Baby Animals How Babies Change
February 1, 2020
In the final week of Baby Animals we talked about growing bigger, stronger, smarter and braver. We also talked about being a part of a community. This post may contain affiliate links. The Make & Play Growing Game gave the children lots of scissor practice. They were able to cut out all of the animal cards with straight lines to guide them. Each child is working hard to learn to cut on the line and to readjust before closing their scissors if they get a bit off. We try not to stress too much and use tape if they cut too far the wrong direction, when possible. They each wrote their names on the outside of the envelope. We helped the children fold the envelope before we taped the sides.
We filled to large square bowls with colored rice and “hide” upper case and lower case letters in each bowl. Then we encouraged them to use tongs to find the letters in the rice. They needed to tell us if they were “mama” or “baby” letters and put them in piles with the same type of letter. The second time they searched for them they had to match the lower and upper case letters to each other.
The Make & Play Cub to Lion craft was great for all skill levels. The children talked about how their hair changed from the time they were a baby until now. They learned that lion cubs do not have a mane but by the time they are five years old male lions have a full mane. They decorated their faces and attached googly eyes with glue dots. We ended up using glue dots to attach the mane, too. They were instructed on how to turn it and cut the mane. They love getting all this scissor practice in and I love that it is different types of cutting so their learning is well rounded.
This month we are working with “it” words on their Phonic Decoder. Once again, they got to use their cutting skills. The tricky part is they had to cut some lines but were NOT supposed to cut others. In order to know which ones, they needed to put their listening ears on and pay attention. Learning to follow directions is just as important as the other skills we teach here. Once finished, they were able to sound out the words and match the pictures to the sounds. They also worked on their MORE workbooks when time allowed. We use those in our PreK 4 and Kindergarten classes.
As the school year has progressed, we have gotten more diligent about our More Literacy and More Math workbooks for our PreK 4 class. We have three students that use them right now but starting in August we will ease some new 4 year olds into doing them, like these kids were. They are learning all sorts of fun things but they are also learning they HAVE TO LISTEN TO THE DIRECTIONS or they will get the whole page wrong. That is pretty hard for a 4 year old to do. Just another skill we work on at our school.
We have TWO reading programs that we use. The first one that we always start with is the Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. We may do one or two lessons at a time, depending on the participation level for the day. They are super short but teach very real reading skills that most people don’t realize are actually beneficial to learning how to read easily. Even the youngest children are welcome in the group as we do the lessons. But the program is geared towards children ages 4 and up. The benefits to allowing the younger children in our reading time is when it is THEIR turn to go through the lessons, they already have a great foundation and it comes even easier for them. This book will be done completely before we begin the second one. That one only has 20 lessons but those lessons aren’t done in one day like these. Those lessons contain enough to be done in 3-5 days.
Each month in our curriculum we get a package of loose letter parts so we can build any letter in the alphabet, but especially the ones we are working on for the month. We are also give the letter cards with upper and lower case letters on them. We encourage them to create different letters when they are done working on the ones we are studying for the month. Even the younger children are encouraged to play around with the loose letter parts and try to put them on the letter cards. We do not stop the younger children from growing their skills just because they seem too young to participate. We have found that the more we include them, the faster they learn. They want to catch up to their older friends.
The kids enjoy music time each week. Baby animals was a fun CD to play our instruments with. We have a variety but the xylophones and drums tend to be their favorites. We don’t always use instruments when we do music. Sometimes we do “moving” music and get those little bodies going so they can have a great rest time.
We are enjoying our Disney+ subscription because we have access to some wonderful learning videos. Since we have been talking about Baby Animals all month, Born in China was a great one to check out. It kept the children’s attention for a very long time. We talked about the different things we saw as we were watching and connected it to the things we learned each week.
I hope you enjoyed our preschool adventures for the month of January. Don’t miss our fun topic for February, Nursery Rhymes.
In the final week of Baby Animals we talked about growing bigger, stronger, smarter and braver. We also talked about being a part of a community. This post may contain affiliate links. The Make & Play Growing Game gave the children lots of scissor practice. They were able to cut out all of the animal cards with straight lines to guide them. Each child is working hard to learn to cut on the line and to readjust before closing their scissors if they get a bit off. We try not to stress too much and use tape if they cut too far the wrong direction, when possible. They each wrote their names on the outside of the envelope. We helped the children fold the envelope before we taped the sides.
We filled to large square bowls with colored rice and “hide” upper case and lower case letters in each bowl. Then we encouraged them to use tongs to find the letters in the rice. They needed to tell us if they were “mama” or “baby” letters and put them in piles with the same type of letter. The second time they searched for them they had to match the lower and upper case letters to each other.
The Make & Play Cub to Lion craft was great for all skill levels. The children talked about how their hair changed from the time they were a baby until now. They learned that lion cubs do not have a mane but by the time they are five years old male lions have a full mane. They decorated their faces and attached googly eyes with glue dots. We ended up using glue dots to attach the mane, too. They were instructed on how to turn it and cut the mane. They love getting all this scissor practice in and I love that it is different types of cutting so their learning is well rounded.
This month we are working with “it” words on their Phonic Decoder. Once again, they got to use their cutting skills. The tricky part is they had to cut some lines but were NOT supposed to cut others. In order to know which ones, they needed to put their listening ears on and pay attention. Learning to follow directions is just as important as the other skills we teach here. Once finished, they were able to sound out the words and match the pictures to the sounds. They also worked on their MORE workbooks when time allowed. We use those in our PreK 4 and Kindergarten classes.
As the school year has progressed, we have gotten more diligent about our More Literacy and More Math workbooks for our PreK 4 class. We have three students that use them right now but starting in August we will ease some new 4 year olds into doing them, like these kids were. They are learning all sorts of fun things but they are also learning they HAVE TO LISTEN TO THE DIRECTIONS or they will get the whole page wrong. That is pretty hard for a 4 year old to do. Just another skill we work on at our school.
We have TWO reading programs that we use. The first one that we always start with is the Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. We may do one or two lessons at a time, depending on the participation level for the day. They are super short but teach very real reading skills that most people don’t realize are actually beneficial to learning how to read easily. Even the youngest children are welcome in the group as we do the lessons. But the program is geared towards children ages 4 and up. The benefits to allowing the younger children in our reading time is when it is THEIR turn to go through the lessons, they already have a great foundation and it comes even easier for them. This book will be done completely before we begin the second one. That one only has 20 lessons but those lessons aren’t done in one day like these. Those lessons contain enough to be done in 3-5 days.
Each month in our curriculum we get a package of loose letter parts so we can build any letter in the alphabet, but especially the ones we are working on for the month. We are also give the letter cards with upper and lower case letters on them. We encourage them to create different letters when they are done working on the ones we are studying for the month. Even the younger children are encouraged to play around with the loose letter parts and try to put them on the letter cards. We do not stop the younger children from growing their skills just because they seem too young to participate. We have found that the more we include them, the faster they learn. They want to catch up to their older friends.
The kids enjoy music time each week. Baby animals was a fun CD to play our instruments with. We have a variety but the xylophones and drums tend to be their favorites. We don’t always use instruments when we do music. Sometimes we do “moving” music and get those little bodies going so they can have a great rest time.
We are enjoying our Disney+ subscription because we have access to some wonderful learning videos. Since we have been talking about Baby Animals all month, Born in China was a great one to check out. It kept the children’s attention for a very long time. We talked about the different things we saw as we were watching and connected it to the things we learned each week.
I hope you enjoyed our preschool adventures for the month of January. Don’t miss our fun topic for February, Nursery Rhymes.
COPYRIGHT © A Simple Texas Girl 2018-2021
