Rr is for Robot

"r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r" says your little robot as they mechanically float around the room!  We acted like robots, read a couple books based on robots, sang some songs about robots, and our art tool reminds me of a robot part.

Here is one of our centers: nuts and bolts

Here is our second center: stackable robots

This week, for art, we used roll-on paints.  The container looks like a roll-on deodorant container.  I've read about using this tool.  The book suggested that I save and collect empty roll-on deodorant containers, pop the ball out, fill it with paint, and then put the ball back in.  Well, I found these already made, so I didn't have to go through the hassle.  The ball rolls around as paint comes out.  I was able connect robots to this paint tool and explain that the ball is a lot like an arm that can rotate. 

*Important note - I've been trying to come up with clever activities for early finishers.  I've decided that the children will take white paper and color with markers.  Before - they would play with the toys.  The problem with the later activity, is that they would rush through art and not learn anything from it, so that they could play with toys.  Hopefully, their art is more interesting than coloring on a blank piece of paper and they'll spend more time exploring.  So - if you see them bring home a scribbled paper from school - that is NOT our art for the week!

I realize the paper color is not the best, but I'm running low on large white paper.  If anyone wants to voluntarily donate some large white paper to paint on, I would appreciate it.  I have an abundance of other colors and I don't have the funds in my budget to buy other paper.

Here is a close-up of our "Roll-On Painter"

I do many different things when I teach the children numbers. One important technique is to teach the number line starting with zero!  I've seen many preschool books start with 1 and end with 10. Then the 10' ends with 20 and so on.  One problem with this is that when the children start adding and subtracting, they need to look at a number line to count forward or go backwards.  The number 0 is part of their math facts and they have to memorize these in first grade.  The number line is in math all the way through University when they deal with negative numbers.  When I taught 4th grade, I had to teach about number place and where a digit is on the number line.  When I teach the preschoolers that all of the single digit numbers are on the first row and then I line up the double digit numbers in the 10's, the zero is above the 10, the 1 is above the 11, the 2 is above the 12 and so on.  I can point out that the digit in the ones place is the same as the number in the ones.  Starting with 10, 20, 30...in a row of numbers also makes more sense, because it's the start of the 10's, 20's, 30's.  The books that show those numbers at the end of the row, makes no sense at all and confuses them when they go further into their education!  Okay, I'll get off my number soap box ;).

My store bought numbers don't have a number zero, so I had to make my own.

When my Monday, Wednesday, Friday classes have classes for all three days, on the third day, we've been doing science.  This week, we looked at objects under magnifying glass.  I have some science kits in a can, which makes my job so much easier!  We looked at a real yellow-jacket encased in plastic, a leaf, flowers, a penny, and our fingertips.

Here is one of my classes who chose to play with one toy, together, because we had to transition from snack to science.