Xx is for Xylophone

I follow a curriculum, because it makes my teaching job easier.  The themes and the books are all planned and all I have to do is just teach.  I wasn’t exactly happy about the theme – xylophone, because of the sound that the letter ‘x’ makes in the word xylophone, but I just went with it and turned it into a learning experience.  If you look up words that start with the letter ‘x’ in the dictionary, most of the words makes the /z/ sound, like xylophone.  For preschool and kindergarten, the sound we want to teach is the /ks/ sound like at the end of ‘fox’.  I showed them pictures or wrote on the board, some words that have ‘x’ at the end or somewhere in the middle.  If you want a list of words, here are some that I remember: fox, box, ox, excellent, ax, exit, mix, fix, six, taxi, fax….

The theme was connected to musical instruments, so we read books that featured different musical instruments, a giraffe that couldn’t dance until there was great music, and members of an orchestra.  I showed some You Tube videos of orchestras and talked to them about how amazing it is to see it live!  I also showed them ways of making home-made musical instruments like coffee can drums, shakers, and using rubber bands to strum.  We also talked about using our body to make music like clapping, slapping our legs, stomping, pounding our chest, slapping our cheeks with our mouth open, and silly noises that the mouth can make; most importantly - our voice.  Here are the children playing a xylophone and other musical instruments from my music boxes:

For art, the children painted a wooden maraca.  What’s really neat is that next week, our theme is Cinco De Mayo, so the children will be able to use their painted maraca for the whole week and then take it home.  When it comes to painting on wood (we’ve done it several times already), if the paint gets watered down, it runs off of the wood, so I haven’t provided water to rinse their brushes, until now.  I spent a good chunk of time teaching and clarifying the process of rinsing and drying their brushes.  The children did a phenomenal job (and I did a great job teaching).  Here are some pictures of art time:

On the second day, I gave each child an instrument or a noise-maker and we pretended to be in either a marching band or an orchestra.  Some children liked to pretend to be the conductor, which was absolutely adorable!  Here are some photos of that moment:

In between activities and lessons, I squeezed in fine motor skill centers.  Here are some photos of that:

Here are some outside photos:

Great day to create a dinosaur watering hole!

Next week is Cinco De Mayo and a week of review.

The following week is Parent Appreciation, where we will have a tea party for both mom and dad.  I will need to take a count of who will be going.

Jj is for Jungle

This week we focused on the letter Jj for jungles.  I learned that the word jungle was derived from another language and that it's meaning was an uncultivated piece of dry land.  So, really the lion is the king of the jungle...until the definition of a jungle changed to something that's full of trees and plants.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungle

We were very happy to have our guest marine (a preschooler's Dad) come in and talk to the children.  He wasn't able to come in during our letter Pp week for People and their Jobs, but we feel very grateful that he was able to fit us in to his busy schedule.  I posted pictures of him in that blog http://frenchvalleykpreppreschool.blogspot.com/2013/03/pp-is-for-people-and-their-job.html as well as right here:

He's showing us where he's been all over the world.

He showed us some of the things he wears.

He was so sweet to bring the children a t-shirt!  Later, almost all of the children put it on to wear the rest of the day.

He's teaching the children how to salute when there's the American flag (I didn't have one) or when the American Anthem is playing.  (Does anyone have an American flag to donate?)

The plan was to go outside to do some drills, however, it rained on the day he came.  I moved the tables and chairs out of the way and we did the drills inside.

The children are getting ready to do push-ups

It's so cute and funny :)

This is my daughter's push up :).

This week, our center was working with different kinds of rollers and play-doe.  It's very important for children to figure things out on their own.  When they need help - offer guidance, but don't always do it for them.  Sometimes we have to do things for our children when the task is too hard, they are tired and cranky, or when we're in a hurry.  I'm speaking about tasks where there is time to accomplish them and you know your child would be able to do it on his/her own.  I didn't show them how to use the roller, but they were able to figure it out.  When they needed guidance, I gave tips, but said that this is one way to do it.  Children discovered using the end of the roller, the container, and the lid were great ways to play, as well.  Next time, I'll bring out my play-doe toys and cutters.

For art, we finished our decorative kites by adding bows to the tails.  Here are our pictures:

Sometimes when there is 15 minutes left before we go home and we might play with something together:

The children stacked the large blocks first and then the soft blocks on top to see how tall they could make it.

Our weather this week went from cloudy, cold, and rainy to sunny and warm.  Here are photos of the children enjoying the nice weather:

On Friday in both classes, we focused on Language Arts. I asked the more advanced students to work separately on a word building activity.  The other students listened to words I spoke and raised their hand if it contained different sounds.  I also broke words down slowly by sounds and asked that they tell me what the word was.  When I was finished with my groups, I had all of the children work on the different Language Arts and Numbers/Math games.  They were able to choose what to play with.

The week coming up - we'll talk about the letter Xx and Xylophone (music).  We'll be decorating a maraca, which ties into the week after that - Cinco De Mayo.