Links to alphabet and number videos

Here's a link to the song Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom.  We sang as we read the story!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0vTrfbK3FM


Here's the link to Chicka, Chicka, 1,2,3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkhSO5B60ns

We also learned the song Number Rock by Steve and Gregg, here it is!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4sWyckBaOM

Hope you have fun watching these with your preschooler!!  Hopefully they'll sing along!!

A,B,C's and 1,2,3's

This week we had so much fun reading books by Bill Martin Jr.  On Tuesday we read Chicka Chicka, Boom, Boom and we also sang it!!  It's about letters climbing up a palm tree and turning it into an alphabet tree, then OH, NO!!!  Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom, they all fall out!!  The kids had lots of fun helping me say that part.  This book uses a lot of rhyme and repetition as well as a fun beat so the kids love hearing it over and over.  It is also a fantastic way to expose children not only to letters and sounds but also to phonemic awarness which is the #1 predictor of success in reading.  Phonemic awareness is being able to segment the sounds individually in words.  Rhyming words are great for  this because the kids practice hearing the individual sounds (flee= fl + ee and tree= tr+ee).  Not only do kids need to know individual letter sounds  but they also need to know the blends and vowel combinations.  In preschool we expose them to this stuff through fun activites so that they're ready when they enter elementary school.

Kids also love learning the  letters in their names so we made their names out of cheerios and glue.  We painted a palm tree and tomorrow we're going to turn it into an alphabet tree!!  

On Wednesday we read Chicka Chicka 1,2,3 which is about numbers climbing up an apple tree!  Again a lot of fun, rhythmic rhyming plus a great way to practice counting and recofnizing numbers.  This book counts up  to 20 by 1's and then up to 100 by 10's.  The kids had a lot of fun chanting the numbers with me as we read the story!  

During activity time the kids could choose to play with gears, a giant aqua doodle, easle painting, cheerio art, blocks, the sand table, the kitchen center, and the farm little people set.  The weather ws so nice we made sure to get out and play each day!  Mrs. Jenkins taught us the song Down by the Bay and Mrs. Bulgerin came in a read with us.

We had puppets join our class this week!  The kids had fun reading to them during our "reading workshop" where the kids each get to choose their own books to look through.  We also had our first "writing workshop" where everyone wrote in their journals and then sat in the author's chair and shared what they wrote with the class!  We also have a puppet that we pass around during circle time nearly every day for the kids to share whatever they'd like to with the class.  We hear things like "I went to my Grandma's" or "I grew a carrot in my garden".  Ask your child what some of the things are that he/she has shared with the class.  

In addition to learning what the letters look like we're also learning sign language to go with the letters! So far we've learned: 

We had a wonderful day at Lime Kiln Park on Thursday.  Lisa will be sending out a link to the photos soon!  Have a wonderful evening!!

Missing Pictures!

For some reason the pictures I posted yesterday didn't go through.  Here they are!!

Mouse Week

We had a lot of fun this week reading the books If You Take a Mouse to School, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and Mouse Cookies.  The following links are read alouds of two of the stories on youtube.  The kids might enjoying viewing them on the computer!  There is also a brief play version that I'm including.  Hope you have fun viewing these together!!


. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_EZjj8HEI8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKrBd6lJOIM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=687T5Wqts-Y

After we read If You Take a Mouse to School, we went on a scavenger hunt around out school looking for clues the Mouse left.  We went to the kitchen, the first aid room, the music room, the bathroom, outside, upstairs to the offices and finally back to our classroom, where we found mouse!!  When we went upstairs to the offices we met Mrs. Candy, Liam's Grandma who also works at the church, and Pastor Franz.  He was about to feed his frogs, Juan and Carlos and asked us to come in and meet his frogs and watch him feed them!  Then he read us a clue that mouse left on his desk! When we got back to our classroom it was time to wash hands and have snack.

On Tuesday we had apples and graham crackers.  On Wednesday we had tomatoes fresh from Jonas's garden and teddy grahams and today we had home made chocolate chip cookies from Duncan to help celebrate his 5th birthday.  Happy Birthday Duncan!!!  We read the story about giving a cookie to Mouse, then played the game "Who Stole the Cookies From the Cookie Jar"and then we got to eat chocolate chip cookies and milk, just like mouse!!






This week we were still talking about shapes and so we made mouse puppets out of a triangle, 2 circles, a square, and 4 rectangles.  We also are working on developing our glueing skills this week so we used glue sticks and today we used bottles of glue to make macaroni monsters!

We had show and tell yesterday, and the kids each told us what they brought to school.  They had to fill in the sentence"I brought a _______________" to school".  Then they each told us a short story about what happened after they brought it to school.  It was based on the Mouse Book we read.  Ask your child to tell you the story they told!!




For math we've been counting, making patterns, and learning about shapes.  We made the number 1 and used do a dots to go on top of it and we also talked about the letter M.  We made macaroni monsters to remind us of the sound m makes.  Mrs. Bulgerin came to class yesterday to help out and Mrs. Jenkins taught us Down By The Bay today in music class.  We met two puppets, named Jack and Lily who joined our class too.  As you can see we've been very, very busy learning and having fun!  Have a great week-end!!

First Two Days

Wednesday we heard the story Maisy Goes to Preschool and talked about what Maisy did at school and what we do at school.  We realized that Maisy had storytime and so did we, Maisy painted and played with blocks and we do too, Maisy also made new friends and so will we!  Ask your child if he/she remembers anything else Maisy did in her class!  

Discussing the stories as we read them helps build reading comprehension ability in the kids.

Today we heard a story about a Triangle who wasn't satisfied with his shape.  He went to a shape shifter and kept adding more sides.  He became a square (we learned the word quadrilateral)

then a pentagon, hexagon, heptagon, octagon, and so forth until he had so many sides hecouldn't balance   anymore, he was nearly a circle!! Then he realized he really liked just being himself the best and went back to being a triangle.  We talked about colors, shapes, feelings, and how special each one of us is just the way we are, it was a great to see how interactive the kids were as we read this book together.

Yesterday and today we had a chance to spend time outside.  Yesterday we played with balls, used sidewalk chalk and played on our new climbing equipment.  Today we climbed and ran around a lot!  We also had music with Mrs. Jenkins.  We played a name game and moved around.  We also had a chance to learn about rhythm and play rhythm sticks!  

We loved snack time!  On Wednesday we had raspberries, soy milk and teddy grahams.  Today we had cucumber (fresh from Liam's garden, thanks Liam!!) with cream cheese and dill on top.  We also had the rest of our raspberries, cheese nips, and fruit punch....yum!

During activity time we played with blocks, cars, play houses, and made floor puzzles with Mrs. Chyko.  We did art with Mrs. Gould.  Yesterday we used ink to make our fingerprints.  We learned that we each have our own special fingerprints.  We used magnifying glasses to see if we could see the swirls and lines in our prints.  Today we used shapes and put them together to make a preschool.  This helped us with our visual spatial perception as well as gave us a chance to talk about colors and practice using glue sticks.  We wrote about what we like to do at preschool.  The responses were so cute, the kids said they  liked making friends, eating snack, playing outside, eating cucumbers, working on art projects, playing with cars and playing with "My Little Pet Shop."

Duncan brought in a cicada that he found outside.  We enjoyed looking at that during circle time!  

Hope everyone has a great week-end.  Looking forward to seeing everyone again on Tuesday!!

Welcome Back

It was so good to see everyone today!  This is the blog for Maple Leaf Academy Preschool.  I try to post at least once a week to give the families the highlights of what we've been doing in class.  The address for this site is:

http://mapleleafacademyns.blogspot.com/


I will send out emails to let you know when I have posted a new entry.  The kids all did such a nice job of playing today.  In case any of you would like the recipe for the play dough that we used in class here is the link for it:

http://www.the36thavenue.com/2013/03/kool-aid-playdough-recipe.html


(the only change that I made was that I added 2 tsp cream of tarter to the dry ingredients)

I thought I'd mention that if any of you like fresh raspberries there is a wonderful U-Pick patch in Jackson on the corner of Division and Mill.  It's called Henke's Raspberries.  When my sons were in preschool their teacher told me about it and our family has been going ever since.  My kids loved picking the berries with me when they were younger and they still look forward to eating those fall raspberries!  I stopped by today after class, guess what we'll be having as part of our snack tomorrow!

Looking forward to seeing everyone soon!