Teaching toddlers how to identify their names! I love our name tags that come every month in our Mother Goose Time curriculum, they are always so cute and coordinate with the new theme. I used the name tags in a little game this week! The kids really enjoyed it too :) First I put all of the name tags in the middle so see who could ALREADY find their names without any help or clues. I was so proud of KK because she went straight for it! Then I helped all of the other children find their names by giving them some clues "find the letter B, that's what your name starts with"! After everyone had their name in front of them I went letter by letter and showed each of them how their name is spelt. Then we flipped the name tags over and mixed them all! I put them back in the middle and turned them over to see who could find their name again! They loved searching around for their name and got excited when they found it! They wanted to do it again, so we spelled their names again and then shuffled them up one more time for them to find. After they all had their name tags back I got out my favorite little pencils and helped each of the kiddos trace their names. Really at this age it isn't about if they trace right, it's about teaching them how to grip the pencil and the repetition of hearing their name spelt and seeing it in front of them. As they worked I would ask them ago the letters in their name. "Can you show me where the first letter of your name is? What letter does your name start with?" or "Let' spell your name together!" Then having them point to each letter as we said them together.
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My FCC home has grown and expanded! I've welcomed several new littles and with the additions I'm having to learn how to teach a multi-age classroom. Kids in each age level learn differently and on top of that every child is on their own path! With varying ages you have to make sure that you are proving lessons that aren't TOO challenging and frustrating for the younger ones, but at the same time they can't bee too easy or boring for the older ones. Finding that balance is important.
Over the past few weeks I've been reading, researching and practicing different techniques to help my multi-age classroom be the best it can be! What does this mean? It means that our lessons vary depending on the children's ages and they are also slightly different from child to child. Sometimes the children work in age groups and rotate through an activity. The oldest ones might be reading books while I help the younger ones work on puzzles. Maybe the twos are in free play while the three+ are doing a board game! Other times the kids might be doing one activity as a large group with minor variation for each child. The older group might be working with markers while the younger ones have chunky crayons! One example where I use the "rotation style" is writing. When my older group is working on their name tags, work books, or tracing sheets I like to be able to focus on them. I like to watch their "pencil grip" and make sure they've got a good hold on their writing utensil. I like to observe their letter formation and remind them to give their BIG I a "hat" or "shoes" if they forgot. With these little learners starting to write they need those reminders and guidance, but if I have a one or two year old at the table with us the bigger kids have to worry about their papers getting pulled away or bumped. I am more focused on making sure the younger group doesn't have the crayons in their mouths... etc. SO, first my older group either has free play, book time or I may have a station set up for them. My younger group gets to sit at the table and we do a letter activity! They aren't writing yet, they aren't at that developmental level. So we work on letter recognition instead. Check out Big-E here using these Sassy foam letters. My little kids love them because they have cool textures :) In this activity we dumped the whole bucket of letters on the table and then went through saying each letter as we put it back into the bucket. Next we found all the letters in his name and spelled his name out. He really liked the part where he traced his name with his fingers!
When the youngest were done with the activity they were happy to go play! I find that working with the youngest first helps keep them from getting anxious and pushy for their turn. It really keeps them from disrupting the older group who are trying to focus. The youngest are tired of sitting at the table and are ready to go play again :)
So now the older group gets to come to the table and we get out whatever materials they are using for that writing activity. Sometimes its our Mother Goose Time Little Journal work books, sometimes its a tracing sheet, other times it's their name tags... I like to mix up their writing utensils to help them get used to an assortment of things! Their favorites are when I get out the big kid pencils (golf pencils), for some reason it makes them feel so grown up! They also use markers, crayons and pens.
Here is an example of when I implement the group activity with minor variations depending on the child. This was a Mother Goose Time art activity where the kids were learning about cacti. We talked about how they are poky and they used "pokey" materials to paint with!
While my older kids felt a real cactus I gave my boys (both 2yr) pokey "cactus balls" to feel. I was a little nervous about little hands grabbing the cactus and getting hurt. They loved the cactus balls and they had fun putting them into the empty paint trays. Neither of them seemed to even notice the real cactus that the older ones were feeling.
Next we moved into he art portion where the kids got to use wooden forks and the cactus balls to paint their own cactus with. During this activity I sat near the younger boys so I could help them with ripping, cutting and gluing their green paper to create a cactus. Then I let them loose with the paint. The older girls had scissors and have already learned how to use them safely. They still asked for a little help to finish cutting, but they did everything else on their own!
Big-E wanted NOTHING to do with the paint. He was to into sorting the cactus balls and trying to scoop them up onto the fork. Because I was sitting next to him I used the opportunity to work on his vocabulary and speaking skills. We talked about how the balls felt, what colors the paper and paint were, the plant we were making, etc.
Buddy-B on the other hand was ALL OVER the paint! He couldn't wait to dip his cactus ball into the paint and roll it on his paper. While I was talking with Big-E I included Buddy-B in on the conversation and we described the movements he was using to paint... dot with the fork, rolling the ball, swishing the fork, etc. The girls giggled and would say I can "swish my fork too!".
The nice thing about these large group activities is you have a mentorship going on. The younger kids watch and learn from their older peers and often times if an older child sees their younger friend struggling they'll offer to help. It really is great friendship building and helps the children be aware of each other.
I really enjoyed this post from the Mother Goose Time Blog, there are several great multi-age partner play activities!
Play is such an important part of learning for toddlers and preschoolers! This past month the little ones here at Kiddie Korner have been playing hard :) I'm so glad that so many of our Mother Goose Time activity lessons involve play. Over the past few weeks I've seen the kids grow and expand so many different skills!
Here are the girls scooping the chunky lacing beads out of a bowl with peas in it. A task like this may seem like nothing but play, but what you don't see are the little wrist muscles building up and preparing this little ones for writing skills! In this same activity they practiced pouring their scoops into a basket and shaking out all of the peas. Their little minds were at work connecting cause and effect: The beads are big so they stay in the basket, but the peas are little so they fall though the small holes! They practiced math by counting and sorting how many of each "type" of bead they were able to scoop out. They worked on those fine motor skills by lacing the thread through beads!
Finally once all of our beads were counted the girls practiced following directions as I gave them places to put the different types of beads, "Put the bees ON the car", "put the flowers UNDER the table", etc. Not only did they get to work their ears by listening and following directions they were also being challenged in their spacial awareness! I was assessing to see if they knew the directional phrases "on, under, next to, behind, in front of, inside", etc?
The kids enjoyed so many fun art projects this past month! Art is a time that works best for us for lessons. I have a captivated audience as they sit and work on their projects. Because they are sitting and their hands are busy they seem to listen a little better! They interact with me by answering questions, telling me their thoughts and asking their own questions. Plus they are always so proud of their finished projects :) They loved those little bee head bands so much that they wore them for nearly three days in a row doing our bee week.
During free play they were running around using their antennas to sniff each other! I guess they were listening during the lesson ;)
Aside from the fun that comes with art and the pride they have when showing off the finished product, these little ones are once again at work building important skills!
I mean look at these little fingers at work cutting and gluing! Silly giving them a piece of paper to snip at helps them build up those fine motor skills. They build the tiny muscles in their hands and gain better control at manipulating small objects.
One last important skill I wanted to talk about was writing! Many of the activities I showed you above all help build up those important muscles for writing. Scooping and pouring work on wrist movement; Beading and lacing work on that two finger pincher grip; Cutting and gluing work those tiny muscles and help with concentration.... all of these tiny finger wrist movements build up the writing skill! Kids need all of these things to learn how to control writing tools.
Can you see all of the different GRIPS in these photos above? Tripod and quadruped grasp are the best appropriate way for a writing tool to be held. These skills are things that are learned through activities like coloring, sometimes kiddos just need a little help getting their grip right :) Check out this video for a great tool to help teach the right way to grasp a pencil. Remember FUN is the name of the game for toddlers and preschoolers! Here are some great tips on helping your littles grow their writing skills!
Wondering what skills your preschooler should know? Check out this great post from Mother Goose Time with some helpful tips :) L-Bug really enjoyed using our safari post cards to write draw a picture for her childcare provider for the week. I've been going through my training and classes for two weeks so getting time to do some school with L-Bug has been hard. But she has been diligent! Thankfully we had a simple project to use and L-Bug drew a picture and then told me some of the fun things she's been doing with her "teacher" during the days she goes to childcare! After I finished writing the letter part L-Bug signed her name at the bottom, by tracing her dots ;) She also got to draw a picture to send on a postcard to our friends from Germany. She is hoping to get a letter back! I think she wants a pen pal. I love that these come in our monthly Mother Goose Time curriculum box because being a military family our friends and family are spread out literally all over the world! L-Bug get's to think about the people she loves and send them something.
My Little Journal! For the past few months we have been using our Mother Goose Time Little Journals to practice and review letter, number, shape and color concepts! L-Bug loves working in her journal because it's for "big girls". She works hard and is always excited to show her work to mommy! The little journal cover page is one of her favorite parts of course! For this cover I asked her to draw a safari habitat for her animals to live in. Before we started she looked at the safari poster we have for the month and she talked about some of the things she saw in the habitat: trees, bushes, dead grass, a pond (watering hole) all the animals and a safari car! Then she got to work drawing her own! She told me about the trees she was drawing, a pond for the animals to drink from, and her imagination just went on and on! Even though it just looks like scribbles to me, to her its a masterpiece safari :) Each month the Little Journal focuses on our concepts for the month: a set of letters, numbers, a color and a shape. I call these our brain building blocks :) We learn to identify and write three new letters each month. L-Bug is still very new at writing so a majority of the time I use a highlighter to write the letters and have her trace them. Since we started working with our Little Journal L-Bug has gotten so much better at tracing! Each month we learn about and review one new shape and one new color as well! For L-Bug a majority of the shapes and colors we come to are a review for her because she already knows them. But she doesn't know how to draw the shapes so that is our next step of practice! I drew two ovals with pencil and had L-Bug trace them, then I asked her to draw one of her own (the blue outline was her attempt). One thing we have been practicing while doing little journal and work book activities is being patient and following multi-step directions. For example I told L-Bug to choose two color crayons. Then I told her to trace all of the ovals with pink and to color them in with the blue. This page was pretty funny.... So I told L-Bug to think about some things that are yellow and draw them. I went over to my workbox station to finish writing a note about the project we just finished before this and L-Bug started coloring and talking: "bananas are yellow and tasty too", "Mr Sun is yellow, I think... he's to sunny to look at though", "I like leaves that are yellow and red", "I have yellow blocks, a yellow shirt, yellow undies......" The list kept going on and on. I finished my little note (which only took me about three minutes to write) and this was what I turned around too! I guess each things she was naming she was drawing too! HAHAHA And of course we review our number concepts for the month! As you can see the first page was a casualty of the yellow coloring day :) I asked L-Bug if she knew what that number was and she didn't so I had her count and color the ovals at the bottom of the page to find out what number it was! Then she traced my highlighter number and letters and did the smaller ones.
Like I wrote a few posts back L-Bug has learned so much during the first half of our 2015/2016 school year. She continues to grow and learn and surprise me! As fun as it is watching her learn it keeps me on my toes. Always looking and learning new ways to challenge her so that she will continue learning! The past few months she has really blossomed when it comes to learning her letters! She can sing nearly 3/4 of the alphabet on her own and she has been recognizing more and more written letters. Over our winter break I took some time to read and learn about children's learning habits and how to expand on them! I'm very excited to begin a few new things this last half of the school year. I'm hoping that they will continue to challenge her learning and help her to grow! One of the things I'm chasing in our School Routine is our Concept Introductions! Each month we introduce a new color, shape, numbers and letters. To make letters and numbers more fun we are going to do different games on Intro and Review Days! I found that because we have used the Mother Goose Time Curriculum for over a year we have built up quite an amazing stock of resources and tools to help reinforce the learning and there are different games for her to play. Our concept Intro today was the letter Ss, so I started out by having L-Bug put together her alphabet puzzle. I told her that one piece was missing. I helped her name all of the pieces as she put them onto the board. At the end she found that the letter S was missing! Next she pulls out her work box drawer and found her alphabet mat, the missing puzzle piece and her Ss stick! I told her we were going to sing the alphabet song. Once we got to the letter S she was going to yell the letter and jump up and down. We did the song three times with a different action each time, i.e. whisper and spin, monster-voice and roll... she loved it and was happy to sing the song again and again. While we sang I had her help me point to the letters on the paper. Then I gave her the stick and said we were going to find the letter S around our school room! Both the alphabet house poster and the letter flip strip are from past months that came with our Mother Goose Time curriculum. It was nice to be able to incorporate them in today's lesson! Her next work box drawer had the letter flag and cards for the month in it! Along with our Phonics sound key. L-Bug loves the letter sound song. I used the letter cards to have her identify the capital letter S and the lower case letter s. Since we had done the SEE part of our learning for the letter S I had her use the alphabet key to HEAR the letter S sound song. Then I had her turn over the letter cards in her box and we talked about words that begin with the letter S: suitcase, star were on the cards. We came up with sun, sky, soup, etc. We sounded out the S at the beginning of each word as we said them. Finally I worked on WRITING the letter S with L-Bug. I used a white board to demonstrate how to write the letter. I had her sit in my lap while I guided her hand through dots that I made and had her trace them. Then I gave her a page to do out of a new fun work book I got for her. A Sesame Street Color, Letter and Number Preschool workbook :) She loved it and was very excited to do it! Our concept intro took up the whole morning half of our school day, but I was pleased with the way it turned out! Seeing, Hearing, Saying and Writing a letter are all important part of learning it.
At the beginning of this school year (late August early September) I started working with L-Bug on her hand writing and letter recognition. We had never really practiced any hand writing so I started by drawing doted lines and having her trace along them. WOW I am blown away by how quickly she mastered it! Now we are in the beginning of November and I can tell she is getting bored with his activity (which for the past two months has been a favorite)... she's getting bored because it's too easy for her now! So, that means it's time to find new ways to challenge her! I started off by adding a few extra steps to her Little Journal from Mother Goose Time this month. A simple way to challenge her yet mix up what she was doing. On the day we did our triangle page I had her pick an orange crayon to color inside of the triangle with. Next I told her to pick any colored pencil and while she did I drew dashed lines for her to trace. Then I asked her to pick a new color and draw me her own triangle! I gave her verbal directions on how to draw it and she was very pleased with how it came out :) When she was all done I made my own notes on the page so I could put it in the portfolio to look back on and see how much progress she has made in a few months! Unfortunately my camera got left behind at the house this week as we headed off on our family Thanksgiving vacation so I'm not able to share the rest of the images, BUT we practiced our letters lots of different ways the past three weeks :)
We used paint brushes, crayons, markers & pencils! I filled a ziplock bag with colored glue and had L-Bug practice writing her letters with her finger over the top of the bag. She LOVED that activity. We used dry erase boars a few times. One time I had L-Bug follow along as I did each step on my white board and then I had her attempt to do it without me showing her! We did writing in a few different sensory activities.... we used sand and our fingers, dirt and sticks, chalk on the sidewalk! I can't believe how different her attitude towards writing our letters has become just from me adding in a little more fun and mixing up her materials! WOW what an eye-opener!
I know I've talked a lot about all of the cool themes that Mother Goose Time sends out each month, but I haven't talked much about the amazing way each activity is broken down into learning categories! Their developmental continuum of skills is really incredible and makes it very easy to asses your child's learning level for each learning area! We did tons of amazing activities this week that included so many different skill areas, but I decided just to write on one subject for this week. Here is a little snap shot of our Language and Literacy learning this week.
L-Bug has really started to enjoy writing! At first this was a struggle for us because she was going through a "I do it myself" stage... SO I decided instead of trying to help guide her and show her how to do it we would turn most writing activities into a game so she could observe me doing it. As soon as she sees me write a letter she gets the gist of it and is pretty much able to trace it herself! We have been working with pencils and erasers though because if she messes up she likes to erase it and try again. She is a little OCD about her work... I wonder where she gets that from?!
We played a word letter game where we had several apples, some had -A- on them and others had -a- on them. They were all turned upside down and we took turns picking an apple and then tracing the letter on a card I had made! L-Bug was able to trace the -A- all on her own and asked for help doing the circle on the -a- because it's a little harder, but after the first time I helped she was able to do it all on her own the other few times she got to trace it!
For this activity we used several skills: 7, 11, 12 & 14 {see snap shot image below}.
This week we also got to open our new Mother Goose Time book- Johnny Appleseed! L-Bug loved this book, it's definitely one of her new favorites :) We get to go on an adventure with Johnny as he goes to spread apple seeds across the states! Daddy read the story to her on his lunch break and then we used it again during another lesson/project where we talked about the life cycle of an Apple Tree.
We used our seed manipulatives as we talked about the cycle and read through the book again!
Both of these activities used skill #13 {see snap shot image below}.
We also learned two new ASL signs this week! Well, L-Bug already knew "thank you", but she learned the sign for tree. We have been practicing it though out the week as we talked about trees. I would say something like "Today we are going to talk about _____" and sign tree and wait for L-Bug to fill in the blank, other times I would ask L-Bug if she remembered the sign and if she could show it to me. I believe this skill would fall under both 8 & 9 {see snap shot image below} and a whole other skill set (second language) but I'm not 100% sure!
One other great Language and Literacy project we did this week was using our "I Can Read" books and our sight word pointers and labels! We started off with the labels in our work box and I had L-Bug match up the arrows to the labels. We read the words on each as we went. Then we read the book used our sight word pointers to find our special word "have" as we read each page!
We used skills 9,12 & 13 for this lesson {see snap shot image below}.
Here is a quick glance at the Developmental Skills list for Language and Literacy. As you can see with all of these activities through out the week we used a LOT of different skills from this list. And that's not even including the other lessons that weren't directly geared for Language or Literacy but still used the skills in smaller ways!
One thing I've noticed since our assessment in August was that we didn't really do many technology lessons with L-Bug. So I did a little research and I found a program called ABC Mouse. You can use it on your computer or download the app for your phone or tablet! We started it this week and L-Bug has LOVED it. I really like that it's educational and not just a game for kids to zone out on...
Here is one of the lessons from L-Bug's "learning path this week. It's a story that is read to her (or you can change the settings depending on your kids technology skills. Example: they can turn the pages). The story is about the cycle of a plant. The story talks about seeds, roots and growing plants!
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Proud supporter of Mother Goose Time curriculum!All the posts in this blog are from real life experiences. We've taken the activities and materials provided in the Mother Goose Time curriculum and modified it in different ways to fit our lifestyle. Enjoy the read!
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