Langauge Group Week of October 31, 2016

FALL HARVEST THEME

This week our language lesson for fall focused on the changing colors of leaves.   We used the book “Fall is Not Easy” by Mary Kelley which shows in simple illustrations how trees change during the seasons of winter, spring, summer, and fall.   The magic of the book is that in fall, this one particular tree just “can’t seem to get it right.”   Its leaves turn strange colors and  rearrange themselves to become ‘pictures’:   a yellow and black happy face; a rainbow; red and white stripes like a candy cane; black and white spots like a cow; etc.   The children were encouraged to predict what the tree’s next transformation might be, and to label what it actually  was.

 As a related activity, we created replicas of the illustrations of the tree’s transformations, made a tree trunk, and had the children take turns following directions to “find the one that looks like a hamburger”, for example, then place it at the top of the trunk.

Activities worked on during this lesson:

-listening and attending to a story

-making predictions

-labeling pictures

-identifying colors

-following directions that include embedded descriptive clauses

-waiting for a turn

Activities you can carryover at home:

-look at the clouds and ask your child to describe what pictures they see

-go out and collect a few handfuls of leaves to examine….talk about their colors and shapes and how they are the same or different

-make a leaf rubbing

-sing a leaf song (we’ve included a simple one for you)

Leaf Song (Sung to tune of “London Bridge”)

Leaves are falling all around

All around, all around

Yellow, orange, red and brown

To the ground.

Miss Linda and Miss Diane

Language Group Week of October 24, 2016

Fall Harvest

This week we continued our monthly theme of fall harvest.  Corn is one of the products that we harvest on a farm, so we learned a song about five crows who a scarecrow tries to scare away from eating the corn.  This is a simple, repetitive song (song to the tune of “Five Green and Speckled Frogs”) so it is easy  and fun for even very young children to learn.  We used the poster to help the children “countdown” the crows.

 

As a related activity, a number of crows performing various activities were created.   Some crows were simply standing, some flying with wings spread, some eating corn.   Some crows were girls as evidenced by the pink bows in their hair.  Three crows were placed out at a time, and one child was called upon to respond to a question/directive.   Examples included:   find the two crows that are the same;  find the crow that is different from the other two;   find a girl crow;   find a crow who is eating;  find the crow who is not eating. Once that child had his turn, a set of three more crows were laid out and it was the next child’s turn.  Children were also asked to explain why they made their particular choice (e.g., how do you know the crow is flying?  Why do you think this is a girl crow?).

This activity focused on a number of language skills and concepts including:

1. listening to and following directions
2. responding to questions
3. understanding same/different
4. understanding gender (boy/girl)
5. understanding actions
6. negatives (the crow who is not a girl)
7. attending while waiting for your turn

Activities you can do at home inlcude:

1. Count items in your home.  When setting the table have your child count out the correct number of forks.
2. Ask your child questions using the negative (e.g.: Which one is not a spoon?).
3. Talk about same and different while sorting the socks in the laundry.
4. Sing the song we did at school!

5 crows, all shiny black

Sat on a scarecrows back

Eating the most delicious corn

YUM! YUM!

Scarecrow,he shouted “BOO!”

One crow, away he flew

Then there were four black shiny crows

Just 4!

Continue to 1...

Then there were no more shiny crows

No more!

Miss Diane and Miss Linda

Language Group - Week of October 17, 2016

Fall/Harvest Theme

This week in Language Group, we talked about the fall, specifically about apples.  We read the book “Apple Farmer Annie” by Monica Wellington.  In this book an apple farmer named Annie shows us her apple farm in the fall.  She tells us she picks them, sorts them by color, and uses them to make different things (apple cider, applesauce, muffins, cakes, and pies).  “She saves the most beautiful ones of all to sell fresh at the market.”  She loads her truck, drives to the farmers market and sets up her stand.  She has lots of customers and sells all her apples.  Annie is very tired when her day is over.

For our activity, we had a large paper tree with different colored and sized apples.  Each child was asked which apple they wanted to place on the tree, or directed to find a particular apple and place it on the tree (next to another red apple, at the top of the tree, etc.) When the tree was full of apples, the children took turns picking one, naming the color and sorting it by its color.

This activity worked on:

1. attending
2. turn-taking
3. color concept (red, green, yellow)
4. size concept (big, little/small)
5. superlative /-est/ (biggest, smallest)
6. sorting by color
7. following directions (i.e.: find a big green apple)

Activities you can do at home include:

1. Stuff socks (red, green and yellow ones if you have them) and use them as apples with this poem.  Decide how many you want to use (counting one to five) and have your child count how many fell.  Take turns being the tree and allow the other person to shake “the tree.”

Way up high in the apple tree 
5 big apples smiled at me 
I shook that tree as hard as I could
And down came the apples 
M-mm they were good!

2. Have your child help you sort the laundry by color (sort all the socks by color).
3. Place items out and have your child find the biggest and the smallest (your shirt and your child’s shirt).
4. Give your child directions including size and color (i.e.: get the big cookie, get the red crayon).

Miss Linda and Miss Diane