Preschool Weeks 31-36

I’m so late in posting this.  Gabriela finished preschool in July and is in kindergarten now.  I don’t remember everything we did the last 6 weeks of school, but since I had already started this post, I thought I might as well finish it.  We did quite a bit, so I’ll focus on just a few of the theme units we had fun with.

Musical Instruments

We played two musical instrument games.  One is Musical Instrument Lotto (Nathan, 1987), and the other is Listening to the Music (Battat Games, 1987).  I’ve had these games for years, and I can find neither of them on the internet, not even on ebay.  The first one is great for learning to identify 30 different instruments by sight.  The second one came with a cassette tape with short samples of each instrument playing.  It also has a playing board with a scene full of people playing each of the instruments.  You have to match the sound with the instrument on the board.

We played with two different xylophones.  One was a wooden xylophone, and the other was a fan-shaped metal xylophone.  We had some sheet music for these.  I also have a tubful of rhythm instruments that Gabriela loves to play with.  We have cymbals, jingle bells, tambourines, sand blocks, triangle, rhythm sticks, all sorts of maracas and shakers, and other odd-looking instruments I can’t tell you the names of.  We practiced copying rhythms, and we also played the instruments with music.

Gabriela made this water instrument with her daddy:

Community

We set up a number of dramatic play areas on different days.  This included a sweet shop, beauty shop, vet clinic, post office, and grocery store.  We also set up a town on the shower liner play mat I made a few years ago, and we played Richard Scarry’s Busytown board game.   

Nursery Rhymes

We videotaped a few nursery rhymes that Gabriela memorized (though maybe not perfectly):

We also watched several nursery rhymes from Sesame Street (Kermit’s news reports)!  These are the same ones I watched when I was little in the 70s.  I showed several of these to Gabriela and totally laughed my way through them—hilarious!  Even my older kids enjoyed watching these.  I’ll post a few here, but follow links to watch more.

Summer

Water play—We have a small sand/water table, and I filled it with water and seashells and included a rubber duck, a measuring cup, a strainer, and a funnel.  We were blessed with unusually good weather for England during the whole month of July, so Gabriela got plenty of outdoor play!

That’s it for preschool!  I have no younger children, so Tot School and Preschool are over for me.  If I ever get the opportunity to work with children this age again (which is sort of a dream of mine), I may post more ideas in the future.  Otherwise, this is it!

I'm linking this post to "Preschool & Kindergarten Community" at Homeschool Creations.