assessment week...so boring!

Oh boy, trying to make Review and Assessment Week fun and exciting is a challenge for me.  I came up with a few (not new, but fun) ways to review what we've learned so far this year.  I wanted to keep it simple so the children would understand what we were doing.  We discussed what an "assessment" was, and they were actually super excited to be tested!  

NUMBERS:

Thanks to worksheetfun.com I found a simple way to trace and practice numbers 1 - 10.  We traced the numbers and then put that many freckles (dots) on that particular finger.  It was a little bit boring, but the kids enjoyed dotting their fingers and some of them colored their hands with bright markers.  Little Miss A did a great job and followed my instructions very well :]

SHAPES:
When we practiced our shapes I got the sand out!  My kids LOVE our sand and rice play...so I knew they would enjoy reviewing in the sand :]  From Circles to Stars we practiced drawing the shapes with our fingers.  Some of my kids drew their own shapes and then told me to come see what they had drawn (which was the point of the activity all along).  My kids love shapes...we talk about them a whole lot, so this activity was very rewarding for them.  It was fun to watch them draw out shapes within shapes and connect a few shapes to make a  picture...so creative!
(I always use shallow cookie sheets from the dollar store for sand play...just the right size, easy to use and clean)

 COLORS:
My favorite is playing with color...not always my kids favorite though so I have to be careful ;]  A big thank you to prekinders.com for this cute printable!  It's meant for "bug catching" but I couldn't find enough colored bug stickers to make it work...so, instead we caught frogs!  We all had fun catching the right colored frog to match our jar lid. I was so proud of how great my littles did with this project!  Our pink and purple frogs were so similar in color it was hard to sort them out...but my kids did it!  Good Job!
(I use stickers quite a bit.  They are cheap and easy to use.  My kids love stickers too, they ask to use them in projects and for rewards)

LETTERS:

These letters are bumpy, and the kids love connecting the puzzle pieces.  I, however, am still a big fan of the plain old sandpaper letters for tactile learning.  I am super grateful for ALL the MANY sources of learning materials out in our gigantic world!

I used this matching game, from lakeshore learning, to review our letters and sounds.  There are several ways to play...we simply used the 'matching game' rules this time.  Some of my kids were loosing interest by the end of the game, but most of them hung in there!  My bad, because I left this activity for the end of our day.

Our Assessment day went well.  I was amazed at what some of my kids have retained!  Colors and Shapes were known very well by all.  Letters and Sounds need a bit of work, but I was mostly impressed with what my kids knew about Numbers!  They spoke of beginning knowledge of addition and subtraction and can count higher than I expected...GREAT JOB my kids!!!

Have a fantastic weekend!
Miss Lisa ;]

color in...color out!

My Little Preschool LOVES science experiments!  We feel like that's where most of our adventures take place...at the MESSY TABLE :]

During snack time Miss Lisa read the book "Pete the Cat" by Eric Litwin.

It is a fantastic book about just keeping things 'cool' - no matter what you run into on your journey.  We took the story a little further by investigating the possiblities of how we could add color to something and then take it back out...just like Pete's shoes, when they turned back to white.

Here's what we did...filled a 12 oz glass a 1/3 full of water.  Then we added 3 drops of food coloring (we used blue since that's the color we are enjoying this month).  We made sure to watch the color swirl and make interesting designs in the water before we mixed it with popsicle sticks.  Little Mr. Z said his coloring looked like a tree, little Miss B said hers looked lacey...it is VERY interesting to watch.  After we stirred the color and the water became solid blue, we then added about 1/8th of a cup bleach to the water.  Some 'littles' added their bleach slowly, while others just dumped it all in.  I instructed them to now "just watch and wait."  What a surprise when the water turned back to clear!!  We did it!  We put color in and then took it right back out!  Seems like magic for sure ;]

putting the color in....watching the cool swirling color

stir!  make sure it mixes up good...

Miss A dumping in the bleach...hmmm, now we watch and wait

Miss P is focusing very well and her water sure isn't the same blue it was a minute ago!

Miss M can't believe how clear her water is!   "Where did my blue go???"

This project is a so great, it brings up some very interesting analysis and deep conversation with the very BEST questions!  The kids are always amazed with this one ;]
(***just a tip***) I learned my lesson on this one!  When doing this project with my 'little class' I wiped up and put everything on my supply table.  NOT THINKING, like I should of, I went immediatly to the next project.  Well, some of my boys just didn't get enough and went back to explore a bit more.  They ended up going home with spotted and hand print bleached shirts!  They understood to be careful, they just didn't understand that if it got on your hands to NOT wipe it on your shirt.  Oh boy, my bad!  I never turn my back....but, I REALLY should not have that time!  The adventures of teaching preschool!

Thanks for taking a peek,
Miss Lisa :]

sorting at snack time!

Sorting Colors during snack time proved to be a successful activity...so I wanted to share :]   Snack time is a favorite of all children (I think) and so from time to time I'll include a learning concept during our snack.  Usually it's a life skill, like sharing or manners and sometimes it's part of story time...but this time I arranged to practice our sorting skills.  We have been focusing on the colors red, orange and brown, so I made sure I had small food items that represented those colors :]  It didn't take the kids too long to figure out what I was teaching them...SORTING!  It was fun and made us all look a little differently at what we were eating.  And, it was yummy too!  (obviously this could be done with different colors and food types too)

I prepared the paper plates before school started.  I simply split the plate into thirds with a perminant marker (so it wouldn't smear when we put the food on it).  Then, I wrote one of the colors of focus into each section.  Prep done...super easy.

I had some chocolate chips (brown), cheddar cheese cubes (orange) and went to the store to pick up some fresh raspberries (red).  When we were ready for snack time I placed all the different foods onto the table and gave each child a small handful of each.  Then I asked them if they recognized any of the color words writen on their plates.  They all seemed to recognize the word RED the very best.  So we started with red :]  They began sorting all the food into the correct color section.  The concept was grasped and we had some very yummy snacks to eat!

BTW!  Our raspberries were a little bitter because they're going out of season here in Utah.  Strawberries would've probably been a better choice?  However,  we did discover that if you stick a chocolate chip or two into the center of the raspberry it is delicious!  I hope you will give this a try and let me know what foods/colors you used.  Thanks for stopping by to peek at our activities :]

Miss Lisa :]