Preschool 2 ~ Chinese New Year

I celebrated Chinese New Year with Keefe's Preschool 2 class this year.  His teacher has been "preparing" the class leading up to the New Year!  Here's the class holding up their coloured-in Chinese zodiac signs (either rat or ox) and their personalised Chinese names (which I asked a friend of mine in the school to translate).

During the week, the kids coloured their dragon masks and made their lanterns.  I made little books for them to colour and familise them with Chinese New Year vocabulary words.  I shared these slides and sang a classic Chinese New Year children's song with them.  I gave each child a red envelope with a pair of golden chocolate coins inside to represent lucky money.  I also gave each of them a personalised zodiac animal card with that animal's character traits.  The kids performed the dragon dance and had Chinese New Year treats (fortune cookies, pineapple tarts, mandarin oranges and wintermelon tea). 

Preschool 2 ~ Letter Mm {with freebie learning pack!}

Week of 20th January 2014

Mm poster

Mm is for moose craft. The moose's ears were made from tracing Keefe's right and left hands and he had to cut them out. 

Mm sound book ~ I love that Keefe drew Maximiliano's dad, Marcelo Diaz, who is a football player with one of the football clubs. It's amazing how preschoolers know their friends' parents' names!

(Handwriting rhyme for M - Scoop up to Maisie's head, down Maisie and over the two mountains)

27th January 2014

Keefe was absent from school on Monday due to fever so we did some Mm work at home. He is getting better with rhyming but definitely needs more practice!

Keefe played with bubbles before picking up Kai in Gymboree. There was a sudden downpour of snow when we picked Belle up in the afternoon! The snow lasted only for a few minutes and it was all bright and sunny after that. What an unpredicatable weather!

Gymboree Preschool 1 {Letter Pp}

Zoo-Phonics Animal: Peewee Penguin

Motion: Stiffen both arms at the sides of your body (hands up) and do a penguin walk, waddling from side to side. While signaling, say the letter sound /p/.

Pp is for popcorn on pink paper, papaya, parrot, pepperoni pizza and penguin. Perhaps Kai's proudest moment this week in playgroup was when he got a gold star sticker for his papaya craft and getting a smiley face and star on his hand for a job well done!

At home, Kai and I made a penguin craft and learnt our pizza numbers 1, 2 and 3! 

Preschool 2 ~ Letter Rr {with freebie learning pack!}

Keefe's preschool teacher started on letter Rr last Thursday.

Rr poster

Rr is for robot craft

Rr sound book

(Handwriting rhyme for R - Scoop up, down the robot, back up and over his arm.)

Afterschooling

Keefe has been working on the learning packs that I make for him as part of our afterschooling. The learning pack targets literacy and math skills which we are working on together: ending sounds, rhyming (a difficult skill for Keefe!), high frequency words, short vowel /a/ word families, subitizing and ten frames (up to 20), number sequencing 1-30, counting backwards from 10, what comes next/before/between (1-10), and skip counting by 10's. 

Gymboree Preschool 1 {Letter Oo}

Zoo-Phonics Animal: Ollie Octopus

Motion: Extend each arm outward at your sides, using a waving motion to suggest the tentacles of an octopus, and say the letter sound /o/.

For this week, there were not a lot of Oo-themed activities except for Oo is for orange and octagon. Today, Kai made a hamster craft out of toilet paper roll, gray and white fur and cut-out head and hands. The playgroup also made chocolate cornflake muffins with marshmallows to practice fine motor skills (stirring chocolate with cornflakes and spooning them into paper cups).

On Wednesday night, Kai wanted to do school like his siblings so he did some octopus-themed printables. I asked him to use dot markers to dot the circles around the octopus but he got a gray marker and drew a circle instead. Cheeky boy!

Preschool 2 ~ Letter Hh

This was Keefe's first week back in school from winter break. The letter of the week was Hh. Keefe's preschool teacher has this hand-drawn and hand-written Hh poster on one of the classroom windows. She has the same thing for all letters of the alphabet! The first time I saw them, the posters were posted all over...the class bathroom (yes!). She told me she wanted her kids to remember the alphabet through visualisation and besides, it's better than having them tucked away in boxes where kids don't see them - ha! She changes the letter poster on the window every week to correspond to the letter/sound taught for the particular week.

The class always makes a letter of the week craft, which gets posted on the classroom window along with the letter poster. For this week, they made a hedgehog craft out of brown construction paper and toothpicks.

(Handwriting rhyme for H - Scoop up, down the horse's head to the hooves and over his back.)
Keefe wrote his cursive 'h' in his sound book and showed me the things he drew that started with the /h/ sound. That's his finger in the picture telling me that his teacher forgot to label 'hair' beside the hat he drew :). 

Gymboree Preschool 1 {Letter Nn}

Zoo-Phonics Animal: Nigel Nightowl

Motion: Using the thumb and four fingers of each hang, make round nightowl eyes and say the letter sound /n/.

Nn is for nine, Noddy, night, nest

This was Kai's first week back in school from winter break.  He was still trying to get back to his normal routine.  On Monday (January 6th), he fell asleep for 45 minutes during music class - signs of jet lag after the long flight back from Asia!  He cried during drop-off on the first two days but got better during the latter part of the week.  His preschool teacher, Ms Alana, was so proud that he cut the blue egg (on his nest craft) on his own.  Kai also surprised me this week in "tracing" the letter Nn!  He normally just scribble on the letter but this week, he was more conscious of "tracing" the letter!