Today was my turn to teach our co-op preschool. There are 6 rambunctious little 3 year olds (and Jack) that come and run around. Its lots of fun, but also stresses me out. As most people know, 3 year olds are not known for their attention span. I want them to leave here having learned something, but sometimes that's really hard.
I had lots of fun today, hopefully, they did too! I love to watch all their cute little personalities interact, and listen to their little (often hilarious) gems of wisdom.
We always let the kids play for a few minutes when they first get here. Then we got in our circle and sang the ABC's. Then we started talking about the letter C.
C is for Caterpillar: We talked about my friend Connie the Caterpillar (using a story from Frontline Phonics with lots of alliteration). We read The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle. Then we made balloon art caterpillars (from here).
C is for Cookie: We read If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, by Laura
Numeroff.
C is for Counting: We fed cookies (Cookie Crisps Cereal) to the Cookie Monster (I found a picture on google images, cut out the mouth, and taped it to a bowl). I would give them a specific number of cookies they had to feed him and then they would use tweezers (the big kind. Mine came from the Bed Bugs game) to put that amount in his mouth. They didn't quite grasp the concept, but it was still really fun.
C is for Car, Cats, CTR, Candy: Next we decorated a letter C with stickers of things that start with C. I was going to have them glue on some of the cookies and little candies (mini m&ms), but they were having so much fun just with the stickers that we decided to fore go the rest of the mess.
We always end with some dancing. We LOVE jitterbug.tv! They have all kinds of kids music available. My kids love to go through and try out different songs all the time. The most popular choice of song for this preschool group is definitely We Are the Dinosaurs by Laurie Berkner.
(The letter C paper and the feeding cookie monster activity came from home schooling activities I've seen Carrie do that I adapted to fit our topic and age group.)
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oh! i was just about to comment and say we did a similar thing once, feeding goldfish to a seal. that's a fun activity for that age group! good job!
ReplyDeleteReally cute Sis . . . So many fun activities! (I like the feeding cookies idea . . . I might have to try that just for fun! -- good for fine motor skills!) Love you!
ReplyDelete"c" is for CUTE!! What cute little students you have! And what fun preschool activities! I have missed doing the coop this year but am excited to do it again my 4th and final time (sniff sniff;( ) next year with Lily and her little play group buddies! I will have to refer back to this post and others (please keep sharing these:) on the blog for next year! Love ya!!
ReplyDeleteI wish Liv could be in your group (when she's old enough)! We've been talking/thinking about if we will start her in preschool (technically she could start later THIS year) but still not sure we're ready. A co op group would be fun, but I don't know of anyone who does it out here. Is it just with church friends? Most of the church friends here go to preschool. I just don't think we're (meaning Brady and I) are ready for preschool yet.
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