It's Already October!

I can hardly believe that it is already October! I haven't been on this blog since school started up in August and I am sorry. The start of the year was CRAZY!! Four days into the new school year, I moved rooms all while teaching!! It was very stressful. Then I had to establish the routines all over again in the new space and now before I know it, its the 24th of October! I promise I will be better this year and back on track.

We started our Fall unit this past week. I love fall. It is my favorite season. 

The vocabulary focus for this unit is: red, green, yellow, orange, brown, rake, raking, leaf pile, trunk, branch, squirrel acorn, scarecrow, leaves and tree.

Last week we read "There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves." The kids just love this book! They think it is hysterical that she swallows all of those things! As a follow up lesson we did a sequencing page. We colored the objects by listening for directions. Then we glued the pictures in order.

To get the free printables click here

We also took a nature hike around the school. We went looking for tree trunks, leaves, branches etc. The kiddos just love it! Everyone gets a clipboard and has to color in the picture as we find it. I wish I could remember where I got this from, but I don't sorry!

The following day we reviewed the nature items we collected and made sensory jars. Oh how fun that was!! The kiddos were very excited. This was a language lesson. The focus was "I will put a ___________ in the jar." Each kiddo had to say what they wanted to put in the jar. I found the sensory jar idea on Pinterest. Find it on my board here.

To fill the jars put the nature items in first. Then add 1/3 cup vegetable oil and fill the rest with water colored yellow! 

At the writing center the next day, we drew pictures of the jars. 

Happy fall!

Pumpkins, Pumpkins, Pumpkins!

I know this post is a bit late, but we finished up last week. I had a great time teaching this unit to the kiddos. The main focus of this unit was the life cycle of the pumpkin. I taught this last year (I have the same group again), so this year I wanted to extend it to include new vocabulary.

Vocabulary Focus
seed, sprout, plant, vine, pumpkin flower, green pumpkin, orange pumpkin, pumpkin patch, jack-o-lantern, and pumpkin pie.
I also focused on the idea of each item "growing" or "changing" into the next stage of the cycle.

For this unit each day we made a stage of the pumpkin life cycle.

Day One
I hung "dirt" on the board. This was brown paper :) I read aloud a pumpkin story. There are so many good ones out there. I picked "It's Pumpkin Time" by Zoe Hall to read to my kiddos. After reading the story, I introduced the vocabulary words/cards and the kiddos put the cards in the correct order. We talked about what comes first. The seed! So of course we made seeds!!

I cut ovals from the largest creative memory oval cutter using the blue blade. This gave me the biggest oval possible. I cut 2 per student. Then I used the hole punch and punched holes around the pair. Last, tying a brown string on the first hole so the kiddos could practice their lacing skills. After the kiddos laced, they crumbled 2 pieces of scrap paper to stuff the seeds. The last thing to do is to plant the seeds of course!! Each kiddo came up and "planted" their seed in the dirt.

I wonder what will happen next?
Well......
My fantastic aide, cut leaves with the smallest oval cutter out of green paper. Again, 2 per seed. She made the sprouts and the vine. The kiddos came in the next day and found that their seeds had grown into small plants!! The kiddos were very excited. I was excited because the word "vine" was being used spontaneously by most of the kiddos! Yay!!!

That afternoon, we reviewed the sequence of the pumpkin life cycle again. So we have made the seeds and the sprouts. What is next? Pumpkin flowers! I must admit I struggled with this one. How to make the flower and have it look realish. I finally found a start pattern in a scholastic pattern book. I printed this on cardstock and cut it out (well my fantastic aide did that part). After much discussion of the sprout growing into a flower, the kiddos glued yellow tissue paper on the stars. The kiddos crumbled the paper and glued that on. I wanted it to have a "puffy" look to it. Personally, I think the flowers look great!
I don't feel I can post the pattern I used because it came from a book, however, I did find one online that looks similar. Find the link here to my pinterest page.

So now we have the seed, the vine and the flower. Hmmmm....I wonder what the flowers will change into tomorrow? The kiddos had much debate about this.

Fast forward to tomorrow.
Reviewing the vocab again and practicing the sequencing. We discussed the parts of the cycle we have already made. What is next? The small green pumpkin! Yup, you guessed it, we made small green pumpkins. I had out big paper plates and small paper plates. Which plates would make good small green pumpkins? The big ones or the small ones (and yes some said we should use the big plates. Still working on the concept!) So after each kiddo finally made the correct choice of the small plate, we painted the plates green. I focused on the language target "painting with a paintbrush." This concept is tough for my kiddos. So we practice it often.

This is also a great opportunity to discuss how to make the color green. I did not do that today, but it could easily be added in.

After the pumpkins have dried and the kiddos left for the day, I  hung the green pumpkins right over the flowers. I did this to show the kiddos that the flower turned into the green pumpkin.

Oh boy were they excited in the morning!! Lots of "Sloan, Sloan, look! Green Pumpkins!" I love that spontaneous language. It warms my  heart.

So the last step to this wonderful pumpkin patch is to make the orange pumpkin. We reviewed the sequence of the pumpkin life cycle again and talked about what was last. I also set out the small and big paper plates again to see if they could get it today. Most of the did, yay!

I added pumpkin spice to the paint. Of course, each kiddo wanted to smell the spice. 'What will you smell with?' I asked. "I will smell with my nose." Then it was on to the painting. I used brown construction paper for the stem. Again, I focused on "painting with a paintbrush." Practice makes perfect, right?

Then again, I hung the orange pumpkins right over the green pumpkins. We finished this lesson on the Friday before Halloween. So of course on Monday we went to the "pumpkin patch." I had set out 2 real pumpkins, a big one and a small one. We talked about which pumpkin would make the best jack-o-lantern and why. We of course picked the big one!

First we looked at the pumpkin and talked about what we saw with our eyes. Then we felt it and discussed it some more. I made a pumpkin chart with all of the adjectives.

Next, I carved the top off and we talked about the inside of the pumpkin. What do we see, feel, smell, etc. Great adjectives come from this lesson! I also talked about the flesh and that we can eat it. The kiddos were good and grossed out. I think our jack-o-lantern looked pretty good :)

** Sorry, I forgot to take pictures of the finished product!

To finish up the pumpkin unit, we made mini pumpkin pies. The kiddos were struggling with this vocabulary word. I am happy to say after this great lesson, they have it now!! These pumpkin pies were super easy to make and only needed to bake for about 12 minutes. Perfect for school! I found the recipe on pinterest. Here is the link to my page. I don't like pumpkin pie, but I liked these :)

Well that sums up my pumpkin unit! It was fun and I think the kiddos learned some new concepts this time around. What do you do for pumpkins?

Acorns

So today the focus was on hide and hid. I have a paper squirrel and some acorns. I gave the squirrel and an acorn to a kiddo. Their job was to hide the acorn somewhere in the room (we did watch, that way we could answer the question).

Then I asked another kiddo "Where did Yousef  hide the squirrel?"

"Yousef hid the squirrel _________." Then it was their turn to hide a squirrel.
The past tense version needed lots of modeling.  The kiddos kept saying "hide" instead of "hid."

I must admit this lesson was hilarious!! The kids were laughing and having a wonderful time, way more than I thought they would!! My favorite was when E'Mani put the acorn in the oven, closed the door and turned the knobs to turn the oven on. Then Andrew went over turned the "oven off" and opened the door. "oh, its hot!" he said. What great spontaneous language!!

**Sorry no pictures from the lessons.

For math that day, we "gathered" nuts. I spread out the acorns and called one kiddo to "gather" acorns. I counted to 5 and let each kiddo gather as many acorns as they could. We counted the acorns and made a chart to see who gathered the most.

Fall is here!

I must say this school year is going to be busy! I am out of my room co-teaching for half the day. Then rush back to eat lunch and hit the ground running again! I promise to try and be better about posting, it might not be everyday this year. 

Well fall has finally hit this year in Michigan. It is my favorite time of year. I love the smell of the cool air, the crunch of the leaves under foot, apples, pumpkins, donuts and cider! So this past week I introduced the fall unit to my preschoolers. 

The vocabulary words for this unit are: Fall, tree trunk, branch, rake, raking, leaves, scarecrow, squirrel, acorn, apples, leaf pile, pumpkin, basket, red, orange, yellow and brown. 

The language targets for the unit are: -ing verbs (change, turn, rake, fall, gather), pronouns (he/she, his/her), past tense verbs (find/found, hide/hid) and prepositions (on, under, next to, in front, behind, in). 

To kick off the fall unit we took a fall nature walk. I gave each kiddo a clip board and a nature checklist. I found it on pinterest. Here is the link to the prekinders website where I found the checklist. I changed the ant to a tree trunk as that was one of our vocabulary words. The kiddos had so much fun running around and coloring their checklist. When we finished the checklist, we of course collected leaves to be sorted when we got inside. 

For Math we sorted the leaves. We started with size; small, medium and big. Then moved onto colors. We counted and made tallies. 

For centers I had out coffee filters to make trees. The kiddos colored with washable markers then sprayed with water. What fun! After the trees dried, I glued the trunk on. 

For the afternoon center the kiddos painted the back of leaves and stamped with the leaves. I found this on pinterest. I don't have the link sorry. But here are the pictures from my classroom. 

Welcome Back!

What a wonderful and crazy start to the school year.  I think it is this way every year! I can't believe 14 days have passed already. Sorry, I haven't posted in awhile. Life has been very crazy in preschool land. Moving classrooms, sharing a classroom and an aide! Ahhh!! Finally getting settled into my routine (that is what I keep telling myself anyway.)

Well I had tons of fun on pinterest this summer finding new things for my classroom! The first week we made a version of time capsules that I found at pinterest. I made sheets for the kiddos to use. Each kiddo wrote their name, age and told a few things about themselves. Then each one drew a self portrait. Last, I measured each kiddo with string and put it in an envelope. I marked the envelope "__________ height on (date)." I put all the papers in a folder and stapled it shut. I marked "Do not open till June 2013!" and let the kiddos decorate it.  I don't have a picture, sorry. Will update when I get a chance to upload the pages I created. The big plan is to do the same activity in June! Here's hoping I remember (I hung the folders on my board in plain sight so hopefully this will help).
The link to my pinterest board for this activity can be found here

We also made "All About Me" bags. The kiddos colored the people and glued the finished people on a lunch bag. Each kiddo took theirs  home to fill with a few important items to share with the class. I found this on pinterest as well :) The link to the website can be found here

Well that is just a few of the fun things we did to kick off the year! I will start up the language lessons for the year with the next unit we do, which will be APPLES! I so love fall and can't wait to start this one!!