Desert Blossoms Preschool: Brought to You by the Letter Mm & the Number 3

Mm Cheer

M is for monkey, marble and mop

M is for mitten and moutaintop

M is for mouse and the moon in the sky

M is for muffin, milk and mud pie

Hooray for M big and small-

the most magical and marvelous letter of all!

- Alphabet Tales

Letter: Mm

Number: 3

Sight Word: like

Jolly Phonic Motion: Say Mmmmmm while rubbing your tummy

Theme: Shapes and Signs

A dear friend and colleague of mine stated that she preferred to "work smarter, not harder". This was during my first year of public school teaching six years ago in 5th grade. At first I just waved it off and continued to "re-invent" the wheel. Now I live and work by this motto!

I had a lot of Mm activities planned for this week. Many came from the amazing group of women I worked with at Cottonwood. Other things I found on-line, in books and often tweeked them to make them so that they work for what I was looking for. It saves me time, stress and allows me to be more creative in other areas. After all, who can argue with trying to fix something that is not broken and WORKS!

So please take a moment to take a peek into our week of learning:

M&M sorting center. I did this one a little different for each of my ability groups. The older children had to try and count out three cubes for each color using the tweezers to transfer. The little ones concentrated more on tweezers and sorting into colors.

Clark sorting 3 cubes into his M&M color mat.

Trent and Ellie sorting

We always do floam, playdough or some other type of tactile center for our letter formation.

Athena rolling out her dough to make her Mm.

Our TLC page this week was Mm is for mouse.

We did a sight word center this week. Each sight word we have learned up to this point was on a flashcard. The kids then had to find the matching letter tile to match their word.

Another reading center included the worksheet below. You have probably noticed by now that we do have a few worksheets every week. I like to use them so that we can track each child's growth. It gives me a better idea at what they are really grasping. The smaller children may not get exactly what they should do every time, but it's great exposure!

Coloring big M's purple and little m's brown.

One of our emergent readers using the sight word like.

Cutting, cutting, and more cutting... their future teachers will appreciate this!

Part of our theme this week was shapes. Most of the kids know their basic shapes. Many of them know pentagon, hexagon, octagon, trapezoid, and rhombus aka diamond! We watched a Power Point on shapes, enjoyed a Baby Einstein and a short show called Meet the Shapes (Thank you Anabelle & Ami). On Friday we walked to the neighborhood park and did a shape/ sign hunt. It was a lot of fun!