December - Don & Audrey Wood

AUTHOR STUDY

This month we have been working on our unit on authors and illustrators with a focus on Don and Audrey Wood.

The books we have been using:   Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear; The Napping House;  Piggies;  and Silly Sally.

The children will learn the definitions of “author” and “illustrator”, and that books are read from left to right.    Teachers will discuss the front and back covers, pages, and words on a page.  Children will be asked to look at the illustrations and describe what is happening, and predict what might happen next.

Language activities:  

For The Red Ripe Strawberry, we created seven different cards pictures from the book, and duplicated them. Children will receive a picture each, and then will try to find the peer who has their match. They will be asked to describe what the mouse might be feeling, as his emotions are very well illustrated in this book. The children can then use the cards to play a memory matching game.

For The Napping House,  we placed pictures of all the characters in the book on blocks.  As we read the book, we stacked the blocks.  In the end, we knocked the blocks down.  We counted the blocks, named each character, and talked about placing the block on and knocking then down.   We also worked on linguistic concepts as each character in the story becomes smaller than the previous on.   While stacking the blocks, we talked about putting on top, and asked who was under. We also used the pictures on the blocks and talked about big/small and bigger/smaller.

For Piggies we made a picture of two hands.  On the end of each finger is a piece of velcro to place piggies.  Each child picked a question/task card that had a question and picture choices.  If they answered correctly they picked a pig and placed on the end of one finger.  Some questions included, “Show me two piggies”; “Which piggie in not dirty?”;  Show me the piggie who is clean.”

Miss Linda and Miss Diane

Language Group - Week of November 13,2017

Family Theme

This week in Language Group, we read the book

"Are you my Mother?" by P.D. Eastman.  In this book a baby bird goes out to search for his mother.  He comes across other animals and some big objects.  After his search he makes it back to his nest and his mother comes home.

For our activity, one child was  chosen to be the baby bird.  The other children were given pictures of the animals and items in the book (i.e.: kitten, cow, airplane, boat).  One child was given the mother bird picture.  The Baby Bird walks up to a child and and asks “Are you my Mother?” the child answers “Yes” if they have the mother bird card or “No I am a ___” and fills in the ___ with their picture.

This activity worked on:

1.  attending to the story

2.  labeling pictures

3.  taking turns

4.  approaching other children

5.  asking a question

6.  answering yes/no questions

Activities you can do at home include:

1.  Ask your child yes/no questions about items in your home.

2.  encourage your child to ask questions and model the appropriate word order if needed.

3.  Click the link and print out an animal mother/baby matching.

4.  Play the same game we played at your house!

Miss Diane & Miss Linda

Language Group - Week of October 16, 2017

Farm

This week in Language Group the children went with the Speech-Language Pathologist in small groups to the hallway outside of their classrooms.  A variety of animals were tapped to the hallway wall, some were farm animals and some were not.  Each child was given a clipboard and a crayon to complete a checklist of farm animals that we saw on the wall.

The children helped each other find different animals on the wall that were the same animal on their check lists.  Some animals looked the same and some looked different (the cow pictures were different, black and white cow on the checklist and a brown and white cow on the wall).  We also went through the pictures and asked if it was a farm animal (i.e.: Does a whale live on the farm?).

Once we found all the farm animals, we counted how many each child found and wrote the number on the bottom of the checklist.

This activity worked on:

-vocabulary related to farm animals

-labeling animals

-following directions

-answering yes/no questions

-counting one to one correspondence

Things you can do at home include:

-sing farm songs "Old MacDonald"

-play with a farm animal set and label the animals

-ask your child yes/no questions

Miss Diane & Miss Linda

Language Group - Week of October 10, 2017

Farm

This week we are starting the Farm unit!

We began by the children sharing what they know about the FARM!

We asked the children, what is a farm?  What animals live on a farm?
What things happen on a farm?  Who works on a farm?

The children were encouraged to share their thoughts within the group.

We read the book "Barnyard Banter" by Denise Flemming

The book shows a variety of animals that are on a farm, along with their animal noises.  However, in the background of each page there is a goose chasing a butterfly.  The children looked for the goose on each page and on the last page the butterfly fly up high and got away.

Some of the vocabulary we talked about included: pasture, hayloft, rafters, and grain.

For our activity, I placed a large picture of a barn with animals velcroed outside.  Each child was asked a question related to the topic.  Some examples include:  Do pigs gallop?  Does a dog lay eggs?  Do dogs say baaa?  Do we get wool from sheep?  Can dogs fly?

If the child answered the question correctly, they were able to place an animal in the barn.  If the answer was not correct, they placed a raindrop in the sky.  The object was to try and get all the animals in the barn so they did not get wet from the rain.

This activity worked on:

1.  attending to the book
2.  picture identification and animal sound identification

3.  vocabulary related to farm and farm animals

4.  answering yes/no and what questions

5.  answering informational questions about the farm

Things you can do at home include:
1.  sing 'Old MacDonald had a farm'
2.  try to go to  a farm
3.  try online farm games

http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/preschool/animals/farm/animalfarmgame.htm
*search for other online games!

Miss Diane and Miss Linda

Summer Fun Ideas!

With the school year winding down, we wanted to pass along some activities that you can do at home or on the road!

Enjoy your time with your  family!

Diane and Linda

Speech-Language Pathologists

Click this link to see the calendar! 

Summer Calendar of Ideas 

 

Language Group - Week of March 13, 2017

Community Helpers

This week we continued our unit on community and community helpers.  In language group we pretended to be mail carriers.  There were different variations of this activity.

Mailboxes were made out of folders with different photos of community helper buildings in Franklin.  some were real photos and others were clipart.  Letters/mail were also made, using different colors of different shapes as the address to deliver the mail.


The Mailboxes, as shown here, were taped to the wall in the hallway.  The children went in groups and began by answering:
1.  What community do you live in?
2.  What street do you live on
Then we looked at each mailbox and identified the building and what community helper(s) works there.  We also identified the colors and shapes.





Each child was given 2 letters to deliver.  We talked about the letter and what was on it (who it was from, the stamp, what the address was.  As you can see on the letters the addresses were different colors and shapes.  The children had to match the addresses and place the letters in the correct mailbox.






Once all the letters were delivered, we went to each mailbox and made sure it was delivered to the correct mailbox.  I took out each letter held it next to the mailbox and asked if the addresses were the same or different.  If a letter was delivered to the wrong mailbox, we delivered it to the right mailbox as a group.
This activity worked on:
1.  attending
2.  staying with the group
3.  vocabulary related to community and community helpers
4.  descriptor vocabulary (colors/shapes)
5.  concept of same/different

Try some online community helper games with your children!
1.  http://pbskids.org/cgi-registry/curiousgeorge/on_the_job.pl
2.  http://www.nickjr.com/bubble-guppies/games/firefighter-number-adventure/

Miss Diane & Miss Linda

Language Group Week of March 6, 2017

Community Helpers

 
This week in Language Group we talked about Community Helpers.  The children were asked the following questions:

What community do you live in?

What community helpers are in the town of Franklin?

We then played a community helper guessing game.  The children were tthe detectives and had four clues to try to figure out the community helper.

Things you can do at home include:
1.  visit community helper sites
2.  talk about community helpers when you see them 
(what they drive, what they do, what they wear)
3.  pretend to be a community helper during play
(grocery store, fire fighter, police officer)
4.  play 'red light green light'

Miss Diane and Miss Linda