Garbage Truck Legos

Whew!
My days have seemed so busy to me but when I sit down to blog and write it all down it seems like less.
Silly how putting things into words doesn't always capture the events in the day.

For this post I am going to combine yesterday's and today's preschool lessons.

Stations
Reading station: With new library books the kids haven't seen.  I have been keeping them pretty busy so they have not had a lot of time to spend reading. 
Rock counting: I pulled out the bag of rocks I bought months ago and haven't used and decided I was going to figure out a way to use them as a station.  I put them in the red tray and set out two 10 spot tiki green ice trays next to it.  I wrote the numbers 10 and 20 on papers and taped them in front of the trays.  The instructions were to sort or group the rocks into these numbers using the ice trays or the red tray. 
Rubber Band Geo Board:This came with this weeks discovery pack from our local library.  My little dragons are very intrigued with this board.  Even though they keep snapping their little fingers with the bands trying to connect them they keep trying! 
Legos:A new found love for an old toy. 
Coloring:I haven't had a simple coloring station for awhile and the kids always favor it.


Circle Time
Depending on the daily activities I have planned I conduct circle time in the morning or after lunch.  I don't have a complete 'set' schedule.  I have the kids moods and my mood to consider daily and that is what I usually gauge our activities by.

Monday we started circle time reading My 'g' Sound Box .  This time every time I said g I asked the kids to say /g/ (the g sound).
Next we read Abram and Lot again so next time they can tell the story on their own.

The kids were very attentive and just wanted to keep reading books this morning.  Usually we read only two, but what the heck if they are eager I want to engage them in their interests.

Lastly we read Beep Beep Vroom Vroom.  This book was in the math discover pack from the library and the kids and I really liked it.  I knew it would be a hit with the two younger boys.

I had planned a Lego activity before reading this book and was pleased to see that the activity I planned went well with this book.

Athena has been doing well with patterns so this was simply practice. 

I asked her to mimic and continue the patterns in the book. 

While she worked on that I took one boy at a time and played 'garbage truck sorting'. 

I gave each child a pile of garbage (Lego's) they had to put in their individual garbage trucks.  

Then they drove their garbage trucks to the factory and dumped their load. 

Athena helped Spencer to start his sorting.  Then he finished the last of it. 

We will work on this again.  

Isaiah was quick to sort the garbage.  

I would continue to add the garbage they he dumped as he sorted and he would get flustered when he would see another of a color he had just finished sorting.  

I love seeing different personalities with activities.

Each child was able to build while they waited or after their turn.  We played with this activity for at least an hour if not more. 

Tuesday circle time was in the afternoon and we read In The Tall Tall Grass.  

Before joining circle time the kids made an their own prop for the book. 

While reading the book the kids looked to see if they could find the same insect/bird in their grass as they saw in the book. 

Thursday the kids will color their grass and draw the missing insects/birds on their pages. 

Next we read the famous Giraffes Can't Dance book.  

There are 5 different dance styles in the book that we watched being performed on YouTube. 

Then we listened to the sounds of nature, just like the Gerald the giraffe. 

After we discussed our favorites and why we liked them the kids tried each of the dances together.  

This was so stinking cute! 

They even held a flower between their teeth.  I wish I would have taken a picture. 

Preschool

After snacks we made sheep cut outs for our bible story and will use them in the next telling to illustrate a herd. 

After the three books in circle time the kids were having a hard time sitting down.  

I was getting frustrated. 

I turned on some worship music while I prepared lunch to calm myself and get some of the bottled energy out of the kids. 

This ended up working out well.  After a few worship songs a Baby Einstein video came on (I was using YouTube).  The kids giggled and laughed the whole time. 

After lunch the boys went to sleep and after many trips up and down the stairs, spraining my knee, straining my back, two spills, a couple fits and a couple accidents I was on the verge of tears.  I took Athena and spent some time in the garden and prayed. 

You can't get closer to God then working in the earth harvesting the food and pulling the weeds out of your garden. (Both literal and figurative.)

Of course this was the cure.  In no time at all I was feeling better. 

The two of us went inside and worked on a phonics packet Jerry printed for Athena so she could have some undivided attention working on something solely her level while the boys napped. 

When they woke we sang and danced to our favorite kids songs before getting our hands messy! 

I had some extra dough sitting in the fridge and no use for it.  I saw  the challenge posted by Inspiration Laboratories and saw the perfect opportunity to use it. 

I will be writing a separate post about this activity later. 

Tuesday we started our day playing outside.  The weather forecast said it was to be rainy later in the afternoon so we got our outside play in early.

When we came inside we had talked about the number 3. 

I have nothing that starts with the G (or at least nothing I could think of) for this activity so we used erasers. 

Of course I fret over this and the kids are happy to have something physical and colorful in front of them. 

We estimated how many there were then added and subtracted to get three then wrote out the equations in the jars.  

Spencer grouped his erasers into piles of three. 

There was handwriting practice on the sheet too! 

The song we have been singing for the letter G is Glorias Garden which you can find here. 

I had a picture of a garden printed for a coloring page and decided it would be perfect for the spur of the  moment lesson plan that hit me today. 

There were 5 different types of flowers on the picture. 

First I asked the kids how many different types they saw.  They immediately just started counting flowers.  To help them see the differences I encouraged them to color each type a different color.  

As Athena colored them she would try and name the flowers.  She got a couple of them correct and was eager to know the names of the rest.  

When they were all colored I sat with each little dragon and helped them write a short story about their Garden.  I vouched for songs but they wanted stories. :(. 

It ended up working well.  They had handwriting practice and each created their own garden scene. 

To read their stories click here!