Gardens and Plants Theme

In the spring when we talk about gardens and plants, we try to take a field trip to our local garden park and nature preserve. We talk about using our senses to explore the plants at the park and end our trip with some ice cream. Back in the classroom, we use flowers and veggies in our many centers. We sort the flowers by color. We set up a flower shop in our dramatic play center. I lay out paper shapes and the students use the shapes and their imagination to create a flower, making sure it has all of the parts that we discuss in our science lesson (leaves, petals, stem, roots). We plant seeds in pots for our moms and take them home as a surprise. There are many good gardening books we read. Here are a few of them:
*"Lola Plants a Garden"
*"The Surprise Garden"
*"Growing Vegetable Soup"
*"In the Tall, Tall Grass."
I also have a collection of seeds that the students can explore and sort and even guess what the seeds will grow in to.

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Friends

Social-Emotional Skills are such a large part of the Preschool curriculum. Most of our activities are group based and we spend a lot of time and instruction learning about how to be a good friend and how to treat the people around us. In February, I send home a handful of cutout hearts with each child. I ask parents to document each time they catch their child doing something kind and send it back to school. We then read them aloud to the class and hang them on our wall. The goal is to cover the entire wall with hearts. We also focus on one character trait each week. We discuss the trait and give examples of that trait and then watch for students exhibiting that character trait throughout the week. Some books that I use to reinforce our lessons are: *"Stick and Stone" *"A Sick Day for Amos McGee" *"How Do Dinosaurs Play with Their Friends?" *"Llama Llama and the Bully Goat" *"Rainbow Fish" *"Should I Share my Ice Cream?" ...

Daily Preschool Schedule

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

Body and Senses Theme

I usually spend a day for each of the basic five senses and then further the theme by spending a few more days covering the basic parts and functions of the body such as heart, lungs, skin, and brain. For the sense of taste, I give each child something sour (lemon drop), something salty (pretzel), and something sweet (a piece of chocolate) to eat. We discuss the tastes and which they like the best. Then we discuss our tongues. Each student can be given a mirror to look into to see their tongue and the taste buds on it. We read "Jamberry" and try some different flavors of jam. For the sense of smell, I place items in film canisters and allow each child to smell each item and guess what it is. Then we graph which smells we like and do not like. A follow up activity is to ask students to determine which items will have a smell and then walk the items around and have students smell them and determine if their guesses were correct. I use things like mustard, a comb, or...

Engaged Early Learning

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