I decided to start cleaning out my Pinterest boards today, as I've gone a bit overboard on some of them. Like my recipe boards. :) But while I was doing that, I thought I'd ponder thru my Math Center board and came upon this fun idea I had saved.
This is a Montessori based blog. It has a great idea where you use sticky fall leaves, clothespins and ribbons. I bet you can find the materials pretty cheap at a dollar store. You can even do this on a clothesline instead of the floor. :) Fun, right??
I love music. I love it not only for my own pleasure, but in my classroom as well. There was almost always music playing in the background during free time, during lunch time, and I often played jazz or classical during work time; during my circle time we used music every single class.
Some of my favorite background music comes from my time as a Gymboree Teacher. For almost seven years I enjoyed the wonderful music Gymboree had to offer, and when they added music to the program it was even better. The music they put together is all content and age appropriate. They offer a bunch of CDs with each CD being a different genre of music. I love playing the African CD during free playtime.
My all time favorite for ME is the Surfin Music. Here is one that is for sale on Amazon: Gymboree Music: Surfin
Other music I use, to teach a specific skill, comes from many sources. Wee Play offers an abundance (I bought most of mine at Costco) of finger plays and rhymes that I was able to make flannelboards to go with them.
Everyday Mathematics offers a music CD to go along with their curriculum. Maybe yours does too?
A parent gave me a copy of the CD Movin 2 Math by Jack Hartmann. I used track #3 Let's Get Fit (Counting to 100 by 1s) almost daily. Even my three year olds, who could not count to 100, loved doing the exercises.
One song I used soooo much in the springtime is Five Little Butterflies. I heard it on Barney once, and thought it was adorable. I made these cute flannel boards to go with the song:
I added the flowers cause my butterflies needed to fly over something. Anyway, here is the song:
Apparently this comes on a CD too. Not a big Barney fan, but the kids love the song when I sing it. So I just don't tell anyone I saw it on Barney. :) Shhhhhh.....
I love using literature to teach both math & science. When I get to posting science lessons this summer you will see that. I have an entire preschool science curriculum based on the Magic School Bus. I can't wait to put all that together for you!
But in the meantime, this week my preschool classes are doing an activity based off of this book:
This story is so cute I can't even tell you. "Dog" is a white puppy with a black spot on his left ear. As he goes throughout his day he has some mishaps which, by the end of the day, looks like this:
We start by reading the story as part of circle time. We talked about how poor Dog gets so messy, mostly not of his own fault, and how that happens to us too some times. The afternoon classes were able to show me "spots" they had on their clothes from earlier activities.
Afterwards, we go to the tables where each child gets a copy of Dog (I traced from book and enlarged) and some spots. I have a circle punch that I use to make the spots. We then re-read the story and attach Dog's spots. The youngest kids can all apply their own glue and love looking for the right color. I am fortunate that we have enough help that I have an adult with every 6 kids for the 2 yr olds so they can each monitor a table to offer help where needed.
Here is a group of 4 year olds working on their Dogs:
As you can see, I have the spots lumped in a tray they can dig through. The younger classes are given a little more assistance with the spots.
When reviewing the picture at the end of the project, we count the spots to practice one-to-one correspondence and rational counting, but also ordinal numbers as we count which spot he got first, second, third, etc.
I am looking forward to remaking this page and offering it up as a freebie...when I learn how to. :(
