Congratulations!

Congratulations on a great season ladies!
don't forget to tell your parents to watch for an email in the next few days about a banquet.

Much love,
Coach Riley

Bears in Hiding

This is a very simple activity that my kids have been loving as part of our calendar time. I choose a number (usually the date and I try to stick to less than 12) and select that many small manipulatives. I am using bears because we have also been working with Venn Diagrams and these are great for sorting, and we are reading Golidlocks. But you can use legos, pennies, anything that fits in the cup.

To Play:

1. Count the objects and verify the amount. Because our younger child has just turned three I use this control card from one of our works, He can set the bears on the dots and count, as well as use as a tool to help determine how many are hidden.

2. Ask the child to close their eyes and then hide some of the manipulatives under the cup

3. Have them open their eyes and try and determine how many are hiding.

4. Ask them to talk about how they figured it out. Our five year olds might say, "Four are in there, because I see three and it takes four to make seven" or " There are four in there because all the yellow ones are gone." or "Four, five, six, seven are missing, (counting on fingers) there are four numbers missing." Our three year old will use counters to cover three of his dots and then count how many dots are left.

5. Verify the right amount and talk about which methods are reliable.

6. If desired write the math sentence.

Sometimes we make a list on the whiteboard of all the combinations that make the total, but not everytime. I make sure that each of the kids get to be the leader of the game and I make guesses too. Sometimes I am right, and sometimes I am wrong and they enjoy catching the error of my thinking. The most important part of this exercise for me is having them explain how they thought through/figured things out. One part that has been very revealing to me is that they very rarely use subtraction, and instead tend to think of a total as a number that can be broken down. I'm sure this will change as their math abilities increase.

It has been a hit everytime. When we get past the 12th of the month we have a few other games I like to work in instead. That way this becomes more interesting when it comes back into rotation and really helps us focus on our basic math facts.

Clothespin Work

Clothespin work is very important for preschoolers because it strengthens their little hands for cutting and pencil holding. As our middle child is working on small numbers, and counting with one to one correspondence I had Miss H make this "work" for him. She glued felt numbers (0-5) to the back of sentence strips, and put little dot stickers to indicate the right amount. She put odd numbers on yellow and even numbers on red and then counted out 15 clothes pins. It's a great little work, because it is self correcting, the felt numbers are a great tactile reminder to help form that association between number icon, number name, and quantity, I am going to add a list of the numbers going 0-5 for control of error. But thus far, a success. (Of course if I had made the work, I would have put 0 on a neutral color, and also color coordinated the felt numbers, but as my "assistant" turned five two weeks ago, I guess I shouldn't complain!)

Making Words

My "students" are not yet in Kindergarten, as they missed the cutoff in NC by five days, but either way.. some kindergarten teacher's loss is my gain. (This is what I think most days.. some days, I do not think this at all!) For the Pre-K twins I have been doing one of my favorite elementary literacy activities, called Making Words! Is was designed and invented by Pat Cunningham and Dottie Hall who were my professor's at Wake, and is part of the balanced literacy model. C and H just love this one and I am using the 1st grade lessons because you don't usually do making words in Kindergarten, but it does seem to be developmentally appropriate for these two. By far their favorite part of the lesson is when they get to write other words they can spell using the words they made. In this picture they have written crab, grab, flat, cat, fast, mast (don't worry we are working on handwriting.) For added fun, I have used these word slides from Cherry Carl (A generous genius who has all her literacy products online, and downloadable for FREE!!)

I also get some scissor work in by writing the letters on a piece of sentence strip purchased at the dollar store and having them cut it apart. This little easel was sent to me by The Mr.'s aunt, and came with some matching cards the kids still get a kick out of. I love using it for Making words because the two kids can stay seated at the table, but still get to "lead the class".

Hello Hello

Well, this was supposed to be the blog for the kids summer book club that I never managed to get off the ground. What was I doing all summer? Oh yeah.. nothing. YAY!

Anyways, I have opted instead to put up some of the activities I do at home and play-school in hopes that someone will find them useful.