Rattles and Redheads: Preschool Planning

Showing posts with label Preschool Planning. Show all posts

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Summer Family Fun Activities

Here are a few summer fun idea's that I have compiled together. I plan on doing these with my family before Harmony starts school in August. :)

1. Play a game of hopscotch
2. Have fun with ice cube painting
3. Make puff paint
4. Collect nature objects, rocks, twigs, flowers and place them into a display basket and use them for props or story time
5. Make a nature book
6. Blow bubbles
7. Dance in the rain (a light drizzle- not recommended for dancing in thunderstorms! hehe)
8. Go Hiking
9. Go to the park
10. Have a picnic!
11. Camp out in your backyard
12. Take a family bike ride
13. Watch a movie under the stars (usually events like this are at your local theater, library, or within your community)
14. Go to your local library and sign up for their children's programs- story time, family craft time, music, and art programs.
15. Plant a garden or a tree
16. Fly a kite
17. Make homemade ice cream
18. Make a puppet theater out of cardboard boxes
19. Take a walk and explore your neighborhood
20. Make homemade lemonade
21. Eat lots of watermelon
22. Start your own reading program. Read a book a week with your kids to keep their minds fresh.
23. Go to the beach
24. Play in the water, pool, or water hose
25. Start writing a pen pal
26. Read a classic
27. Go to your local flea market
28. Make a sensory tub for your toddler/preschoolers: You can make a garden sensory tub with seeds, soil, and a shovel. :)

29. Play tag outside your house and run aimlessly after each other (that's what we plan to do!)

30. Have a family sleepover in your living room

31. Make homemade play dough

32. Make smores

33. Create a sun picture (place lemon juice on paper and place in sun)

34. Use up your scraps from your art collection (example: use extra broken crayons for making jumbo muffin tin crayons)
35. Read the news
36. Play a board game
37. Play kickball
38. Have a water balloon fight!
39. Observe the clouds for rabbits, squirrels, and other fun shapes!
40. Register for Lowe's or Home Depot's building program for kids (usually held on Saturdays and are completely FREE)
41. Learn (or teach your child) how to jump rope, roller skate, or swim
42. Make a sockpuppet
43. Donate toys to your local charity
44. Start a kids club for community clean up
45. Play I-Spy
46. Have a treasure or scavenger hunt
47. Have a tea party
48. Make tissues flowers
49. Make a magazine holder
50. Create a shadowbox
51. Learn to sew
Most of all...stay safe, use sunscreen, and have fun!!

Candice S.

Linking To:

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Color of the Rainbow: Preschool Schedule

051711 Preschool Week Rainbows

Click on the "Fullscreen" to see it in larger print. Any questions, feel free to ask. Most of my resources are included as hyperlinks, which I will have to test to see if they work for you. Also, I will be posting on the crafts, projects, and videos that are utilized during the week as we learn! :) Stay tuned!

Candice

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Melissa and Doug Magnets- Amazing!

I decided to buy the Melissa & Doug Magnetic Wooden Alphabet for Harmony so we could easily spell words. So far, we really like them.. although I think that my creative artist has enjoyed using them to create people, objects, and houses.

I have recently purchased other Melissa and Doug products, which I love beyond words! -I am not advertising here.. I am just a really satisfied customer! If you are unfamiliar with their learning toys, you must go take a looksy! :)

Happy Tuesday!

Candice

Friday, February 18, 2011

Montessori Method, Letters, and Reading Fun

I have been studying and learning the concept and principles of Montessori. I have been learning some methods of Montessori and why teaching a child during the open outlet of teaching is so important. Although these moments of teaching occur during time periods in the earlier years of a child's life, it is imperative to grasp onto them and allow the child to absorb any information provided for them in their environment. Allowing the child to absorb and create in their environment is the biggest principle in Montessori teaching. You prepare the environment for the child and see where they decide how to use the tools provided for them. They also gain knowledge of errors that they make during certain activities, such as simple tasks of lacing shoes or sorting marble colors. There are different models and different Montessori Tools available that work as the cornerstone for this teaching method. (Hainstock, 1997) I am still learning the techniques for Montessori, and although I don't agree with everything that this teaching method offers, I love the fact that it relies on the child's motives and creativity. I could talk about Dr. Montessori and her methods all day. For more information, you can visit some of these websites: Montessori and a real-life teacher/mom of Montessori's blog that I just LOVE reading about, Counting Coconuts.

Learning letters, their function in our language, and their function from a preschool perspective.

The letter's of the week are P, Q, and R. I try to change up the learning methods for teaching Harmony these letters.. because lets face a fact about most four year old children, they do not have a long attention span especially when they know they could be doing something more exciting. :) If Harmony is not intrigued to begin with and seems bored, I might as well skip that lesson and move on.

I usually always have Harmony do the writing sheets. She use to struggle with this months ago, but now will complete them with ease. I often let her use a pen. She feels that she is rather grown up while doing this. It makes her day! Aside from that, we also work on letters by creating shapes out of play dough and using pasta, marbles, paints, textured material that is maneuverable, and other household materials. I have done research into teaching the alphabet to children and it is important in cognitive development for a child to write and have a visual depiction by using fine motor function skills to complete an image that they create (forming play dough and using pasta to create picture of the example letter). (CASRC, 2008)

I am also trying something new, as Harmony and I have been working with phonics as well. I want her to start familiarizing words with pictures so we place labels on objects that are lying openly around the house so she can associate the letter of the day with her environment. I definitely walked around for an entire day with "pants" tapped to my leg!

I get so delighted when Harmony surprisingly says a word as I'm reading during story time, whether it's familiar to her or a sight word. We do run through the sight words flash cards on a daily basis so Harmony can learn them to ease the reading process later on. She is doing wonderfully with this!

In conclusion, children absorb a lot more information than we give them credit for! They are truly amazing and are extremely intelligent creatures wrapped up in a cutie-pie package! I could go on and on and ramble about my teaching methods. They might not work for you, but at least I can provide you with some resources, personal experience, and ideas for your little one's!

Happy Friday!!
Candice S
References

CASRC. (2008). How Kids Develop. Retrieved on February 18, 2011, from http://www.howkidsdevelop.com/developSkills.html

Hainstock, E. (1997). Teaching Montessori In The Home. Penguin Group: New York, NY.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Weekly Preschool Planner: Weather Thematic Unit

021311

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Science Experiment #2: Varying Sounds and Tones (Making Music!)

Our musical glass jar have had a prosperous life making music for well over an hour. I decided to use some variety to allow us to hear different sounds other than just tones, so we also used a recycled tin can and a plastic container.

The goal was to determine the changes in tone by feeling up each glass jar with 1 cup water, another with 1/2, and then the last two with a 1/4 cup of water. Then we added 1-2 drops of food coloring to each glass jar. Harmony did this successfully while supervised.

The experiment was to determine which glass jar was louder, why, and the differences in the tones that the jars that were filled with different levels of water. We whipped out our observation booklet and documented the different tones that each one made, compared and contrasted, and determined what the possibilities (the water) were of the tones being so high, low, loud, quite, etc.

Preschool+ age appropriate and beyond. Even our Stud had fun banging wooden spoons around.. Simple enough for us and the supplies were easily accessible without purchase.

Happy Saturday!

Candice S.

Friday, February 11, 2011

February Sensory Box

Balloons

String and buttons (needle not included)

Art Toys

Pencil

Cookie Cutters

Homemade Playdough

Cupcake Liners

Confetti and Hot Pink Rice

Seashells for scooping

I wanted to share our sensory box with you. I actually was running WAY behind on getting all of its contents together, seeing as its only a few days from Valentine's Day.

Our sensory boxes usually end up with My Little Ponies, Strawberry Shortcake Miniature Dolls, and other small gadgets that Harmony enjoys playing with. It promotes fine motor function and coordination, as well as compliments imaginative qualities and artistic means. I love it!

(Does anybody else end up picking up quite a bit of rice from all areas of YOUR house?.. hehe)

Happy Friday and Enjoy Your Weekend!!
Candice S.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Teaching Science To Your Preschooler

"Science is an intellectual activity carried on by humans that is designed to discover information about the natural world in which humans live and to discover the ways in which this information can be organized into meaningful patterns. A primary aim of science is to collect facts (data). An ultimate purpose of science is to discern the order that exists between and amongst the various facts." (Gottlieb, 1997)

Every child has an hypothesis based on a collection of simple data that they over analyize. A child is constantly exporing the world around them. They crave learning new things. It is in the way that material is presented to them that awakes the want to learn and explore. Science comes quite a bit more naturally to us because the human brain is relentless for asking "why" and "how" things are. We are always asking questions about the way life works, the way objects work, and how everything falls into place. Science allows us to form an opinion, to collect data or facts about that opinion, and gain perspective on the information we accumulate. Children gather information every single day and form opinions on the simplest forms of science.

I am going to start a little series for parents that has idea's on science experiments that allows a child to form an hypothesis and collect data to test their hypotheses. This series is not made to be so structured that it's boring and it isn't going to just be "experiments" but more "ah ha" moments for a child to really pursue how things work. To test the simple things such as watching ice melt to applying two colors together to form a new color.

My goal is to provide other sources for preschool science lessons and experiment's that allow parents to have options. There is not an adequate of age appropriate material out there that is available without a fee. wanted to be another Mom to post some fun experiments or "ah ha" moments that we do here at Rattles and Redheads.

I will be posting some science projects that Harmony and I have done over the last few weeks. I will make an attempt at posting these on Saturday morning's. In the meantime, check out our tutorial on changing a liquid to a solid..

Happy Thursday!
Candice S.
References

Gottlieb, S. (1997, April 8). Religion and Science. Retrieved on February 10, 2011, from http://www.theharbinger.org/articles/rel_sci/gottlieb.html

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Reading List for February

Here's our nice fun pile of books that we are pursuing for this month! Usually we keep our books anywhere between 1-2 weeks (an average of 12-20 books) and read most over and over again. There are some books that are geared towards our thematic units for preschool, while other's we read a chapter or two on a daily basis.

Charlotte's Web is a "big girl" book that Harmony and I have been reading during storytime in the day and in the evening before bed. Although, as I read I ponder if the realistic farm life is a little too difficult for my little mini-me to grasp. She's intrigued, none the less and loves hearing about Wilbur's adventures.

Harmony loves the Fancy Nancy Series. We recently checked out Fancy Nancy: Every Day Is Earth Day (I Can Read Book 1) and Fancy Nancy at the Museum (I Can Read Book 1). We have read almost all of the Fancy Nancy Books, and I cannot find one reason why every preschool girl who enjoys dress up and succumbing to the princess inside of them cannot enjoy the pleasurable experiences of these books.

If You Give a Pig a Party (If You Give...)

Too Cute! We have "If you give a pig a pancake"..It discusses the adventures of pigs and the "fun" ..and some trouble that come along with them. Such a fun book!

Our thematic units for this week are birds and how to tell time. I do not go strictly to every single aspect of our lessons having geared towards our "theme" but I do try to keep the direction pretty clear, as to not confuse us. The following books will help us with coordinate with our lesson plans.