Friday April 15th- Easter egg hunt & party

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our class started with Y tracing practice downstairs and then stamping on yellow Y’s on the back of the sheet. Upstairs I had puzzles, star wars characters, links and some Easter activities at the table that I had made for them. There was a small, medium and large bunny match up, putting the right amount of birds in the numbered nests and the letter E sort.
Nya was gone and our play time was shortened due to our park trip so we went right into circle time after our rise and shine song and pledge. We had to do a wiggle song since we were full of wiggles (I am sure excited for our hunt). Afterwards, we reviewed our date, counted in English and Spanish, and sang days of the week and Macarena Months. We skipped weather and went right into sight word review. I had each boy come up and pick out two sight words that were upside down and they had to tell me what they were then show the class to review with them as well. For letter practice we worked with the sign and singing the song. By Friday they have it so it is just another review for them.  We wiggled again (Nya was here to pick out the song) and then Jackson’s mom had sent yummy cheddar bunnies and pretzel bunnies for snack today- so fun! We didn’t do book time or show and tell and we went right into letter Y time practice. We reviewed the two sounds and then I gave them instructions on our Y word review sheet. They had to find the YES word and then Yorkie could say Yes to all the Y words. Each child has to find 4 words out of 6 that start with the letter Y. They have improved by leaps and bounds since the beginning of the year- this would have been a hard activity for them to complete. After we finished, I got into our Easter party portion of the class.
I read the students two books- My first Easter and Easter Babies- a counting book. They enjoyed each one. We talked about some things that their families do at Easter. After that, each child wrote their names on their white paper bags to be used for our Easter egg hunt. Then I gave them a bag of stickers to decorate their bags with. I collected those for our hunt and cleaned up for our Easter cookie decorating.
I allowed each child to pick a cookie and color frosting to decorate with- they are seasoned pros with frosting . They also got a little cup of sprinkles to add to their cookies.
I sent home two home work sheets to help review patterning and number sequencing with them. If they return it after break, they can pick out a prize for each completed page out of my prize bucket.
We loaded up their bags and I walked all the sweeties over to the park. They did a great job finding the eggs and we practiced counting up to 12 in the process

Thursday April 14th- Easter egg hunt & party

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our class started with playtime today since we were having a shorter class period due to going to the park for our Easter egg hunt. The children played with foam blocks, nuts & bolts, a floor puzzle of the Easter bunny and some Easter activities at the table that I had made for them. There was a small, medium and large bunny match up, putting the right amount of birds in the numbered nests and the letter E sort.
Garrett helped me pass out and pick up our shape review cards. Circle time was an overview of all the skills we had worked on Tuesday as well as reviewing the letter Y and its two sounds. We wiggled, ate our snacks and only explored books for a bit before we got into lesson time.
We had to finish our letter time that we didn’t have time for on Tuesday so we read our Y story about the young Yak who yelled “YUCK”- a great story to promote trying new foods instead of saying it is gross before you try it then we went to the table to color and practice the letter Y. They did a great job!
I read the students two books- My first Easter and Easter Babies- a counting book. They enjoyed each one. After that, each child traced their names on top of my highlighted practice. Then I gave them a bag of stickers to decorate their bags with. I collected those for our hunt and I allowed each child to pick a cookie and color frosting to decorate at home since we ran out of time (Hope they had fun with that ). I sent home a home work sheet to help review colors with them. If they return it after break, they can pick out a prize out of my prize bucket. We loaded up their bags and Mr. Josh helped me walk all the sweeties over to the park. They did a great job finding the eggs and we practiced counting up to 12 in the process.

Wednesday April13th- Earth Day

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was allowing a big painting project for Emma’s teacher dry on the downstairs table so we came upstairs for name practice. After that the kids played with Lincoln logs, foam blocks and nuts and bolts. Nya was our star and she chose to do our review of colors and shapes on the board. Circle time was great and we reviewed our new sight word “a” and we practiced the letter Y’s sounds with our song and sign. Wiggle time was followed with snacks, books and show and tell.
For our lesson on Earth day, I read “I can take care of the environment”. We discussed what “environment” means and how the characters in the story took care of theirs. I then read “Big World, Little Me” and in that book it gave simple ways for children to help keep our earth clean. For table time, we colored the earth with blue and green and then I asked each child how they were going to help the earth. I wrote this on the little note and then they glued this on to the back of their Earth after they cut it out. While we were coloring I played the song –“3 is magical number” by Jack Johnson from the Curious George soundtrack. It sings all about reduce, reuse and recycling. They were rocking out and it has a great message.
Once we were completed with that, we come back to our carpets and I read the Y story about the young Yak who yelled “YUCK”- a great story to promote trying new foods instead of saying it is gross before you try it. After we read the story we reviewed our sign and sounds for the letter Y and got a stamp if we wanted it. Downstairs we watched an episode of Curious George about recycling and how to do it correctly. I made the kids some popcorn and it was a simple way to teach about Earth day and some thing we can do to help the Earth.

Tuesday April 12th- Planting & I can be patient

 

 

 

 

 

 

To practice our fine motor skills, we practiced with our scissors and then went upstairs for free play with duplo blocks and links. Garrett was our star and he helped with color recognition with our class. We had our circle time with calendar (days of the week, date review and months of the year), counting, weather and practicing our nursery rhyme- Little Bo Peep. We alphabet boogied and met our letter Y and our friend of the week- Yorkie Yellow jacket who likes to ride on yachts and play with his yo-yo. He also does art projects with yellow yarn. Our little fingers have a hard time with this sign- sticking our thumb and pinkie out keeping all the other fingers down. Y is a vowel- sometimes. It has two sneaky sounds- “Yeh” like in yellow and “I” in the word eye. We sang over the song a few times so that we could get the sounds just right. Afterwards we wiggled, ate our snacks and explored our books.
For our lesson we were learning about planting and how to be patient. I read a big book- Spring is Here and it showed the changes that the seasons have throughout the year. I then talked about the 3 important things that are needed for a seed to grow- water, sunlight and soil. I have a variety of different seeds and we looked at these seeds as we passed them around. We noticed that they are all different in size, color and shape and what the seed looks like is not the same as what the plant turns into. I had preschool chairs set up outside and we went out to my back yard. I talked about my garden which is in boxes and how a garden can we anywhere. I showed them all the vegetables that we growing and each child planted some of their own seeds. I had each of the children come up and put soil and wheat seeds into their cups and then we watered them. I have them in my backyard and will send them home after spring break.
We came back inside and read a story called –“I can be patient” about a little girl who had to wait to see what her seeds were going to be. The class then went to the table and colored a worksheet about planting a seed and the plant that it will be become.
For letter time we reviewed the letter Y with its song and then I assessed each child and gave them the Y in yellow on their hands.

Monday April 11th- boats and ships

 

 

 

To practice our fine motor skills, we practiced with our scissors and then went upstairs for free play with transformers and littlest pet shop. Don’t tell the dads but LPS is more popular than transformers.  I practiced the letter Y with each child individually and had them finish the tracing and coloring on their own. Nya was my star and she helped with our sign practice. We showed the class all the letters one by one and we had to review the sign for each. After that we had our circle time with calendar (days of the week, date review and months of the year), counting, weather and practicing our sight words. We learned the word “a” and how you would see it in a sentence. I have been trying to give them examples of how we use the word in our language as well as how you would read it in a sentence. I am hoping this practice will help the students recognize the words once they see them in print.
We alphabet boogied and met our letter Y and our friend of the week- Yorkie Yellow jacket who likes to ride on yachts and play with his yo-yo. He also does art projects with yellow yarn. Our little fingers have a hard time with this sign- sticking our thumb and pinkie out keeping all the other fingers down. Y is a vowel- sometimes. It has two sneaky sounds- “Yeh” like in yellow and “I” in the word eye. We sang over the song a few times so that we could get the sounds just right. Afterwards we wiggled, ate our snacks and explored our books.
Nya shared her show and tell with the class and then we proceeded to get into our lesson about boats and ships. The students made their carpet rectangles in to boats for a while as they listened but then they became a distraction. We were talking about all the types of boats and ships that you would see in the ocean or on bodies of water. As I explained each one I drew a picture and talked about their functions. Once we talked about all of them- I showed the class the pictures of each of the boats and ships and how they work.
For review and letter time, the students came to the table and they had to match the right yachts together and then color Yorkie Yellow Jacket on the back of the worksheet. We did two Y review activities today because I knew that Friday would be a busy day with our hunt. We practice the song and each child had to tell me the two sounds of Y then get a stamp if they would like one in yellow.

Friday April 8th- #20

Friday is letter review day so each child printed the upper and lower case “U” and then stamped “U’s” all over the back of the sheet. For play time, we played with cars and trucks, tinker toys and puzzles. During playtime, I practiced counting to 20 with each child as we dot stamped “gumballs” in a gumball machine. Jackson helped me as we got a little wacky with our circle time. I did everything out of order to change our class time up a bit. We still practiced all of our skills we normally do. We wiggled, ate snacks and checked out our book selection. Jackson shared his show and tell and we were on to our number of the day- 20! This is our last number of the year- yippie!! We practiced counting in English and Spanish. We learned that 20 in Spanish Is veinte. The students wanted to know all the numbers in Spanish up to the millions but I am afraid my Spanish skills are not so vast.  For 20 practice, I showed the students how to make the number 20- starting with a 2 and then ending with a 0. I printed these on a white board to show them how we print them then we practiced the number 2 in the air with our numeral song- curve it down and slide to the right. We went to the table for printing practice and then they each had to find the 20 hidden butterflies and count them out as they colored them so that they knew they found all of them.
For a hands-on experiment, I had all the students explore a 20 dollar bill-I usually don’t have these around  but thought it might be nice to count all the 20’s on it. We found 4 on the front and 92? on the back. There are 90 mini gold 20’s on the back- I counted those. We also found the number twenty written on the front and back of the bill. Some of the kids wanted to keep their 20 dollar bill but I had to take them back. 
We practiced our numbers again with the beanbag toss with the remaining numbers we didn’t practice on Wednesday. For letter time, we sang our letter song and then colored and cut out Unger Unicorn. He was upside down again and he had to find all the words that began with “U”. The kids do a wonderful job finding the right words. Once we finished that, we were done for the week!!

Thursday April 7th- farm animals

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today we started our day with name practice and then went upstairs to play with cars and trucks and Mr. Potato Head. My prep time was finished so I played with the kids. We got a little wacky with our circle time today. I did everything out of order to change our class time up a bit. We still practiced all of our skills we normally do as well as reviewing our letter X. We wiggled, ate snacks and checked out our book selection. I shared my show and tell and then we practiced our new nursery rhyme this month- Little Bo Peep. This nursery rhyme works great with our theme this month. We sang the song a couple of times and then went to the table to color our Little Bo Peep book. We sang the song again with looking at our books.
For lesson time, we reviewed all of our farm animal friends. We talked about sheep, pigs, horses, ducks, chickens and cows. I talked about the names of the moms, dads and babies and what kind of food they eat.
Afterwards we did a mom to baby match up with cards- they had to match the ducks, pigs and horses together correctly. At the table we matched the right colored pigs- brown to brown, black to black, white to white and pink to pink. They pasted their pictures on as we reviewed the colors as a class.
For letter time, we practiced our song and sign for the letter X. We crossed our arms to make an X and I taught them how to make an X on their papers on my white board. At the table, each child colored a xylophone and x-ray then we practiced the letter X. Some of us had a hard time going straight down but I reviewed with each child how to make the letter. As they were coloring I quizzed them on the sound of the letter and gave them their X stamp.