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!

Street Sign match up

More shape matching on the white board

Pattern block mats

Squares!

Rectangles!

"I saw a diamond!"

"There is a triangle and square here!" Abby.

"It looks like a moon", Prestton.

More outdoor fun at DBP:

More Centers:

Puzzles

Magnet color match puzzle

Kitchen

Cars

After a busy morning...

We had a great time! See you back here next week, same time, same place!

Little Miss (& Mr.) Independent

There is a lot to be said about children becoming independent. Many of you have observed your child stacking chairs at school, gathering their papers and packing them into their bags or  helping with snacks. The remarks I hear range from, "They don't do that for me at home!" or "Why doesn't this happen at my house?"It makes me smile, because as parents it's hard for us to let go! 

As their teacher, I have an abundance of opportunities to explicitly teach and model self help skills. Their success is based largely on what they are developmentally capable of, a self-care routine, patience and lots of encouragement. You are their #1 fan!

So how can you make this "magically" happen at your house? 

1. Let them pitch in! 

They want to help rinse the dishes off, wipe down the tables and clean up their spills.  When this happens, take a moment to see how they can assist you. Trust me... they turn 13 way too fast and then walk away from any such task.

This was after breakfast and I really was in a hurry to get everyone into our classroom. But the sink was full of bubbles and the kids pushed the chair to the sink all by themselves and decided they would wash their own dishes.

 2.  Show them the Ropes
In order to complete #1 without a disaster you will have to show them how it is done! (Take a deep breath, it will be awesome!)

Creating our TLC Gg page. Lots of following instructions, cutting on their own, finding the right pieces etc.

Growing into "Independent" students.

3.  Allow your Child to Take the Lead and Resist the Urge to Jump In
This can be a tough one. We see them getting frustrated or a whimper escapes from their lips and what do WE do??! Come on be honest! 

I will be the first to admit it took all my strength not to walk over, take the scissors and just do it for her!

But they do figure it out on their own. A bonus to this particular task... gummy snacks were the prize!

Attempting to squeeze the glue to add glitter for their Gg

With each passing birthday they will grow more and want that independence. The reward for us is being able to watch as they truly Blossom. 

Happy 3rd Birthday Morgan!!!!!

 

 

 

Kinder Prep reading group finding the letter Gg independently

"Look Ms. Jaymee, goldfish sounds like our letter!" Ella.

Independent centers...

including a want to be independent Harley!

Cause you Gotta Have Friends

Do your kids come home and sing? You know, those songs that are kind of choppy and you are desperately trying to decipher what they are saying? I thought so... this clip shows my Friday kids singing their heart's out to The Number Rock. It is their favorite (this week). I am sure if you push play and they are standing near by, they will break out and sing along!

Honestly, as I sat down to write out our past week and everything we did I found myself hitting a road block. Which seems to be happening a lot lately when I write! So for inspiration I like to blog hop. I end up spending hours pouring over blogs, reading updates on friend's blogs, catching up on the news and even getting sucked into the mundane world of Facebook. Then the muffle of little voices from our classroom pulls me back into reality and I realize all I have on my blog page are these wonderful pictures, which I am almost positive many of you don't mind seeing just that! 

But in my last ditch effort I did stumble across an interesting blog entitled childhood101.com. It's latest entry had the the question below:

 What will your children be grateful for when they look back on their childhood?

 As with many of you I have my own list of hopes and dreams of what I would want etched into their memory. But as I think back to my own childhood, with it's abundant wealth of memories, I recall the most precious part of my life was my family and my friends. 

And of course to truly appreciate a friend at the tender age of 2, 3 or 4 you have to know what that means!

 

Ms Jaymee to class: "What is a friend?" 

Ella, "I don't know, I don't have any friends!"

"I am sure you have friends Ella. Look around our class, who do you like to play with?"

"Well sometimes I play with Prestton. We play cars." Ella

Prestton, "You play cars with me El-wa?"

"Yeah Prestton. We like cars." Ella.

"Me too guys! Do you wanna play?" Karol.

"Come on! Let's go guys!" Trynnity. 

"Cause we will always be best friends. Right Trynnity?" Karol.

"Right! Best friends forever!" Trynnity.

(pretend to insert photo here of that moment! I was dictating...sorry!) 

However,  I did get pictures of us making our friendship necklaces (below) and the final exchange (above).

 

Independent time is always good too! We all need a little down time on our own. It helps us to appreciate those friends a lot more. 

Rose painting with watercolors.

Joey engaging in shaving cream art.

Morgan completing puzzles.

Ella making the letter Gg with playdough mats.

Danny doing a Kumon maze.

Trent partaking in ABC matching.

Trynnity making a block tower.

At the end of the day though you gotta have friends! They are there to help you out when you get stuck counting out "gumballs" for your gumball machine.

They praise you when you do a job well done. 

(Joey correctly colored his sight word "the"! Worksheet from 1+1+1blogspot)

They support you during reading group time (and provide a good chat about whose house you will be going over to play with later).

Let's face it, life is just a little more interesting, a little more fun and a little more memorable with friends!

 

"Prestton I like your coloring!" Ella. 

Footnote: the letter Gg was part of this week's curriculum. We also worked on the number 2, patterns and of course our theme was FRIENDSHIP!