E is for Elephant

Did you know an elephant can put as much as 2 gallons of water in its trunk?

Or that a mom elephant is pregnant for almost 2 years?

Or that just like a human babies sometimes suck their thumb,
baby elephants often suck their trunks for comfort?

Check out this site National Geographic Kids Creature Feature
to learn more about Elephants,
watch a video of a baby elephant playing,
 hear elephant noises
and even see a picture of elephants hugging.

We didn't get a chance to do this at school today,
so it would be a nice follow-up activity for you and your child to explore together!

We did, though, make these fun sack puppets . . . 

I used the template found here,  which you could also use to make an elephant mask too.

THE ELEPHANT GAME:

Everyone sits in a circle while one child skips around the circle.
The child pretends to be an elephant by using one arm for a trunk and the other for a tail.

Everyone sings:

1 elephant went out one day

Upon a spiders web to play,

He had such enormous fun,

He called for another elephant to come!

When the verse ends, whoever the child is standing behind then joins him/her holding hands
and skipping around the circle while everyone sings:

2 elephants went out one day

Upon a spiders web to play.

They had such enormous fun,

They called for another elephant to come!

Continue until everyone is up and then the final verse is sung:

____ elephants went out one day,

Upon a spiders web to play.

They had such enormous fun,

But the web it broke and they all fell down!

Everyone falls to the ground (and giggles, of course!)

Ms Tamra's Bookbag

This is another book in the baby loves jazz series that I love.  

In this book (and accompanying Jazz CD) charlie bird plays different kinds of jazz while counting animals.  

Listen and dance as two tiny turtles play trumpets 

or 

seven smelly skunks play saxophones.  

Beautiful illustrations, fabulous music and silly alliterations make this book a winner.

In fact, when I read this to my class as a part of our numbers unit, 

my plan was to read the book and skip the music--

but the kids begged to dance.  

And so we did.  

And loved it!

It appears we are a jazz loving preschool class!

C is for color

We started off today's exploration of both color and Jazz Music with this fun book . . . 

I got this at a music teachers convention two years ago--
but you can get it online.
I LOVE  it and the kids do too!

After reading the story, we listened to the accompanying CD and drew pictures of whatever the music sounded like in the color we heard. 

Everyone heard something different--

 We had a pink dancing princess, a big brown bear,  

and even a green trumpet!

 Then we ended up with an impromptu dance--

the kids LOVED the Jazz music!

One of our gross motor activities for the day used these simple plastic lids with flashcards taped on the bottom.  

We put them upside down on the floor and marched around listening to our new favorite Jazz music.  

When the music stopped, we ran to put our toes next to a circle, then got to flip it over and name what was on the bottom.
We'll use this game throughout the year with letters, and numbers.

Did you know that some colors are made by mixing other colors?  

Ms Tamra used a green marker to draw a big green dot on this coffee filter then she used a straw to drip a little water on it. 

When it dried, we could see that the green had yellow and blue it in!

We also did this with orange and purple.

 We'll do more with mixing color magic on Friday :)

Finally, here's a picture of Ms Munching Mouth . . . 

She LOVES to eat letters!  

During our one-on-one assessments this week, the kids named letters as they fed them to her.  

There were lots and lots of giggles as she almost nibbled little fingers :)

See you Friday!

Uppercase/Lowercase video

The concept of upper and lower case letters can be kind of confusing.

"I thought this was B . . . "

"well . . .and so is this b, but not this d."

 Up to this point in a child's life, they have been learning very concrete concepts like a shoe is a shoe regardless of where it is or what direction it faces.  Even a triangle is still a triangle no matter which way it goes.  

Now letters come into play . . . They have to grasp that a B can have two totally different looks, but is no longer a b if it flips to look like this d . . . and that is confusing!

I found this fun elvis-style video from Between the Lions that would be fun to use when helping a child understand this concept.  

Have fun. . . you might just find yourself singing along!

B is for Bumblee Bee

Today while listening to a kids station on Pandora.com I heard this perfect letter B song! Here it is with a fun little video to sing and dance to . . .

Bumble Bee Buzz!

With this, take a few minutes to learn about the interesting way bees communicate through dance . . . Then dance with your child doing a bumble bee dance!

Here's some links to videos that might be helpful . . ..

Here's one

and

Here's another

Pretty interesting!

Days of the Week

A while back, I shared our months of the year song.  The following is the song we use to sing the days of the week, sung to the tune of "The Adams Family".  The kids love it! Instead of clapping, we make clicking sounds with our tongues.

N is for Nursery Rhymes

As part of our Letter N week, our preschool theme today was Nursery Rhymes and Numbers.  Here is an activity that was a huge hit!

Jack Be Nimble

After comparing sizes amongst a variety of candles and ordering them from smallest to largest,

The kids lined up . . .

Then took turns jumping over the candles! We started with the smallest and when everyone had a chance to jump over that, moved to the next candle.  We did this until everyone had a chance.  For each jumper, we chanted the following nursery rhyme:

Jack be nimble.

Jack be quick.

Jack jump over the candlestick!

Make it lively,

make it quick,

But don't knock over the candlestick!

The kids absolutely loved this! And they showed some pretty sweet jumping skills . . . 

A super fun preschool nursery rhyme activity that you could easily do at home!

Months of the Year

This post will be the first in a once a week series about Calendar time.

Calendar time is an important part of the preschool day.

It provides opportunities to explore math, word recognition and music.

I'll provide more specifics on how we do that in an upcoming post.

But to jump start our Calendar Time series,

here is a video of a great song to teach the days of the month, sung to the tune of "Ten Little Indians".

M is for Music

Today we continued our Letter M theme through exploring Music.  

Some of today's highlights include: 

each child taking a turn playing a violin, 

looking inside a piano to see how it works, 

a class concert,

and marching to various types of music 

while playing the drums we made! 

What Marvelous fun we can have with the letter M!

Welcome Moko!

A big Welcome to MOKO! Our newest classroom member. . .

He sleeps in a treasure box in our classroom and loves to introduce storytime with this little song (sung to "On Top of Old Smokey")

"My name is MOKO, I am a monkey
I live in your school and I dance really FUNKY!
I like to read a really good book,
Come on with me, and we'll take a look!"

Welcome Moko! We are so excited to have you be a part of our classroom!