Sunshine Day School

Monday, June 18, 2012

Reading is an Adventure!

Today at Pre-K camp we focused on learning to love reading and writing. Sure, reading is something you HAVE to learn to do, but we might as well get them excited about it! We talked about all the adventures that you can take and the cool characters that you can meet when you just open a book (or your Ipad)! I am all about instilling a love for reading in young children, and what better way than to expose them to fun books! And speaking of cool characters, you should meet Pete the Cat!

Pete the Cat, is just that, a fun book. What makes Pete even cooler is that there are some really cool You Tube videos that set his story to music, which is really catchy! Today we read Pete the Cat on my Ipad, then watched the story come to life, read and preformed by the author and illustrator.

It has occurred to me that many of the children will read in an age of no-books. They will be reading on E-readers and computers. So today was a good opportunity to show them that there are many ways to read a good story!

Next, we read our own version of Pete the Cat. First, we took a picture walk, and discussed each page. Then we went through and in an exercise in listening and following directions, we colored each page to give us extra clues to help read the words that we don't know. This book will be trickier to read, but I hope that they will stick with it and enjoy the challenge. Just remember to make each reading experience fun, when it gets stressful, just step away.

Independent snack today was Fruity Tarts. They really have gotten the hang of the process now. They get out the recipe card, follow the steps, enjoy the snack, and clean up. It is truly amazing to watch them work together, passing the foods and helping each other.

The whipped cream posed a bit of a challenge due simply to hand size, but the problem solved and got it all worked out.

Some asked a friend, some asked me to help, and some stayed with it until they got it out themselves.

In preparation for our Kindergarten Rocks send off next week, we tie dyed some really cool shirts to wear during our parade. We did a little research and found out how to make certain designs on the shirts. I printed the information as a guide. Each child chose the design they liked and tried to follow the instructions, many mixed the designs, which should turn out to be pretty neat. The rubber bands were pretty difficult to stretch, but you know what that means, it was a good fine motor workout!

Finally, it was time to don our PPE (personal protective equipment) and head out to apply the dye. We wore goggles, gloves, and smocks (when necessary).

This was another super, busy day at Pre-K summer camp. We can't wait to see how our tees turn out!

Next Monday we will have our kindergarten send off- Kindergarten Rocks- complete with a parade and rock and roll, tie dyed tee shirts! We will be exploring sound and how it is created. We will use what we learn from the lesson to create our own instruments. This open ended project, where children select their own materials form a collection of recyclables, will surely be an adventure. I am willing to bet, if you just stopped by, you would think you had stepped into absolute chaos. Rest assured, it will be organized chaos! You will see kids planning, experimenting, thinking, trying ideas, sharing, collaborating, talking, and learning. No 2 instruments will be the same, but I guarantee that there will be good stuff going on in our classroom and joyful noise will be made!

Monday, June 11, 2012

Pre-K Camp Day 2

Today we focused on "First Day Feelings". We talked about how each child was feeling about the first day of school. We read the "Kissing Hand", and followed this theme throughout our day.

Today the children prepared their own snacks of love cookies. They did a great job following the recipe once again, and no spills today :)

I did give them a little time to free-explore in the classroom, and look what they did!

Such a cool "structure" (their word!),

During our free exploration time, each child made a pocket full of kisses to remind them about how mama's kiss goes straight to their hearts.

They did sewing and stapling to complete the project.

They did a wonderful job operating the stapler.

Today's literacy focus was on reading a predictable text. We took a picture walk together and discussed other strategies that we can employ when we encounter words that we don't know.

We read the book together, each person worked really hard to point to each word.

So proud of my little readers! Make sure they read their book to you too!

Finally, lunch time! They hardly even needed us today. I even heard someone remembering to eat their sandwich first, instead of dessert!

Monday, June 4, 2012

Pre-K Camp Day 1

Yay for the first day of Pre-K Summer Camp. Just a little background information... I decided to offer this workshop series as a way to help children and families as they prepare for the transition from preschool and home to kindergarten. There are many transitions in life, but this is one of the biggies. Preschool IS preparation for the transition by its nature, however I try really hard to let the end of preschool be just that, the end of preschool. I hate to "cheat" the end of preschool by totally focusing on kindergarten. This series of classes lets us focus on 4 main parts of the transition, as well as skills that will be mighty handy when we start big school!

5-4-3-2-1, Blast off for Kindergarten! Each child found their name on our bulletin broad when they first arrived. During circle time, we talked about bring a good friends, and what the Bible says about being a good friend. We made a list of what good friends do. Then we read the book Chrysanthemum, by Kevin Henkes. She is a little mouse who goes off to school for the first time and runs into some bullies. Not to worry, a nice teacher comes along to save the day. This book was a good way to talk about how important it is to be a good friend, and use nice words.

During centers the children had the opportunity to "cook" their own snack. (see previous post)

We also had a formal writing lesson. We wrote stories about how to be a good friend.

Many people wonder how you do a formal writing lesson with preschoolers, who are one so many different levels. It is really not as hard as it sounds. Through modeling, we are reaching each learner where they are. Some children are working on drawing people, some are developing a setting, and many are writing sentences using sounds and sight words. It really is a neat process to watch unfold. The sentence accompanying the illustration pictured above says, "I can be nice to my friends".

We were able to squeeze in just a little time for playing outside. We were so surprised to see that our tomatoes were ready to harvest.

Then we dug potatoes!

Time for lunch! We are learning how to manage our lunchboxes, open all of those tricky containers, eat our sandwiches FIRST, and clean up. We also started talking about things that we can save, and things that will spoil if we put them back in our lunchboxes. Since many kids will be eating food purchased in the lunchroom, we will be playing some fun balancing games with cafeteria trays later in the month.

For our math lesson we thought back to the story of Chrysanthemum. She has 13 letters in her name, 1/2 as many as there are in the entire alphabet. We decided to find out how many letters we have in our names. We also found out who has the longest name in our class. Each child write the letters of their name in a strip of boxes, then counted carefully.

Finally, we sorted ourselves by the number of letter we have in our names. 5 was a very popular number, with 5 kids having 5 letters in their names.

We are blessed with many double-name babies in our class. We decided to count the letters in the names they go by, so we had many names with 9+ letters.

Guess who has the most letters in their name???

Today was a very good day at school. We accomplished all that we needed to, and then some. Each child took home homework. It is not my favorite thing for young children, but it is a reality of going to big school. The children are to assemble a homework kit (crayons, glue, scissors), and find a quiet homework place to do their work. Hopefully having some of these in place will help them when homework comes in the fall. We will talk more about this during our parent session at the end of June.

Cooking Our Own Snack at Preschool!

Today was our first day of our Pre-K Summer Workshop Series. This is only a small part of what we did today. This activity was part of center time, a free choice snack option. It wasn't required, however everyone, at some point, came over and gave "cooking" a try. We are eating lunch together at school this week, so we didn't need a formal snack time. The free choice option allows children to eat when they are hungry, not just when the "teacher says so"!

I love providing the children with learning opportunities like these. It isn't necessarily something we could do every day in the classroom, but it was just the right thing for this day. Througouht the process children "read: a recipe, interacted with meaningful text, followed directions, exercised resposibiity, used good hygeine, shared, worked as a team, helped one antoher, used transition words, and so much more...

This is our cookbook...

The directions are written in picture and with minimal text.

The first step of our recipe is to wash your hands. Next the recipe says get a plate, napkin, and knife.

Following a recipe is great practice in listening and following directions. It was neat to see these kids working together, using "nice words". I heard lots of, "Please pass the windows", "Please pass the wheels", "Thank you", "Do you need a napkin?". Our focus today was on being a good friend, so these kind words were music to our ears.

Next, we spread "icing" on our graham crackers. We chose to use whipped cream, as an icing alternative, because it has less sugar and was more easily spread.

Time for windows!

Good fine motor practice too!

Next, we added 2 wheels. It was really, really hard not to add 4 or 10 wheels, after all, the Oreos were the best part of the whole thing! This was a good teachable moment for us. We discussed the importance of following ALL of the directions in the recipe.

The last step in the process was to pour a glass of water and enjoy the snack!

Pouring went really well, with only one spill. Of course we expected spills, and were prepared to deal with them. I have learned that if we don't let the children make mistakes, they will not know how to fix them. It would have been a lot easier to pour it for them, but who would have learned anything??? Once the spill happened, everyone jumped up to help. It warmed my heart to see the children helping each other. So proud of each and every one of them!