with the dice, but didn't want to color! ;) 

We also like to play another version that goes a little faster. I just added this game to my store! Be sure to check it out!

I am trying to put a little more effort into some literacy activities because that is not at all what Alex gravitates towards. I had a friend who had her kids write at least one sentence every day in a journal, and I kind of tucked that away as an idea I wanted to try later too. He is not much of an artist either. So on Wednesday I pulled out a journal and we wrote a sentence about whatever he wanted. So he took his toy Mater and noticed that a light was missing. So we wrote the sentence "Mater lost a light." I stretched out the sounds and he wrote down the letters he heard. I was pretty excited with his effort! The picture was a group effort! ;) 

Today he drew a picture of himself eating a lollipop and I asked him some guiding questions to get him to add a little more detail to the picture. 

What does it look like outside? What are you standing on? Anything else you need to add to the background.

He was a little less enthusiastic about writing a sentence today, so I helped out with the word lollipop. But he is trying and that is what makes me happy! :)

These are just a couple of easy things that I try to add into our weekly activities. Most last 20 minutes or less and come out of interest that Alex expresses about playing with dice or making a craft. I think that activities at this level definitely need to be child driven, and we stop when he loses interest. Liam, who is 2, often joins in for a little bit and then gets back to playing or snacking. His turn will come soon, but for now he is learning and enjoying some playtime by himself! :)

I'm linking up with Kacey's Five for Friday! Be sure to check it out! 

Five For Friday: Busy Week!

Here is what we have been up to this week!

{one}

Over the weekend I shared about some of the things that Alex and I like to do at home to build number sense. All you need is a couple of basic materials and then have lots of fun! You can check out some of our activities and can't live without materials here.

{two}

I also worked on a beginning letter sound sort for him. Its perfect for Pre K through Kindergarten to help them hear beginning sounds! I wanted to make sure it was useful all year long, so I also added long and short vowel sorts, and word cards so that the ones who are ready can start using their decoding skills to match the words and the pictures! You can find more information here!

{three}

In writing this week we talked about adding sensory details to our writing. So I split the kids into groups and they had to feel an object in a bag and first describe it without looking at it. Then I let them look at it and add more descriptions. We then came back together as a group, looked at the different descriptions and i gave each group a different bag and they had to match the object to the list of discriptions! It was fun. I did notice that a lot of kids went back and added more detailed descriptions while we were revising so I thought that was a plus! :)

{four}

This week we studied Michelangelo in history so that 3rd-5th graders got to experience what it was like to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel! They found unique ways to make it work, but all commented on how tiring it was! I have been able to see the Sistine Chapel in person and I am so amazed by its beauty! The set up and clean up were quite involved, but the kids had a blast!

{five}

To celebrate the ending of our first set of novels we had a fair with with our kids at a family's farm. We had elements from our three books, Because of Winn Dixie, Charlotte's Web, and Maniac Magee, present. The petting farm gave them a taste of Charlotte's Web's fair, Lots of food goodies from Winn Dixie's party at the end of the book, and a cobbler's know, pizza, and games from Maniac Magee... What we didn't anticipate is that true to the ending of Winn Dixie, our plans for a day of fun would be thrown for a loop by rain!! It slowed down at the start of our hay ride, but by the end the rain picked up and we were DRENCHED! Of course a lot of our plans changed, but the kids had a great time and made lots of memories! Since we did it on a non school day for us, parents and other siblings came along, so Alex and Liam got to come along too! They loved every minute and were troopers through the rain too!

Even though it rained I have to say I love the cooler fall weather that is rolling in! Can't wait for lots of fall activities to start!

Hope you all had a great week too!

Be sure to check out Kacey's Five for Friday Linky!

Preschool: Number Fun!

This summer I made some schedule cards to give us a sense of routine at home. Over the next couple months I will highlight some of the activities we do when Alex decides to put up that card! ;)

We will start with Numbers because that seems to be Alex's favorite and I enjoy it too!

I had lots of number sense activities that I had bought/created throughout my years teaching and so I was able to bring them home and I put them in a big tub. Whenever Alex chooses numbers we pull out the tub and go from there! 

Here are some fun things to add to your number tub!

Foam Numbers

Foam numbers are great for building numbers! We use them for lots of different things. Here he would roll dice, count the amount, and then build the number! 

Unifix or Connecting Cubes

We also spread the numbers out like a number line and Alex builds the number on top! Connecting cubes are also fun to build with! :) Eventually I do want to get some base ten blocks, but for now these are great!

Counters and Dice

These are two tools we can't live without! Alex loves to play dice games where all we do is roll, count, and collect. I got a fun tub of dice from Target that included all sorts of numbers, colors, and letter dice. Its fun to combine different dice together. Here he would roll a number dice and a color dice and then count out that many of the color. 

We also like to takes turns rolling a die and see who can get to 20 bears the fastest. 

With dice and counters the possibilities are endless!

Pentaminos/Attribute Blocks/Tangrams

These were all fabulous yard sale finds! Building spacial thinking is so important, not to mention the problem solving skills that kids develop when they learn to try again to figure out how all the pieces fit! We do a lot of these together and I am glad he enjoys it because I love this sort of thing! :)

We talk a lot about shapes when he pulls certain ones out to start building the pictures!

Check online for pictures and shapes cards to laminate and cut out! I found a bunch of freebies that I used at school before I found this set!

Ten Frame Mats

I love ten frames! I think it helps train kids to keep their work organized in a fun and easy way. There are lots of great ten frame activities out there. Alex is already getting the visual of "how many more" to a five or ten and its easy to count the empty squares!

Calendar

This was born more out of necessity because Alex was constantly asking "How many more days until..." Now he looks at the calendar and can tell that its too more days until Saturday, etc! He loves to add the new date each day, tell me the date, and ask what day of the week it is. He has occasionally come up to me and told me it was a "new day" because of something fun he is anticipating, so of course we have those conversations about how putting up a new date doesn't mean its a new day!! Target occasionally has the little pocket charts, and I had picked up a couple before, and they are perfect for the calendar!

I also sneak in a lot of number talk through the games we play, but I will save that for another post! :) What are some of your favorite numbers activities to do with kids?

Five for Friday: Enjoying life!

The this has been a fun, but busy week! After I got my LRP and syllabi figured out for next year, I felt so much more at ease. I had to make some last minute changes, but I am excited to start planning for next year. 

But in the meantime, I am enjoying EVERY minute with my sweet boys. I think I love it even more because I get to KEEP being with them next year. I love that I can still pursue teaching, yet get to be at home more! 

{one}

This weekend my brother-in-law got married! While Will was busy with groomsmen stuff, the boys and I enjoyed a day in Charleston! They loved the water taxi, and I got lots of new ideas for fun things when they are a little older.

Then we headed to the SC Aquarium (free for teachers!). The Madagascar exhibit was lots of fun, especially when the lemurs came over to say hello. We had lots of fun seeing all the fish too! ;)

{two}

In the evening we enjoyed a fun and fabulous wedding! I'm not going to say how much I had to bribe the boys to keep their boy ties on ;), but there were LOTS of treats in my bag to help! 

{three}

I reached 100 followers this week! I know some people may hit these milestones a lot more quickly, but I was proud all the same.  Blogging this past year has been a great outlet for me and the point I was at in my teaching. And now that I split my time between some fun preschool activities at home, and 3rd grade Literature, Writing, and History for 2 days a week, I am looking forward to continuing to share my inquiries and creating resources to help me, and hopefully others too!

{four}

Earlier this week, I wrote about some schedule cards I made for us at home. It has helped us get up and moving quicker in the mornings and Alex loves planning out our day.  You can check them out here!

{five}

One of the things I have LOVED about watching my boys grow is the fact that I get to see new learning everyday! Isn't it such an amazing thing! What makes me really excited about being at home with them is the fact that I can really build that sense of wonder and inquiry into them. My goal for Alex is to help him learn as much as possible, but in a way that he doesn't even realize it. 

Lately he has been into mazes. He asked for a maze book one afternoon, so I found some on the internet and printed them off, and stapled them into a little book. 

It is so interesting to me to realize that he is building his problem solving skills by retracing his path until he got back to the right one!

Early Childhood education is so fascinating to me! Having taught first grade will always be a gift because I got to see the reading process unfold in front of me, but now to watch language, number sense, problem-solving skills, (and so much more) develop in my 2 and 4 year old is also so beautiful.
It makes me just love being an educator and a parent! :) It also makes me want to keep exploring so many more avenues of education. So much to keep learning! I love it!

Linking up with Kacey's Five for Friday! 

Inquiring our way through Preschool!

When summer hits I usually try to come up with some kind of schedule of fun things so we all don't go crazy over the summer, get stuck in a rut watching TV, or get TOO overwhelmed by boredom.

I also believe though, in giving myself some grace because summer is usually when I am exhausted from the school year too! And then there are the days, like after a fun-filled wedding weekend, that we all stay in our pajamas until dinner time and then get dressed so we can go on a walk. 

But this summer I was thinking that SUMMER was not going to completely end. We will only have 2 days a week of going to school, so we need to keep up some routines for the year too...

Thats when I decided to make us some schedule cards! Inside I was thinking that it was a little ridiculous, I mean, do I need to have our day that organized, BUT, I love/crave schedule and organization so I thought that this would help.

And...they have been wonderful! Alex has loved using them from day one. Its the first thing he does in the morning and he likes to talk about his ideas at bed too! If he is needing something to do, or wanting to watch TV, we usually check out the fridge for different ideas. Sometimes I will put up specific ones, but during the summer, we put up whatever we feel like! Kids definitely crave schedule too, especially ones like Alex! ;)

Check out the schedule cards here!