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.

Preschool Corner: Weeks 27-30

I’m playing catch-up with this post.  We are currently on week 32, and we have just 4 weeks left in preschool after this week!

Reading

We just started a new phase in Gabriela’s preschool.  She’s been so ready to begin reading, but I wanted to finish the letter Z first, since we began the year with the alphabet.  I began teaching my two older children to read at younger ages (my son was 4 1/2 and my daughter had just turned 5).  They learned, but they struggled a bit and dreaded their lessons (they do like to read now).  We use the book Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, which did not end up being 100 easy lessons for the other two (we split up lessons to make it easier).  Waiting until Gabriela was 5 1/2 has made a difference I believe.  She is learning so quickly.  She knows most of the sounds before I’ve introduced them to her.  She remembers everything the first time and doesn’t have to sound words out after the first few tries.  She reads quickly, AND she loves it!  She begs for extra lessons and tells me reading is her favorite thing.  Maybe it’s her older age, or maybe she’s just a quick learner, or maybe reading is just her thing.  I don’t know, but I’m loving teaching my youngest baby to read!

Just before starting our reading program, we reviewed the alphabet with these fun books:

Dr. Seuss's ABC (Dr. Seuss)
Alphabatics (Suse MacDonald)
Alphabet Adventure (Audrey Wood)
Alphabet City (Stephen T. Johnson)
Albert's Alphabet (Leslie Tryon)

Mini-Units

Plants

This is a theme we didn’t do much with (which is why I’m calling these mini-units).  I’m using theme units suggested in the book Early Learning at Home  (M. Jean Soyke), and this one was suggested for Week 29.  The problem is that England didn’t have much of a spring this year, so it was hard to get out and examine plants.  Also, I didn’t have any seeds to experiment with.  We did  manage to have one decent day during the week, so I had Gabriela help her Daddy plant and water some flowers:

Other than that, we just read the books A Tree is a Plant (Clyde Robert Bulla) and A Tree is Nice (Janice Udry).  I almost forgot about The Giving Tree (Shel Silverstein)—our book includes a CD, so I just might let her listen to it tonight! 

Growth

We talked quite a bit about how people and animals grow from the time they’re born.  We did two activities for this.  The first was a puzzle of baby farm animals and their mothers.

 

The second was sorting pictures of Gabriela into order from newborn to age 5 (this photo is missing one picture—don’t know where it went).

We also read the book Clifford the Small Red Puppy (Norman Bridwell), which shows the somewhat amazing growth of Clifford the Big Red Dog!

Math

Gabriela has been working all year through Singapore Math’s Earlybirth Kindergarten Mathematics 1A and 1B.  During these weeks, she learned the concept of zero, picture graphs, pairs, and even numbers.  She enjoys math almost as much as reading.  We also use fun math manipulatives as often as we can (pattern blocks, all sorts of counters, an abacus, a learning clock, and more).

Field Trips

Lyme Park (Cheshire, England)

Chirk Castle (Wrexham, Wales)

Bluebell Woods walk (Cheshire, England)

Biddulph Grange Garden (Staffordshire, England)

Bodnant Garden and Conwy Castle (Conwy, Wales)  

Preschool Corner: Weeks 22-26

Okay, so we’re currently on week 32, and I’m just now posting this.  This has been a very busy spring!  Anyway…

These 5 weeks of preschool included letters V-Z, outer space, transportation, Easter and spring.  We read lots of books and had some fun excursions.  Here are the details!

Alphabet Time

Lessons:  Easy Peasy—All in One Homeschool

Crafty ABCs:  Totally Tots

Paper plate zebra:  DLTK’s Crafts for Kids

Played with xylophones for letter X

Themes

Outer Space:

The picture above right is Gabriela pretending to go to the moon like Little Bear.  I have this story in a book, but I thought Gabriela might enjoy someone else reading it for a change:

Here are some more YouTube videos we watched:

This one is her favorite!  The song isn’t appropriate in my personal opinion, but this project is way cool:

Outer Space Book List:

Comets (Kate Petty)

Curious George Gets a Medal (H.A. Rey)

Dora the Explorer: Little Star (Sarah Willson)

My First Book About Space: A Question and Answer Book (Dinah L. Moché)

Stargazers (Gail Gibbons)

Sun and Moon (Marcus Pfister)

Sun Up, Sun Down (Gail Gibbons)

Sunshine, Moonshine (Jennifer Armstrong)

There's No Place Like Space! All About our Solar System (Tish Rabe)

What Makes Day and Night? (Chris Arvetis)

Transportation:  We played games, sang songs, and read lots of books.

Transportation Book List:

Trains

Catch Me, Catch Me: A Thomas the Tank Engine Story (Owain Bell)

Little Engines Can Do Big Things (Britt Allcroft)

Little Toot (Hardie Gramatky)

Terrific Trains (Tony Mitton and Ant Parker)

The Taxi that Hurried (Lucy Sprague Mitchell)

The Train to Glasgow (Wilma Horsbrugh)

Thomas & Friends: Down at the Docks (Richard Courtney, illus.)

Thomas Goes Fishing (Richard Courtney, illus.)

Tootle (Gertrude Crampton)

Cars & Trucks (including construction vehicles)

Good Driving, Amelia Bedelia (Herman Parish)

Mr Gumpy's Motor Car (J. Burningham)

Old, New, Red, Blue (Melissa Lagonegro)

Tip Tip Dig Dig (Emma Garcia)

Truck Talk: Rhymes on Wheels (Bobbi Katz)

Boats

Peek-a-Boo! Boats (Keith Faulkner)

Sail Away (Donald Crews)

Scuffy the Tugboat (And His Adventures Down the River) (Gertrude Crampton)

The Boats on the River (Marjorie Flack)

Air Travel

All Kinds of Planes (Seymour Reit)

Curious George and the Hot Air Balloon (Houghton Mifflin, pub.)

Curious George Goes to an Air Show (Margret Rey and Alan J. Shalleck, eds)

The Glorious Flight: Across the Channel with Louis Bleriot (Alice and Martin Provensen)

Various

Cars: Al's Sky-High Adventure (Luke Paulson)

Down by the Station (Jess Stockham, illus.)

Travel & Transport Then and Now (Alastair Smith)

Spring:  We didn’t get much of a spring this year, but we did the best we could!

We made a pinwheel (which didn’t work very well), painted a cherry blossom tree picture with the bottom of a pop bottle, examined different flowers with a magnifying glass, and made clothespin butterflies.

I found the cherry blossom idea found at Alpha Mom, via Pinterest.  I wanted a black tree like on this website, but Gabriela insisted on brown.  Well, it is her art, not mine!

Spring Books:

Curious George Flies a Kite (Margret Rey)

Let's Look at the Seasons: Springtime (Ann Schweninger)

Puddle Wonderful: Poems to Welcome Spring (Bobbi Katz)
Seasons: Spring (Anna Claybourne)

Spring Changes (Ellen B. Senisi)

Easter

For Easter activities this year, we dyed eggs, made a “stained glass” cross, and drew a picture of the first Easter. 

We also read the following books (mostly about eggs…I don’t have any children’s books of the true meaning of Easter, but we did read and discuss the Bible story of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection):

The Golden Egg Book (Margaret Wise Brown)
Easter (Gail Gibbons)
Hopper's Easter Surprise (Kathrin Siegenthaler and Marcus Pfister)
Horton Hatches the Egg (Dr. Seuss)

Field Trips

Chartwell (Home of Sir Winston Churchill)

British Museum and Churchill War Rooms (London)

What Gabriela loves most about London is the Underground (trains).  This is the entrance to Westminster Station:

Quarry Bank Mill—I’ve lost track of how many times we’ve been here, but it never gets old. 

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