Monday, March 18, 2013

Letter "O" Fun

We had a great week this week with the letter "O" As usual I enjoyed your preschoolers so much! They constantly amaze me with their creativity and intelligence. Here is a short summary of what we did this week.

We created stunning owl babies and their mamas (from top right clockwise T, Rh, A, Ro this is how I will abbreviate names for safety)





 We played a fun owl math games with some cute owls and eggs (convenient time to pull out Easter eggs). I am so impressed with how well everyone is doing with identifying their numbers. I have been trying to work with the children on the numbers 1-5 and they are coming along quite well!




 We had a lot of fun with imaginative play and owls. T was so cute with the owl rocks. He wanted to play with those little guys all day. I think he is a fan of little toys :) I'll keep that in mind when his Birthday comes around. Look at that sweet face, I love this little guy!


T did a GREAT job counting out the eggs and identifying the numbers. 



A little more pretend play from these cute girls!


I'm sorry it looks like I just randomly dropped the pictures. I have just barely enough time to get the pictures up here, so til I get a little more practice, it may not be the prettiest formatting. Just focus on your cute kids and maybe you won't notice my poor blogging skills!

We took a hike in the woods to look for owls. We had to be really quiet and use our binoculars. I think we may have heard an owl once but it was tough to tell because we heard a lot of birds chirping as well.

We often take turns leading the way when we are on our outdoor adventures. A is showing us the way up the hill in the above picture. I am always so proud of how well everyone makes their way through the brush. Sometimes its tough for them to manuever those little legs through the big sticks but they all love it so much that they don't really care!
Here A is turning around and waiting for us slow pokes. She is a great hiker and I am always happy that I can count on her to keep trucking along at a nice pace It seems that we are never all walking at the same speed. We usually have a leader and a caboose and everything in between, but not by my direction! This is nice for learning to do things together as a group and that everyone does things differently. A is never the slow poke and is usually helping others to keep with her pace and I appreciate that!

I love this because they are "Hooing" like owls! Apparently, they all want to be owls and stay up all night long. I doubt they would like sleeping all day though. They were so great at sharing the binoculars we brought a long as we looked for owls, I know they were sleeping in those trees somewhere.



We practiced writing our own letter "O" during circle time on Thursday.




Again sorry about the strange formatting. Check out A in the left picture above. She is so proud of her letter "O" writing. They absolutely love it when they get a chance to write on the white boards.

Look at those PERFECT letter "Os" that Rh made. I was amazed at how well she drew them on the line and in the right spot. That is tough to get the children drawing in the right area and she nailed it! I can always count on Rh to be a great example to us all :)





I forgot to take the camera out on Thursday, but we made a trip down to the pond and discovered an island that we hiked to the top of. Ro also showed everyone the frog eggs that her and her Daddy found in the pond. There are tons of little clusters of them. We all felt them and they feel just like those little water beads that we are planning on playing with in preschool soon. Squishy, slimy, and wet but very cool! Take a look below at what we found in our yard last week. We definitely will be looking for one of these in the pond with our new nets. Don't be surprised if you pick up a new pet newt after preschool this week...just kidding! We definitely need to explore the difference between newt and salamander though because I have no idea. That is pretty important when you are hunting them, right?

By the way, this guy was huge!


I almost forgot to show our little family of owls. I just love these, they are so adorable. Didn't they do a wonderful job making them? We also were sad to miss T on Thurs so we made him the orange owl. Now he has one of his own to play with. 



It was a great week in preschool! I can't wait to see what this next week brings. Stay tuned for activities for home to go along with the letter "P"

Monday, March 11, 2013

The Letter "O" Fun Activities For You and Your Preschooler

      Hello wonderful preschool parents! I have to tell you that I absolutely love working with your children, they are delightful! I have some ideas that I am excited about and I hope you will be too!

       For quite a while I have been wanting to come up with learning moments for Rory to do when Reagan is taking a nap. These learning moments would correlate with what we are learning in preschool for the week. Let's face it, whenever the baby is asleep, there are a million things to accomplish and often the awake child gets neglected or placed in front of the t.v. because cleaning or bills becomes the priority. I guess to cure my own guilt, I thought that having some activities that I am partially involved in would help to give Rory a little attention from me, and then once she is set up it will give her something to do as I try and get stuff done. As mother's of young children we need to stick together and help each other out because this is a hard, but oh so important job. I figure that if I make it a goal to let you Mamas know what is going on in preschool and some supplemental ideas to go with that, then I may be more likely to actually follow through and do these things with Rory. I will do my best to come up with some weekly ideas and share them here on the blog to help our entire preschool class have opportunity to further their learning and get some one on one learning attention from their Mamas. I hope you find these ideas easy to fit into your busy schedules and beneficial to your child. So on to the activities that I have researched for the week...

      We will be reading "Owl Babies" by Martin Waddell on Tuesday and "Little Hoot" by Amy Krouse Rosenthal in preschool on Thursday. I am super excited about this weeks study of owls and the letter "O" because there are SO MANY things that we can do with these.







        My first suggestion encourages the recognition of the letter "O" as well as some early Math skills. The letter "O" is so fun because I am pretty sure that is the first letter kids usually recognize so it is easy to come up with ways to build on that recognition. This idea comes from teachpreschool.org which is an excellent resource for parents and teachers.
DIRECTIONS: Have your child start by making a circle. Then have them guess how many cheerios will fit inside the circle. Write the number of their guess next to the circle and then help them count out enough cheerios to fill the circle and see how close they get to their estimate. Deborah from Teach Preschool says that this is, "A simple process to invite our students to combine a little math with writing and an excellent opportunity to use language like bigger, smaller, circle, estimate, count, actual, most, least, more, and less…" So I encourage you to use this language with your preschooler and of course don't forget to discuss our letter of the week. To view more about this activity or to find a plethora of amazing ideas visit my favorite preschool website Teach Preschool
"O" how we love to estimate! By Teach Preschool
     Once you have done this little activity with your preschooler, provide a small container full of cheerios and give them tools like measuring cups, spoons, a funnel, etc and they can play in this cheerio sensory bin while you get some work done. We all have cheerios right? This is an inexpensive and easy way to keep your preschooler entertained and learning. So, if you don't have a box of cheerios go pick one up for some fun letter "o" and sensory learning.
 
    Another suggestion that can be done after we read "Little Hoot" on Thursday is once the littlest one goes down for a nap, let your preschooler know that you would like to build a fort just like in, "Little Hoot." Little Hoot is a little owl that only wants to go to bed but his parents say he has to stay up and play. So he does a bunch of activities to try and keep himself awake, like building a fort, jumping on the bed, and skateboarding. Once you take a few minutes to build a fort with your preschooler, then you can suggest some sort of pretend play that she/he can do on their own. For example, suggest that they have a party with their stuffed animals in the fort while you go and get some work done. Building upon the ideas in the books that we discuss in preschool is a great way to further reading comprehension and to promote pretend play, all very important for our preschoolers. Check out these cool forts I googled...



Mine will probably look a little more like this one...

   

      My last suggestion is to have your preschooler create a background scene for the owls we create in preschool on Thursday. All you need is an old file folder and the owl that we will make in preschool. This provides opportunity for pretend play which is great to encourage as often as possible. It is so important to encourage those imaginations so that they can continue to develop and flourish! Here is the link for the owls we will create and below is a picture of the backdrop with those adorable little owls. I love them, don't you? If your feeling extra creative, help your preschooler make a few more to add to your collection. All it takes is a few toilet paper rolls, fabric scraps (you could just use paper too) and some googly eyes. Wah la you have the cutest little owl ever! Why not make it an owl family? You may need to draw the background scene and then have your preschooler color them in.




A few more simple ideas to further our classroom learning...

    If you find yourself driving around a lot this week or you are in the mood to belt it out, try the below song or another owl song from Preschool Express. We will be singing this in preschool and I think you would impress your child if you start singing something from preschool, don't ya think? Just tell them you went to preschool once too (;


IF YOU WANT TO BE AN OWL
Tune:  “If You’re Happy And You Know It”
If you want to be an owl, shout – Who! Who!
If you want to be an owl, shout – Who! Who!
Then you get to sleep all day
And at night you get to play.
If you want to be an owl, shout – Who! Who!
                                    Jean Warren
LATE AT NIGHT
Tune:  “Frere Jacques”
Late at night,
Late at night,
Who, who, who,
Who, who, who.
I can hear the owls call
Way up in the trees so tall,
Who, who, who,
Who, who, who!
                        Jean Warren

Here is a free "O is for OWL" Printable from TwistyNoodle

    Have your preschooler color this one day during nap time. I think the letter "O" is definitely one that they can all master this week! Let me know how it goes!




O is for Owl Coloring Page