Engaged Early Learning

Our Dinosaur theme is always a favorite. There are many activities I add to our schedule to help children learn and engage with dinosaurs. We read books and sing the Laurie Berkner "We Are the Dinosaurs" song of course but there's so much more. We color a dinosaur template and then add a plate to their back for every letter of their name.  The student then writes the letters of their name on the plates and gives the dinosaur a background. I pull out my toy dinosaurs and add them to our centers. In the art center, children can walk a dinosaur through paint and then onto the paper to make footprints.  In the fine motor center, they can stomp the dinosaurs through playdough or build a home for the dinosaur in the block center. In the math center , children can weigh and measure the dinosaur and compare and contrast different types of dinosuars. In the science center, students can look at pictures of dinosaurs and notice characteristics. In the langauge arts center...

Our Preschool runs a half day program so we have a morning class and a completely seperate afternoon class.  Here's the lesson plan form that I have tweeked and found to be helpful in fitting everything into our short day. Class Name_________ Week #____  Day #____ Theme_____________ 9:00-9:25 Arrival and Free Choice Play 9:25-9:30 Clean Up 9:30-9:45 Morning Meeting and Music 9:45-10:00 Gross Motor Play 10:00-10:15 Math Circle Time 10:15-10:20 Brain Break and Movement 10:20-10:35 Fine Motor Table Work 10:35-10:55 Snack and Quiet Time 10:55-11:10 Literacy/Science/Social Studies Read Aloud Read: Focus: 11:10-11:25 Centers 1)math center: 2) art center: 3) fine motor center: 4)language arts center: 11:25-11:30 Clean up and Dismissal

When we study bugs, there are several activities I include in an effort to meet every student's ability and interests along with multiple curricular standards. I bought several bags of plastic bugs at my local Dollar Tree and also gathered a few other supplies and we are ready to look at bugs and investigate them-how many legs do they have? How many body parts do they have? What other characteristics do they have? Then we sort them-insects or not insects. Count how many are in each category. Take some time outdoors as well looking for insects and allowing the students to move in larger ways. Run through the grass but also get down and crawl. Take magnifying lenses out with you and see how many insects can be found. On another day we sort the bugs by color. We identify each color and again count how many bugs are in each category. We use tweezers to sort the bugs so that we are working on our fine motor skills as well. Write the color words where the children can easily see the...

So, lately I have been sending home Lesson Plans for my Preschool families. I have included six major areas of curriculum in each week. I have included at least three activities per curriculum area every week. I send them in an easy to read format so parents can read and choose what works best for their family. They look something like this: WEEK ONE: Music:                                                                       Language Arts: 1.                                                                                1. 2.                         ...

So, life has changed a lot over these last few weeks and I am trying to continue to help engage my Preschool students without seeing them day in and day out.  I sure do miss them and look forward to seeing them again! In the meantime, I decided I would get this blog up and running since it has been on my To-Do List but my time was limited (until now).