Preschool ideas

• We hold preschool three times a week.  Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings for a couple of hours.  Another good option is a Tuesday, Thursday schedule if you have a younger preschooler. 
• We start off with calendar time, identifying the month of the year and day of the week.  We also count how many days left in the month.  Then we sing the days of the week song.  
• We discuss the weather.  Is it sunny, hot, windy, raining, snowing, foggy.  What kind of clothes do we wear today?  
• We try to go for a hike or field trip every week.  We invite friends to join us for this part. 
• We also have Wednesday as cooking day.  This is were we try cooking something new or  making something that goes with the theme of the week.  Like goo, eggs, applesauce, or cookies.  
• We have a letter for each day and practice writing the letter.  There are several ways to do this, dot to dot letters, highlighter letters, copy the letter, and freehand.
• We read a couple books that have the letter in the story multiple times, and find the letter on the pages as we read. 
• We have music time. I play piano and we sing.  
• We have coloring, painting, or craft time.  
• We have Science on Friday.  

We change the schedule around when needed. We are flexible with our time.  If an activity really interests my little one and she enjoys it, I encourage her to pursue her passions.  Sometimes what I have planned is discouraging to her.  For example, for the letter e I planned to cook eggs.  She has done this several times with me and I thought she would enjoy it.  She did not want to cook eggs that day, so we switched it to another craft instead.  Neither she nor I enjoy it if we are arguing about what we are going to do.  We try to make it a fun learning time.  There are lots of great ideas on the web, a quick search can give creative and fun activities.  Happy hunting and good luck. 

Fish for letter F

We just had to put together the 100 piece puzzle, when letter F day came around.  It was much to hard for my daughter on her own, so we ended up working together.  I would get the piece and show her how to stick it together.  She really enjoyed doing this puzzle and was the one to request it. 

For craft we made a fish bowl.  I cut fish out of construction paper and let her glue them on and decorate them.  This took her a good twenty minutes.  She made them a little castle, (the brown arch) and some sea weed.  She wanted to draw eyes and mouths and fins. 

I found a great book series at the library that showcases letters.The series is put out by ABDO publishing company,  called: Super sandcastle, It's the alphabet.  The book we checked out is called It's F!  The book is written with the letter in initial, medial, and final positions in words.  I really liked that not all the words had the letter at the beginning.  The pictures were great and we got to find the letter in all sorts of fun places.  We also read: Catfish, Cod, Salmon, and Scrod, and Do you know about Fish?  Another great book to read, but one we did not is One fish, two fish, Red fish, Blue fish. 

E preschool ideas

We sat down with some books and looked for things that started with the letter E.  Then we made a list of them.  Here is a rundown of some of the words we found:

• elephant
• eagle
• egg
• earring
• envelope
• eel
• electricity
• easter
• elmo

We read: Where's Elmo? A peek-a-boo book, Easy Street, The dumb Bunnies' Easter, and The best mistake ever!  We took a walk after reading Easy Street, to the construction area, and looked at how they make a road.  We talked about sequencing by discussing how the men first smooth dirt, second they smooth gravel, third they smooth the asphalt, and fourth they paint the lines. 
With The best mistake Ever!, we discussed what foods are healthy and which ones are junk food. 

 We did two crafts with construction paper.  We made an Elmo with red, white, and orange construction paper, and a hand print elephant with ink and a black marker.  First we pushed my daughter's hand into an ink pad until all her fingers were covered and then we pushed her hand, palm down onto the construction paper.  The trunk is made from her thumb, while the legs come from her fingers. 


Then we practiced writing big letter E.  First I wrote the letter with a highlighter and my daughter traced over it.