Days when we have inside recess I usually put out some pop-up tents for the preschoolers. But I wanted to try something new, and luckily, they all loved it. I put pieces of tape on the floor with each letter of the alphabet on it. I did upper and lower case together, since that made it easier to figure out each letter (in case they were looking at the letter upside-down). We have been doing lots with letter sounds. Not just listening for the beginning letter sounds, but also the end. So I would call out a word and they would run to the beginning or ending letter sound that they heard. Sometimes it was very tricky and different kids went to different letters, which made for the perfect opportunity for peer teaching. The kids on the right letter would call out to the others, and repeat the letter and sound so they would come to the correct letter as well.
They liked it well enough that we kept the letters on the floor for two days. We played group games and individual games. After the two days though, I pulled them up. The floor needed to be mopped.
I try to mix up the groups when I call the preschoolers to the table or a certain area of the school room for "small groups". I want each pair or trio of kids to be a strong team. There are some obvious strong friendships, but I want them ALL to feel wanted and needed by each friend. Thankfully, they are all such sweet kids that they love each group I set up, and incidentally end up continuing to play with the groupings later on in the day.
The creativity in the group is pretty impressive. I love seeing them imagine and then bring to life what they are thinking about.
We played with "Flarp" and it was (not surprisingly) a fast favorite. It's gooey, but not sticky. It holds a shape, but then seems to melt in your hands. And, the BEST part, it makes silly noises when you push it back into the can that it came in. They were giggling and making quite the scene. It was SO funny.
When the preschoolers are finished with their lunches, they clean up their space and have "quiet reading time", which they have gotten better and better at. Quiet is a hard thing to come by, but at the end of the day, they slow waaaay down and really enjoy this time.
Dragons were a big part of play time this week, so I made a couple of dragon inspired worksheets. Math has been something that we talk about on a regular basis, and they are understanding concepts that are usually introduced in Kindergarten, like using numbers to represent quantities to solve quantitative problem sets, for example. That Kindergarten standard is called "Operations and Algebraic Thinking" and is something that most kindergarteners will be introduced to for the first time toward the end of their year… Like I've said before, these kids are SMART! Here, I gave them a cup of "dinosaur eggs" (bingo counters), and unfinished simple math equations. It was a beautiful thing.
A just-for-fun worksheet I made for them was this ABC dragon maze. The dragons are friends and want to be together, so the top dragon has to follow the ABC's to get to his friend. I love it when after a silly simple idea of mine comes to light, I get 4 happy little boys asking for more and telling me how fun it was. It turned out to be a LOT more challenging that I thought it would be, but perhaps that's because I wrote it myself, instead of typing it and printing it out. Easy or not, they loved it.
Snack and lunch are always a pleasure. The kids are such happy, fun little people. Their personalities are SO big and wonderful. We pretended to be camping and made s'mores. The s'mores were made with marshmallows and bananas, and the chocolate was only 2 chocolate chips, and they gobbled that up FAST!
Viewfinders work, even when it's cloudy outside.
Trying out a game that we LOVE. When you answer correctly, you earn play money for the amount on the back of the card. When you answer incorrectly, you lose that amount of money. They, of course, love getting a big pile of money at the end, so they work really hard to get each question right.
Some of the question cards are simple, but some take a lot of time and effort. Logan kept getting VERY involved cards, like this "count to 100 out loud" card, followed by a "write every letter in the alphabet on your own" card. Sheesh! He did it though!
