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.