Search results matching tags 'math' and 'preschool'

26 St. Patrick's Day Primary Printables {Free}

Anonymous — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 12:00:00 GMT

St. Patrick's Day can still help you teach your standards when you bring in quality, free printables. With St. Patrick's Day themed printables to cover math, language arts, treats and make it all feel fun - you can bring St. Patrick's Day green into your classroom. Here are 26 free downloads for primary grades on bringing the Luck o' the Irish...

Continue reading at Teaching Blog Addict under the "MORE" tab or cut and paste this into your browser: http://www.teachingblogaddict.com/search?updated to see the latest news!

themes for preschool

Anonymous — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 19:16:19 GMT

The afternoon teacher and I went out for lunch at the end of the school year and planned out our themes for the 2012-2013 school year. I thought I would share them with you, so here goes:

August: Family and About Me

September: Community Helpers

October: Fall

November: Fairy Tales

December: Winter (also Jan Brett author study)

January: Construction/Transportation

February: At Night

March: Animals (Zoo for two weeks; Ocean for two)

April: Farm

May: Spring/Plants/Insects

(These dates are not exact, but I thought it would be simpler to present our themes month by month.) For science, we will do one theme per quarter, and they are as follows: 1st quarter — Five Senses and the Body; 2nd quarter — Water; 3rd quarter — Building Structures; 4th quarter — Plants. For math, we will use the Growing With Mathematics curriculum, and plug it in week by week.

Fun Way to Assess Students' Learning

Anonymous — Thu, 03 May 2012 05:37:00 GMT

Assessments play an important roll in understanding how much a child knows and where we can better meet their needs. Assessments also helps students identify their own areas of strengths and weaknesses. As educators, we uses assessments before, during and after learning, but they can also be fun for the kids.

Today I used our whiteboard as an assessment tool and it was SUPER FUN for my kiddos! In this picture, I wrote down 5 sight words on the whiteboard. I called out a word and my "little student" erased it as quickly as she could. She totally enjoyed this task, and it also showed me which sight words she was solid it and which ones could use a little more practice. It also helped to reinforce what she already knew.

I went on to try this with some math facts. I wrote out a few problems, called out the sum and my other "little student" erased them as quickly as she could. It was a great way to have her practice math facts and she enjoyed it too!

Montessori Monday Pond Trays

Anonymous — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 20:04:00 GMT

Montessori Monday

Frog Pond Trays

We are studying frogsand ponds this month. For MontessoriMonday I

wanted to do a post about our trays. I get quite a few questions and

comments on where I get my items and howI set up my classroom. I am

going togive you some tips on how to set up interesting trays in your

classroom and athome.

This is a duck dropper work, the child squeezes the dropper to fill up the blue water and then fills up every duck on the tray. This builds fine motor skills and hand eye coordination.

Let me start off by sayingthat I was a preschool, Kindergarten teacher

and mom all before I got myMontessori certification and became a

Montessori teacher. The way I set up my school and homeschoolreflects

both backgrounds and I believe I have combined the best of bothworlds.

This is a pom pom transfer extension. They have to use the tongs to transfer pom poms to the matching color frogs. This is a build fine motor and math skills.

First I start with atheme, for example this month our themeis pond life.

Every month I go to thethrift store, target and the dollar store to

constantly look for interestingtrays and containers that can be used on

work trays. After each holiday and season I shop all theSALES!! I

have built up items over theyears and now I have an abundance of things

to choose from every month. At the beginning of each year I make a

scope and sequence to lay out what I want the kids to learn for homeschool

andpreschool. I break it down intomonths. Every month when I write my

lesson plans I use this as a guide and I fill out each individual child’slesson

plan to target those goals. Hereis where the fun part comes in!! I

searchmy items to look for works. For exampleif I have kids who need

to work on operating a dropper I will look for fun waysto reinforce this

skill with theme based items. Every month when I put out the new works

the kids are always waiting inanticipation to see what will be next and

even if it is reinforcing the same skillit is packaged in a new way thus

making it more exciting!

These are some of our language trays. The first one is the 4 little speckled frogs. They use the felt pieces to retell the song and story. This reinforces language skills, counting, subtraction and sorting.

Next is draw and label a frog and sort the frog life cycle.

Here are some of our math trays, Lily pad addition using frog counters, frog sort and classify, frog counting with counters, frog patterns

Here are a few of our Practical life trays,

frog egg transfer using small Styrofoam balls, operating a dropper duck pond, build a turtle with wiki sticks and our sewing basket.

Some items that Ialways keep in stock to use are:

theme ice cube trays and silicone baking trays, Siliconeshape baking cups, Colored trays, Theme erasers, Small

plastic toys such asfrogs, Water beads, Suction cup bath shapes, Marbles, Dollar store items forsensory box,

Different colored and scented play dough , Theme based counters and letters, Theme

based shape books made on thecricut, Crinkle paper, Medicine droppers, Various scoops and tongs from

Montessori Services, Theme based foam or felt shapes from Oriental Trading, WikiSticks , Pom Poms, Colored

noodles, Pipe cleaners, Letter and number beads

With these basic itemsyou can make hundreds of fun work trays and change them often to keep it

funand exciting!!

What new works did youmake this week???

Rachel

I am linking up with living montessori now and what's on the tray wednesday

Montessori Monday, Math Madness!!

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 06:31:00 GMT

Montessori Monday Math Madness

Why and How?

This week for Montessori Monday I decided to write about Montessori Math. I wanted to tell you why I LOVE Montessori Math and how it works.

Why?

Let me start off by saying that I am TER I BLE at math!! I just didn’t get it. I am incredibly visual and kinesthetic and if you said to me what is the square root of sixteen I would look at you with a puzzled face and say what kind of plant makes a square root? Yep, it is that bad! Well let me tell you that I went to high school and college and did not truly understand math until I was completing my Montessori certification and I had to figure out what the square root of the pink tower was that I finally had my AH HA moment! You know the one where the light turns on and everything seems glorious?! I finally could visualize math and how it works. It is amazing that I literally had to go back to preschool to learn, but that is what it took. Now I do understand math and I am thrilled to give kids that glorious AH HA moment at such a young age!

How?

Montessori math is completely concrete and hands on! No boring drills and flashcards. You start with the basics and build on it through mastery. This week I am going to talk about steps one through three.

The first step is the sandpaper numbers and counters. I always introduce these concepts simultaneously in order to reinforce one to one correspondence. This is a fun math activity because you can add different themed counters all year long!

Start this math work as a sensory activity. Have the child trace the number and then repeat in different sensory materials such as sand, rice or shaving cream.

After they trace and repeat have them count the number of items they have traced. Mix the numbers up to reinforce number recognition.

The second step in the Montessori math process is the number rods. The number rods are a versatile tool that will be used all the way into kindergarten and beyond. You start very basic by counting the colors on the rods. You will then combine the number rods and sandpaper numbers followed by red and blue patterns. After the child can successfully count to higher numbers they can make a number rod maze!! They LOVE this activity and repeat it often. Finally the number rods will be used for addition and subtraction! Talk about a fabulous concrete math tool!!

Geometry is the third step of math that is covered in the Montessori curriculum. Constructive triangles are a tool that can be hard for even adults to complete however, with proper training and building concentration children as young as three can accomplish this task and with great joy!
Constructive triangles come in a wooden boxes with multiple triangles in different sizes with a larger triangle to use a self correcting tool. The children must match the colors and the black lines to make a larger trianle. This work gets progressively more difficult and requires a great deal of concentration to complete.

Never underestimate the mind of a young child. It is truly an amazing thing! They are an empty vessel and it is our job to fill them up! Happy Montessori Math Madness day!

Rachel

Valentine's Day Activities for Preschoolers

Anonymous — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:00:00 GMT

With Valentine's Day just around the corner, the boys and I explored a few Valentine's Day learning actitvities during preschool time with my 2 year old and 3 year old. Finding ideas was so easy this year because I had downloaded the heart book. It's an ebook with over 100 crafts and activities for kids-- all with a heart theme! It's only $5 and you can get a copy of the book when you make a donation to the AHA. But it's only available for the month of Februrary!

In our Valentine Themed preschool time last week, we read some Valentine books and did some literacy related activities.

My Heart is Like a Zoo. This book was suggested from Reading Confetti. In this book, author/illustrator Michael Hall uses hearts to create many different animals. Check out this book trailer to see!

We created the caterpillar. Logan really liked looking at the one from Reading Confetti and trying to copy it. It was much easier than trying to copy the ones from the book. Of course, older kids would be able to come up with their own animals too.

We also read one of my favorite Valentine books EVER, The Valentine Bears by Eve Bunting, Illustrated by Jan Brett. In this sweet story, Mr. Bear and Mrs. Bear set their alarm to interrupt their hibernation on Februrary 14th so they can exchange Valentines. Now, that's love!

This is a perfect book to use to talk about ways to show love or to talk about making or writing Valentine Cards.
We made a few cards but we also did an activity with envelopes. I found this at Hubbard's Cupboard.

I printed free Alphabet Stickers from Carl's Corner. This is a great FREE resource! You can print these pictures onto sticker labels-- or just use paper and then cut and glue. There are several pretty clear pictures for each letter. I glued a picture to the front of each envelope (apple for a, banana for b, car for c, etc). I controlled the activity by only providing the first 5 letters. You could also just pick the letters you child knows. I also provided letter stamps. Logan chose an envelope, looked at the picture, and chose the correct letter stamp. For example, "I see a frog. Frog starts with the letter F". The stamped the f in the corner. After he stamped all of the envelopes, he filled the envelopes by sorting all of the other pictures into the corresponding envelope! You could probably split this into two activities.

We also did some math games.
This was a cute game I found on pinterest. I used playing cards which provides an extra scaffold of the number on the card. Mine was more of a matching game. If you don't want the numbers on the card, just use card sized paper and heart stickers (or draw the hearts).

We also did some sorting of Conversation Hearts by color and graphing/ counting with the hearts.

Tyson mostly liked dumping the hearts into containers.

My boys love art.
We were able to find some great ideas in the heart book for art time.

"From the bottom of my heart... to the tips of my toes, I Love You!"

One that was did was this handprint and footprint craft. Of course, you'll have to get the ebook to see the rest of the great ideas ;)

Have you gotten a copy of The Heart Project ebook? What are some of your favorite heart crafts?

*** Don't forget to stop by my heart project giveaway!**

Here's where I am linking up:

100th day of school!!!! Thrilling Thematic Thursday!

Anonymous — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:23:00 GMT

100 days of school!! This year has been flying by, I cannot believe it! Today was our 100th day of school it was wild, crazy, a little bit dangerous but fun! We were lucky to have an amazing parent helper stay for our special day. We started out our day making our 100 day crowns. Then we headed to circle time to count our chart and to see what number we ended up on.

Our helper of the day counts the numbers everyday and we count with him. When we get to a "10" we do something different everyday. Today we jumped and clapped every time! :)

We sang our 100 days of school songs and we read an interactive poem together. For Math the first thing we did was dance to this song.

I asked the kids if they had 100 dollars what would they buy. Everybody had a chance to draw on the chart what they would buy.

We even got to see a REAL 100 dollar bill!!

Each Child shared the poster they made at home for a family project with 10 groups of 10

Great family projects!!

Every child brought in 100 of some type of snack. We counted and graphed everyone's snacks then put them all into one big bowl to make "gorp"

Everyone helped make "gorp"

We had a cooperative project where the thinking math question was "how many friends will I need to count 100 fingers?" We had quite a few sick kids today so we had exactly 10 friends to count fingers on. They were excited to see that it equaled exactly 100!!!

our 10 friends equaled 100 fingers!!!

Finally we had a special treat brought in by one of our students!! This was my favorite 100th day memory ever!!! This little boy brought in a cake with 100 candles to celebrate my team teachers' "100th birthday" haha !!

Happy 100th birthday Mrs. Nicole!!

my brave parent helper!! She almost caught on fire, that is dedication!!! haha this is what 100 candles looks like! :)

Happy 100th day everyone!!

Counting Kitchen: Soups on

Anonymous — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 06:20:00 GMT

In this version of counting kitchen kids will be counting out ingredients to make 5 different types of soup: Chicken noodle, Broccoli Cheese, Cheesy Potato, Minestrone, and Tomato Basil soup. This file folder game is perfect for the preschool/kindergartener to practice their counting skills. Also as a new feature in this game kids will be able to put their ingredients directly in the pot instead of just on top of [...]

Counting Kitchen ESL Version

Anonymous — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 23:13:16 GMT

While making the Counting Kitchen game I kept on thinking that this would also be a great way to teach ESL kids the English names of food. So I also created this ESL version of the game. On the recipe card the ingredients are in Spanish while the ingredient cards are in English. [...]

Teaching Young Children to Count with Games

Anonymous — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 17:00:00 GMT

The essence of who we are today largely depends on how we were educated as youngsters. Because early educational development is the precursor to our more advanced education, it is vital that parents take an active participation in helping to form the cognitive functions of their child’s minds. One of the most critical skills that [...]