We have been on quite an adventure in Pre-K! We are learning about water habitats during our Bubbles, Boats and Floats unit. Recently, we focused on beavers and all of the animals that live in and near a beaver dam. At this point in the year, children are adept at working in small groups. They have been practicing social skills such as how to negotiate space and materials. Accepting the ideas of your peers and working as a team requires practice over time. Here, children chose who they were going to work with and what portion of a beaver habitat they would create. The long line of wood pieces is the beaver dam, the children explain, which leads to a lighthouse (more on that later) and a fish pond. Earlier in the day, children visited the art table to create a Make and Play activity. They have learned that they can make their own toys or "props" and immediately play with them in the classroom. As we have explored the Bubbles, Boats and Floats theme, we noticed that fish live in beaver dams and ponds, so the children went to work making a pond using popsicle sticks from our STREAM station. Children proudly explain their work to me. I ask questions and then repeat their explanation back to them, not only for clarification purposes, but to model how to break down the project. "First you built the dam, then you created a fish pond, is that correct?" Using first, then, next, language demonstrates sequencing using math vocabulary.
"Yes and then we built a fish pond so F. could swim her fish in it." "I see. Tell me about what you are doing here (at the dollhouse)." "This is the lighthouse." "Ohhh, a lighthouse! I wonder if one of our little emergency lights would fit in your lighthouse?" "Does it fit? Yes! Let's turn off the lights and check it out." When teachers partner with children in the learning process, an atmosphere of respect is created. Children feel heard and their ideas are validated. What learning adventure will you go on with your students today?
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Affiliate disclosure: My classroom receives Experience Preschool Curriculum in exchange for sharing our honest and unique experiences with it on my blog. How do you think Lions find their food? What do you call a family or group of lions? Would you rather meet a happy lion or an angry lion? Why? These are just a few of today's big questions. My goal as an early childhood educator is to have children leave our program with the skills necessary to enter kindergarten, and even more importantly, a zest for learning that will be a constant in their life. The preschool curriculum we use allows me to do just that. Through play, children learn important concepts. The "topic of the day" hooks them in, and we build from there. The art center is open daily during free choice time and has either a Make and Play activity or an Invitation to Create. A teacher is always seated at the table, ready to guide children through the process. Children learn to wait for instructions, make observations about the inspiration piece, and answer open-ended questions. While children choose which materials to use, we get to know the children as they share experiences from their home life. "I saw a lion at the zoo in Florida." "I love Simba from the Lion King." "I have lion toys at home." Other activities (not pictured)
Be Patient (Small group math) Children lined up opposite each other in two lines. One group had lion number cards the other had zebra number cards. The teacher would ask a lion what number was on their card. Once answered, the child ran across to the zebra with the matching number and tapped them on the shoulder. Skills: MR 1 Number Sense and PD 1 Gross Motor What's Hiding (Small group literacy) The teacher placed an animal card under the "What's Hiding" sign while the children closed their eyes. Matching animal cards were placed on the table for reference. One child at a time was called on. The child was encouraged to answer in a complete sentence, such as "Is the lion hiding under the sign?" Play continued. Skills: LLD 2 Communication, SED 4 Social Relationships MR 7 Logic and Reasoning I hope you enjoyed following along on our lion adventures! The children were excited to see today's topic poster on our concept wall as they arrived. Next stop: Art Table. Shrieks. Chatter. Cookies! Today's Invitation to Create: Cookies. Children were able to choose cookie shapes and decorate to their liking. Some drew frosting details, others colored, many opted to add sprinkles. Everything is better with sprinkles! Mrs. P. is our naturally gifted preschool aide. She loves our students and takes a personal interest in them, so conversations at the art table flow easily. Children are eager to work with her and share their experiences from home that relate to the project. Yes, I could easily list a variety of visual, math, fine motor, and language skills. (Click here to learn more.) What warms my heart the most is that we have developed healthy, nurturing relationships with our families. Children feel safe, loved, and supported at home and school. These relationships open the door to a foundation that will set them on a life-long love of learning. Experience Preschool provides us with not only four teacher guides and many of the materials needed to carry out the lessons, but they also add a music CD that helps children learn concepts through music and movement. We have learned so many concepts through music, which you about here, here or even this one. "Counting Cookies" is a song the children have enjoyed. I have heard them sing it while they play also. Our teacher guide for this week suggested a number line placed on the floor for children to hop to while they sing the song. So much fun! We also had children hop to a specific number and a number that comes before or after a given number. This activity helped us engage those active kids who have difficulty sitting during learning time. They don't realize they are "doing" math, although we know they are learning number sense, gross motor, and self-regulation skills. During skill time with my group, we sorted cookies by the letter on each one. Our transitions to a new activity are always the same: come to the table (or area) with hands in our lap, waiting for directions. Children learn to wait their turn. After a few rounds, a child suggested we sort cookies by color, so we did that, too. Letter sounds were practiced as well! "The B says /b/, the B says /b/, every letter makes a sound, the B says /b/."
Not pictured: the cookie patterns we worked on during our afternoon skill time session. Patterns have now advanced to an AABB pattern. What a busy, learning-filled day! Cozy Winter Senses is the new theme from Experience Early Learning that we began last week. Each day we learned about a new family of instruments. On Day 1, children made paper drums at the art table, explored a hand drum and other hollow containers at the STEAM station. During Circle Time, we repeated patterns while listening to Dancing to Sights and Sounds (included in our curriculum kit.) During morning skill time, we practiced writing our names, then clapped out the syllables in the name of everyone in our group. Our Teacher's Guide provides us with a STEAM station idea for each day of the week. However, once I introduced the Drum Circle, the STEAM station for the day, the children visited the area all day long and made repeat visits. The next day, I moved the sign and photo to the mirror at the music center. I also added a few new hollow containers. Soon, we had children collaborating and taking turns being the Drum Leader. Next came the dancers using the scarves from the music center. When there weren't enough scarves for all dancers, they continued to dance without disagreements. The musicians seemed to enjoy making music for the dancers. Everyone moved in the same space, respecting each other in the process. It was beautiful. V., who loves to explore the science and nature center, proudly came to me with her creation. "Look, Mrs. Anderson! I made one of those things from the music area!" She placed our magnetic bowls on the magnet wands and clanged them together. "You made cymbals!" I told her. So very clever.
During our afternoon skill time, we played an instrument matching game. The children are getting very good at waiting for their turn, and some are learning how to use strategies as well. We read "Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb" by Al Perkins, a book from the monthly book list also included in our curriculum kit. The children were drawn to the repetitive and rhyming text, and I heard them quoting the book while they played. At Closing Circle, they asked me to read it again, which of course I did! A simple Drum Circle, led us to learn about culture and community, phonological awareness, classification, music, gross motor, investigation and inquiry, and reading comprehension. The children think they were merely having fun with instruments, and as their teacher, that makes me very happy. If you would like to learn about the skills embedded in the curriculum, please click here. You can read about the assessment system, here. I have blogged about other musical experiences, too! You can go here, to read them. Please see our affiliate disclosure here. We have children ages 3-years to 5-years old in our classroom. Often, I get asked how we meet the needs of the children that vary in chronological and developmental age. One way we do this is by using Experience Preschool Curriculum that provides us with weekly Teacher Guides and lesson plans. Each day there is a suggested small group literacy and tabletop math activity and a Science STEAM station. The second way is how we schedule our day and customize the curriculum to fit our needs. Above, a student working with the Tangrams and pattern cards included in this month's Friends and Feelings theme kit. School Readiness Skills: MR5 Patterns and SED 4 Social Relationships. A side note, in each monthly kit, we receive most of the materials for the art projects and tools for literacy, math, and science. These tools are ours to keep and use again in the future. We have an AM and PM Skill Time scheduled each day. Mrs. P. has one group of children (typically the younger, but not always the case). I have children who are going into kindergarten the following year. We will then use the suggested small group or tabletop activity in the teacher guide. Sometimes we repeat an activity from a previous lesson if we feel some children could benefit from more practice. I use a blank teacher planner to write in the title of activity and page number from the teacher guide provided in our kit. You can read another post on how I customize the curriculum, here. I modeled how to create simple patterns to my group and then had them work in pairs to create a pattern to share with me. I walked the students through their pattern if it wasn't quite correct, asking engaging questions and having them work through it again. We then celebrate the hard work of the teams!
I hope you enjoyed seeing how we customize Experience Preschool Curriculum to meet the needs of our mixed-age preschool classroom. Please see our affiliate disclosure here. Here, we highlight a few language and literacy lessons embedded in our preschool curriculum from Experience Curriculum. This month, we are learning our way through the monthly theme of Friends and Feelings. Why themes? Learning is rich and meaningful when we explore related topics for an entire month. Children can build on previous skills, all in the context of a theme. My Feelings Book Our curriculum provides us with weekly teacher guides and suggestions on how to carry out the lesson plans. I have become adept at using the materials to fit our program. For example, a literacy lesson was used as one of our arrival activities. After children put away their belongings and wash their hands, they join me in the literacy area to work on a project before choosing where to play in the room. Writing Center One of the centers children can work and play in is the Writing Center. We receive word cards in our monthly curriculum kit. and display them in the writing center. The children can use the English or Spanish side of the card and are encouraged to copy the word on a strip of paper and add an illustration if desired. Skill Time Twice a day, we break into skill time groups to work on school readiness skills. During the Letter Community activity, we worked as a group to create letter posters for our word wall. Children rolled the cube, said the letter and its sound, then wrote that letter on the appropriate poster. I was then able to assess the following skills: LLD 7 writing and SCI 1 Investigation and Inquiry. We use this information to influence future lesson plans. Would You Rather? In this activity, I posed the question, "Would you rather play with stuffed animals or blocks?" I held up name cards, and once the child identified their name, they used them to vote for their choice. It became a math activity as well when we discovered which group had more and which had less. Skills assessed: SED 1 Self-Awareness, MR 1 Number Sense, LLD 1 Listening If you would like to explore this curriculum for your preschool, child care center or homeschool student, please visit their website: https://www.mothergoosetime.com/
It is one of my favorite times of the year. Back-to-School time! I love a fresh start, and back-to-school time provides just that. The curriculum that we use makes it easy to prepare for the first week and beyond. Let me walk you through our room. Our enrollment DOUBLED from last year! God is amazing. Not only did he bring us through COVID-19 scares, regulations, virtual learning-hybrid learning, and so on, he helped us THRIVE and double in size. Wow. This summer, two members of our Parish volunteered to paint our classroom. They are not retired, either. They have careers and a growing family. We are so very thankful that they shared their time and talents with us. To prepare for painting, we had to move everything to the center of the classroom. Then our carpets were steam cleaned, so that meant we had to relocate everything to the linoleum. With a fresh "new" classroom on the horizon, I began to think of how we would work, play, sleep and eat in this space, especially since we had twice the amount of students we had last year. I also thought about what bugged me about last year's classroom design. Children meet in this area upon arrival for a table activity (usually handwriting), then the Pre-K group meets here for skill time in the morning and afternoon. The Preschool group meets across the room. There are eight language and literacy skills and 14 goals; embedded in the curriculum. Experience Curriculum provides the lessons, materials, and assessment tools for us each month, so no more lesson planning on the weekends! Experience Early Learning is influenced by the best educational philosophies in the world, one of which is Reggio Emilia. Our art experiences very much reflect the Reggio way of inviting children to the art table and the process that ensues from there. Watch for a post of this soon! I prefer to sort our materials according to color in glass jars as I have done in the past, "COVID" requirements have changed that. The children are learning responsibility and name recognition (not just their own!), so not all bad has resulted from the change. Most of our furniture is pushed against the wall this year, and it seemed to work during the first week of school. Our science, nature, and health area are in one section, leading up to the teacher chair and concept wall. Children had more space to make their own on the carpet, and we could spread out for dancing and singing during Circle Time. I cannot wait to highlight our STEAM stations in future posts! Experience Early Learning provides a source of deep, meaningful learning, across all domains. We alternate movement and sitting down activities at Circle Time to increase the oxygen flow to the brain and lengthen attention spans. The block area is on the same carpet area as many other centers. The new classroom layout has allowed children to spread out and play on the floor without being too crowded. The newer organization of this area has made it easy for the children to use. It flows nicely into our "Jesus Time" area also. We listen to Bible stories, sing Christian songs as we gather around the crucifix and fireplace. Our monthly curriculum arrives separated into a Teacher Bag, Circle Time bag, and daily lessons. We place the lesson bags into the labeled drawers, post the weekly lesson plan and monthly curriculum map and hang up our new concept posters. I hope you liked this quick classroom tour! Watch for more posts on specific themes and activities.
Resources: Paint: Inspired by Magnolia Paint (It is Well) Learning posters: Experience Early Learning Decorations: Schoolgirl Style's Woodland Whimsy Hobby Lobby: backgrounds, lanterns Dollar Tree: Butterflies, tissue poms We receive Experience Preschool curriculum each month in exchange for documentation of our learning experiences with it. All opinions and experiences are our own. One of my favorite times of the year in the preschool class is around December or January. That is when I see writers appear! Things start coming together in the minds of my students and voila, they SHOW me what they have learned so far. Letter strings, letter-like shapes, lines, and squiggles are written across the paper- all are so exciting to see! This tells me where each of my students is in their handwriting development. I have a mixed-age classroom of children from 3 years to 5 years. So not only do I have children demonstrating different skill levels, I have a chronological age span as well. The preschool curriculum that we use is brilliantly designed, especially in the language domain. We receive 4 teacher guides each month along with curriculum maps, skill charts, and so on. Here is an example of one literacy activity: Gold coins were hidden in the paper crinkles. Once a child found a gold coin, the /g/ sound was emphasized. Then the child was asked to write the letter in cornmeal. The cornmeal provides a wonderful sensory experience and makes the brain more likely to remember the formation of the letter. Children took turns rolling the cube and indicating if the photo began with /k/ sound or not. If it did, the child wrote a "K" on the kite. Letter-sounds and letter identification are all important pre-reading skills. Language and Literacy Development is one of the 7 learning domains embedded in the Experience Preschool curriculum. The lessons are a great combination of learning through play, then demonstrating that learning through journals and such. The journals are included in our curriculum kit each month. Our students work at the table each morning doing what I refer to as an "arrival activity." Handwriting is great for the arrival activity because it gets their brains and fingers warmed up and ready for a day of learning. Once children learn the mechanics of writing and begin to understand that those squiggles on the paper are letters and letters form words....they understand how language can be useful and fun! With each theme, I consider how I can support their language development in meaningful ways. Adding paper, clipboards, calendars, calculators, old cell phones, etc. can go a long way to promote language development. At Christmas time, I added order slips to our cookie bakery and the children had so much fun with them. They took turns taking the orders and filling the orders. "Customers" had to articulate what they wanted. An easy way to get children writing is to provide them with interesting writing materials and name cards for family members.
I hope you enjoyed this post and consider Experience Preschool curriculum for your program, be it an in-home program, for your homeschooled child or a center-based program. Disclosure: Our program receives free curriculum in exchange for the sharing of our original classroom experiences. Our preschool program adopted Experience Preschool, which is a research-based preschool curriculum. Parents, teachers, and students alike love it. There are seven learning domains and 35 skills, uniquely woven into play experiences that promote school readiness. Below are a few activities from the Dinoland theme; Week 1, Paleotonology, Lesson 5: Tyrannosaurus Rex. We began our day creating T-Rex Teeth Necklaces. Even children who don't usually visit the art center, participated in the Make and Play activity. Skills focused on: MR 5 Patterns, PD2 Fine Motor, and CA Visual Arts. Each Make and Play activity has three sections: Discuss, Make and Play. We discussed how many teeth the children think a T-Rex had vs. how many they have. We explored our teeth in a mirror, then used our small muscle skills to cut straws for beads and strung them with the foam teeth. Children wore their necklaces while I played music from this month's CD: Dancing with the Dinosaurs. So much more than an art project! How big was the footprint of a T-Rex? We used math, science and social skills in this fun activity. We stood in the footprint of a T-Rex, which was approximately 4 ft. x 3 ft. Our little Friday group fit just fine in it, too! The children predicted (science skill) that our entire class will fit in it on Tuesday! Skills: MR 4 Measurement, SCI 1 Investigation and Inquiry. We have writers! Back in December, our students writing skills began to flourish. So exciting! They learned that those "squiggle lines" everywhere are letters and that groups of letters create words-which they can write! Learning is a process Dinosaur names on bone cards and a word cube with illustrations were available at our writing center. By watching the children write, I could assess where they are in their writing skills. From the teacher's guide: Did the child write the letters or letter-like symbols on the paper? Did he fit every letter on the paper? Did the child understand the activity? Could they identify the letters? Our students are ages three years-old to five years-old and all demonstrate skills at different levels. Experience Preschool curriculum stresses that learning is a process and provides the Developmental Continuum to map each child's growth. Word Wall Review Throughout the week, we visit our Word Wall so I can assess Alphabetic Knowledge (Skill: LLD 4) and Phonological Awareness (Skill LLD 3). It also provides repeat exposure. At Circle Time, we review our core concepts: 2-3 letters (which are on the Word Wall as well as our Circle Time display) 2 numbers, a shape, color, and topic of the day. We do this through music and movement to help cement learning.
I hope you enjoyed a glance into a day of learning at St. Mary. In one day we covered at least 13 school-readiness skills had a lot of fun in the process! We recently began the Dinoland theme from the Experience Preschool curriculum, and my students are diggin' it! Here are the highlights from week one. Watch for future blog posts, too, as this is sure to be a lively few weeks! My students used the tweezers, links, and number mats, which were included in this month's curriculum subscription box from Experience Preschool. They pretended they were at an excavation site and had to carefully remove the bones (links) with their tools (tweezers) and lay them on the number mat. I have children ages 3 years-old to 5 years-old and they were all able to do this activity. Many of them wanted to continue long after they counted their "bones" for me. I was able to assess through play if they could identify the number, use the tweezers to lift links, and demonstrate one-to-one correspondence skills while counting the links on their mat. This activity stayed out for a few days so children could practice their skills during free-choice time and quiet time. Have you ever heard of a Zachasaurus or a Connorasaurus? One of the activities in our Teacher's Guide was to create name tags for the children and adding -asaurus to the end of each name. We receive name tags for every student each month that are decorated to match the current theme. Also included are creative ways to use the name tags. After the children traced the dinosaur names on the name tags, we hid them under a brown towel. Children took turns feeling under the towel for a name card. We read the card retrieved and said, "Look, we found a bone belonging to a Frediasaurus!" There was lots of laughter and requests to play again, which we did. The Invitation to Create is one aspect of the Experience Preschool curriculum that I really love. I am also blessed with an assistant that carries out this activity in a very beautiful way. Mrs. P. invites small groups of children over to the art table where the materials were set-up the night before. Children may decline if they are deeply involved in another project or activity elsewhere in the room. Mrs. P. engages the children in meaningful discussions as they observe the inspiration photo. Many new vocabulary words are introduced through natural conversation also. She then asks a series of open-ended questions regarding which tools and materials they might use to create their own project. Here, children created skeletons from an excavation site.
As I said in the beginning, these are just a few of the activities we did during the first week of Dinoland. Come back soon to see what else we did! |
AuthorSheila Anderson has over 25 years experience in the Early Childhood Field and still loves going to "school" everyday. Archives
January 2022
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