Preschoolers are known for asking many questions in a day and the preschool teaching team at St. Mary Preschool ask just as many questions! Why? We want to encourage higher level thinking skills. We want children to become problem-solvers and we want children to think beyond the obvious. This "mental exercise" will prepare children to to do well across all learning domains (our curriculum has 33 skills that span 7 learning domains). Today's preschoolers are the future workforce and although we do not know what type of jobs will be in demand, we know that workers will need to be innovative, which requires "out-of-the-box" thinking. During our "Down on the Farm" theme, children had the opportunity to make baby chicks during an Invitation to Create experience at the art table where Mrs. Plamondon was there to provide a little background information, determine what the children may already know about chicks and ask open-ended questions. At another table, they could then build a nest for their chick. I was close by to ask "biq" questions such as, "What will you use for the base of your nest?" "What materials will you line your nest with?" "Will your chick live alone or with other chicks?" I absolutely love how our preschool curriculum provides sample questions to ask as well as guidance we can provide while children are exploring the materials prior to the real "lesson." Certainly I am capable of coming up with own questions and quite often I do. However, there are days where I really welcome the suggestions! During our Mud Pie activity, children explored dry soil, then added water and explored the new texture. Mrs. Plamondon asked many questions throughout the process. Once the mud was made, children chose natural materials to decorate their pie with. Some children enjoyed the sensory experience, while others were curious but not so sure they liked the feeling of wet mud in their hands. Experience Preschool with Mother Goose Time provides weekly lesson plans that play off the larger monthly theme. Teachers can use the daily lessons as a starting point however and expand it based on the interest of the children. The tractor activity was extended over the course of a few days as it was widely popular. I was thrilled as it involved not only engineering wheels but ramps, too! (science geek here). Children made several wheels and "raced" their friends. They experimented with different ramps and it was exciting to hear their reasoning behind why they made the ramp a certain way or even in how they positioned the wheel on the ramp. One of our children decided to put a "plow" on the front of our toy tractor. The plow was actually a small construction cone. How very clever! I hope you were able to get a few ideas for your own preschool weekly lesson plans. If you like to save time and have most of the materials packaged into daily bags, please consider checking out Experience Preschool (formerly Mother Goose Time). Thank you for following along with our learning journey.
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Community Challenge, EXTENDEDWe start our group time with a Community Challenge that relates to our daily/weekly theme. Our preschool teacher lesson plan book has a suggested community challenge each day and the children look forward to what we will do together. Here, I highlight the daily topic, Silo during our Down on the Farm monthly preschool theme. I took the oats from our sensory box and told the children we needed to work together to fill the silo. I quickly reviewed the parts of the silo with them as we got into an assembly line. All children had visited the art table earlier that day where they explored a photo of a silo and engaged in a meaningful conversation with Mrs. Plamondon about what silos are used for. Children were then able to create a silo shaker, to be used during music and movement. Once the children were in a line, each child was handed a small cup. I then poured oats into the first child’s cup, who then poured their oats into the cup of the child next to them and so on. The last child in line poured the oats into the “silo.” After two rounds, we looked in the silo. “That was a lot of work! Do you think there is a large or small amount of oats in the silo?” Many were surprised to see only a small amount. That led to a discussion of a good work ethic and why its important that everyone helps. We continued a few more rounds and checked on our progress. "How long do you think it would take to fill our silo,?" I asked. "All day!" "100 hours!" were just a few of the responses we received. Time for more movement! Children used their silo shakers to dance to an instrumental song on the preschool music CD that is included in our curriculum box. Mrs. Plamondon poured out the difference in sounds among the shakers. Some children used rice in their shakers while others used beans. Math and Literacy: Feed the Animals We break into small groups twice a day to work on school-readiness skills. During this activity, the children used our story magnets and a spinner that were included in our curriculum kit to play a math game. They spun the spinner, then scooped grain from the silo and “fed” the correct animal. I then asked, "Which animal was fed the most?" "Which animal has the least amount of oats?" I appreciate the fact that everything is plotted out for me by Experience Preschool (formerly Mother Goose Time). I don't have to worry if skills are taught in the correct succession, as the scope and sequence are carefully planned out for the entire school year. Community Challenge, extended: The children chose to use buckets in the sand area as silos. They eagerly told me how they cleaned the grains (sand) then dumped them into the silo. If the grains became stuck, they used a shovel or stick (from our discussion with Mrs. Plamondon) to free the grain. It is always so exciting to see how children apply earlier knowledge and conversations to their play later the same day or even many days later. Many teachers use these observations in their approach to what is called and an emergent curriculum. In our program, we use a blended approach. We begin with our monthly preschool curriculum kit and are flexible in our planning. If the children are really excited about a particular daily topic, we may extend it for a day or two. The same is true if we see even one child struggling with an important concept such as patterning. We may revisit an activity a few times, changing it slightly as we go, to ensure that children have enough exposure to the skill and time to practice it.
Thank you for following along on our learning adventure! Kickin’ Off a New Theme: On the FarmThe children in my class have a farm, garden or know someone who does, so this theme is particularly exciting to them. Our school is in a beautiful agricultural area that is also surrounded by lakes, rivers and a National Park that runs along Lake Michigan. On the way to school, our children see vineyards, cherry, apple and peach orchards and glimpses of Lake Leelanau. They play and learn where people vacation! Cooperative games: We played a game during skill time where the children rolled the die, then moved the hen to nearest matching space on the board. Their goal was to work as one team to get the hen to the henhouse before the fox came. Following directions, spatial awareness and working cooperatively with others are all school-readiness skills that were focused on. Don’t Drop the Egg! We played a fun game on “Chicken Day,” of passing an egg around the circle as our theme music played. During Art, we stamped eggs in paint onto black aper. Mrs. Plamondon engaged the children in a conversation about where eggs come from, the parts of an egg and so on. Language skills develop at a faster rate when used in a deeper context t(such as our monthly theme) and with a caring, familiar adult. Writing in Mud We wrote farm words in “mud” during skill time. Counting Pigs: Each month, our curriculum comes with two sets of manipulatives. The children love these little piggies! We counted them, sorted them and used our math cards to indicate the correct number. School readiness skills: one-to-one correspondence, identifying numerals, following directions, sorting/grouping. The month has just begun, so come on back ya’ll to see what is happening on the farm!
Literacy Throughout SeptemberAs a busy director and lead teacher with a family, I appreciate having a month of sequential lesson plans already plotted out for me. I don’t have to spend hours outside of the school day gathering ideas and materials. I can rest assured that our curriculum, www.mothergoosetime.com has everything in order. Here, Mrs. Grady is leading a small group in a literacy activity that involves the entire body and most of the senses. Young children learn best when engaged in this sort of activity as it is how they experience their world. Children are able to make letter-sound-word connections, walk the letter “T” to imprint the parts of the letter in their brain and then create it with hands-on letter pieces. Following directions and working cooperatively with their peers are other skills gained as well. Mrs. Plamondon led an “I Spy” activity that emphasized the letter-sound connection. Small muscles in the hands are prepared for writing by making playdough “snakes” and creating letters. Mrs. Plamondon worked with her small group throughout the month , using the www.mothergoosetime.com I Can Read books. They began with basic concepts of print then progressed to “reading” sight words using picture clues. Once my group became comfortable with this month’s book, I gave them monster fingers to use as pointers. They thought it was so much fun! Thank you for joining us on our adventures in literacy!
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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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