KJ's Ladies: lesson plans

Showing posts with label lesson plans. Show all posts

Lesson Plans the Erasable Way

I have found the best pens EVER!!!

These are FriXion Point Erasable Gel Pens

In my lesson planner I color code my kids work... blue, purple, pink... each little Princess gets her own color. But I am constantly changing and rearranging my schedule and these pens have this neat little white tip that erases the pen perfectly and unlike pencil erasers they don't wear down.

Then throughout the week as we accomplish task I highlight it...

what doesn't get done moves to next week or skipped.

(this is a good week look at all that yellow!)

It has made a world of difference for me in my lesson planning. I love the bright colors, I love the fact that they are erasable. Go ahead try these pens for yourself.

I is for Indian and T is for Thanksgiving

In my curriculum the "holiday" lesson was I for Indian but alot of the lesson revolved around thanksgiving so I spilt the lesson into two weeks and supplimented the Indian lesson a little. We also used this week as a review and focus on prewriting skills as I was noticing that Princess #2's "lines" and "circles" were not as correct as they should be...

Princess # making an Indian vest out of a paper bag (hard to find nowadays)

Courtney in her vest and hat

We learned about how Indians used to paint pictures to "write" their stories, so we created a picture story of a girl going to her house to eat food (corn on the cob to be specific)

Then for the second week we focused on the letter T for turkey or thanksgiving... we made turkeys and pasted the number of feathers on the turkey corresponding with the written number

We drew a handprint turkey and sprinkled different spices (curry, poultry seasoning, sage, cayenne pepper, black pepper, and curry) on the fingers and smelled them to find out how they smelled

We made handprint turkeys with different colors of paint as placemats

We used our sorting animals to practice the grouping of animals with corresponding written numbers (i.e. placing three animals in a group and then placing the "3" flashcard with that group)

Finally our snack was an apple turkey we made with pretzel sticks and marshmallows

And folks that is all the school lessons we will be doing until the first of the year... have a happy holidays!!

H is for Helpers

During all this hub-bub of holidays and birthdays we did manage to squeeze in a few lessons for school. We did learn about the letter "H" and the theme was community helpers. I did not at all like the lesson prepared in my curriculum so I mainly just used my resources in my classroom and studied the letter "H" with a few worksheets to suppliment. (I did not get a lot of pictures as my memory card was full and I did not get time to download them)

As has become a tradition I taped the letter H on the floor and we talked on it stating "this is the letter H and it makes the sound hah... this is the little letter h and it starts helper"

We glued "hay" to the letter "H" (side note: this makes a MESS)

We used our letter puzzle and flashcards alot

And finally some worksheets as follow-ups

J is for Jack o Lantern

So this week we had a lesson on the letter J and jack o lanterns. One day was spent in the classroom learning the letters and another was spent in the pumpkin patch as a field trip. Here are the pictures from the "classroom"....

We glued pumpkin seeds all over the letter "J" and we made pumpkin playdough (homemade playdough with pumpkin pie spice and orange added) Princess #3 really like this and decided to put a whole glob in her mouth, that was fun trying to get out!

Walking on our letter "J" repeating the sayings

"this is the big letter J and it says Jah... this is the little letter j and it starts jack o lantern"

Princess #2 painted pumpkin vines by running a matchbox car through brown paint and then making lines on the paper. She added pumpkins later with orange paint and green leaves. This exercise was to help her to understand following directions and not just "free painting"

She painted glue on a pumpkin and then put it a bag of tiny tissue paper and shook it to cover the pumpkin and make a "fluffy" pumpkin as she called it. In hindsight I probably would have used glitter instead, the paper didn't stick all that well without help.

This painting was a lot of fun because I had Princess #2 make a fist and then I painted her fingers orange and she got to "stamp" a pumpkin then she used her thumbprint as the stem. I thought this would be a lot of fun to do another time as a family as Prince Charming's "pumpkin" would be much bigger then the girls. We could make a family pumpkin patch.

Princess #2 played a game to help her gross motor skills and listening to instructions skills by setting up these bowls and trying to toss a ping pong ball into the bowls. It is alot harder than is sounds.

As always we worked on flashcard letters. She is getting better at distingushing between the letter "E" and "F"

Back in the summer I made this box to go with our Flower lesson to recognize numbers. I made some pumpkins for Princess #2 to plant, she is still struggling with number recognition. We will continue to work on numbers 1-5

F is for Fall

side note: we skipped "E" and went right to "F" this week is in school to try and catch these seasonal activities! So for the next few months we will be out of order in our alphabet learning...

This week we did the letter "F' in school. Princess #2 is still having difficulty distinguishing "F" from "E" and "b" from "d" . They look so much alike! But we had lots of fun anyway! We started the week with a walk around the street to find the prettiest fall leaves then we...

We used the leaves to glue on to a large letter F on poster board

We practiced our shape of the week "triangles"

We worked on matching colors with the correct animals

We did leaf rubbings, this was really neat because it was almost as if a leaf just "appeared" as she colored. (I taped to leaves on the table and then taped a piece of copy paper over top. She just needed to color and the leaves came through)

Day #2: We made a leaf wreath to match the aquarium we did last week

We made a leaf collage that goes from green to brown in progression. Princess #1 ended up taking this into her Kindergarten class to share

We have moved from number counting into number recoginition. There is a difference between being able to count from 1-10 and recoginize each number. She has difficulty with 3 & 4.

We made leaf people

I taped the letter F on the floor for Princess #2 to walk on to repeat the letter name, what it sounded like and what started with f.

the two saying were:

"This is the letter F and it makes the sound fah, fah, fah"

"This is the little letter f and fall begins with f"

D is for Dog

This week we did the letter "D" and our theme was dogs and other pets.

I made a box full of birdseed and put our sandbox toys in it for a kinetic play area for Princess #2. It was the favorite part of this unit but it was really messy! Princess #3 loved crawling over and watching the seeds go through the wheel.

Princess #2 working on a "d" worksheet, she still has trouble distinguishing between "b" and "d"

We made "Reilly" puppets (our dog), but they came out more like mice... oh well

And finally we made paper plate aquariums with a paper plate and fish, mermaid, and nemo stickers. We hung it in Princess #2's bed (the bottom bunk).

C is for Cow

We had our lesson last week on "cows" or the letter "C" but we focused more on the fact that "Courtney" starts with "c"...

Courtney cut out pictures of things that started with "c" and put them on the clothes line

Doing a "C" worksheetPutting together a puzzle given to us, the letters spell her name

Coloring her legless cow brown, the color of the week

A few clothes pins and the cow has legs!

Each day we use this sheet to practice writing, the first four are tracing and the bottom line is the first time she has written her name indepentantly

On Day #2 we painted milk cartons red for the little people farm animals to play in

We also focused on the shape "squares"... here she is tracing some squares on a worksheet

We are also beginning a unit on community recognition/geography. I would like her to know her street address by the end of the unit. Here we together drew a map of our house to Kimberly's school (needs work)

As always ending the day with a journal entry, generally writing her name once and a free draw picture

B is for Bubbles

The second week of preschool was all about bubbles, the letter "B", the color blue and the circle shape. On the first day we did a bible lesson on Jesus walking on the water we did an expierment about what sinks and floats. We learned that people do not float so it was a miracle that he walked on water. We read some books, painted bubble pictures blue, blew bubble in water and in milk to see which created more bubbles, ran across our bubble wrap bridge stomping out the bubbles many times and made a large B and cut out things that started with B to paste on. We also did "B" worksheets, name worksheets, and a "circle" worksheet. For math we worked on putting our 1-5 flashcards in order. We had bananas and berry juice for snack.

On day #2 we read more books about bubbles, we made placemats for each family member, painted with blue finger paints and made bubbles, we blew bubbles and caught them. We then had blueberry bread and berry juice. We did worksheets with her name, "C", "cicle" and "patterns". We also did patterning with our counting animals.

This week was especially hard because we just got back from Maine. I did not have the proper supplies. I could not find bubble items anywhere as this was a seasonal item and is already gone. I also wanted to get a small wading pool to make big bubbles from but could not find them anywhere. ARGH!! So anyway, the next week Mommy is taking a vacation to get caught up on school and get back on track with the schedule. So next week will be "C is for Cows"

Princess #2 painting bubble pictures