Mary Had a Little Lamb ~2014

Have you heard of “Discovery Bay Preschool” on facebook?  Every week she shares a lesson plan and some of the neatest ideas I have seen in a long time.  I love browsing through her page to see what they have been up to and love her current unit ~Holes.  Well this summer I decided I wanted a program more structured like hers, and so I began.  Of course, I still haven’t made it as wonderful as hers, but all things are a work in progress and she is truly a creative person.  It has made the whole lesson planning thing a much less daunting task because I make sure I have covered the areas.  Of course, I write the full lesson plan out separately with all those things you should have in a lesson plan. 
I also wanted to share that things have really changed a lot here at “The Kids Place”.  I  always had (and well still have, just in a different way) a preschool focus serving children 2 and older.  On occasion I would take one younger than 2.  This year is a whole new story… I currently have three young infants in my program and one preschooler.  I even moved my daycare room from May 1999 when we moved into this house to our living room/dining room to accommodate the infants and preschoolers.  I love my new space and am truly enjoying the change!  I will post my new set-up sometime in the future as it still needs plenty of tweaks and things changed to make it the space I want.
So back to the lesson…  our first week I decided to work off the theme “Mary Had a Little Lamb”.  

Here is the outline lesson plan I came up with:

And some of the activities I captured with the camera…

Homemade puppets used to sing “Mary Had a Little Lamb”

Counting sheep… we just used the number 1 due to the age of my child so I just left off the “s” in lambs.  I had numbers through 20.

Mary Had a Little Lamb pasting page.

Facts about sheep page.

Colored Sheep pocket chart story found at “Make Learning Fun”.  I didn't make the felt sheep, I made paper sheep... not as cute but I just didn't have the time.

Grass growing project. We covered it with saran wrap to help make it grow faster and not having to water (or overwater).

                                           Sheep paper plate project.

Emergent Reader on Colors ~found at “Making Learning Fun”.

Lamb color word activity ~found at “Making Learning Fun”.

Color sorting sheep and size sorting sheep.

 Matching sheep.

Sheep in a pasture art project.  I made my own stamp for the grass using a Costco milk top and fun foam cut like grass and hot glued to the milk top.  See below.

And then we did a “Mary Had a Little Lamb” rule book and inserted our own pages to go over the rules.

And lastly, our learning activity boxes.  I only got photo’s of one of the two… but they are all on my plan as to what we did.  I am thinking of making one for math, one for language and literacy, one for fine motor, and one for science and social studies.  My children that I have had over the years (and this year is no exception) love these boxes and the activities inside them.






 

And that concludes “Mary Had a Little Lamb”!  Up next week is “I Know My Name”.

Hope to see you back!

Rose

Third week in March 2012

This month we learned...

The letter Uu.  We did many activities and completed our letter books.  Below I have posted our older children Letter Uu Books and our Tots Letter Uu book.

Letter Uu Books

 Here is the cover.  We colored the Uu's and the umbrella.

 On the left we made our three piece letter Uu puzzles and we colored umbrellas that had the letter

Uu in them.  On the right we found the one that was different and circled letter Uu's on the bottom of the page.

 On the left we found the pictures using clues and colored the pictures according to directions and we

traced letter Uu's.  On the right we used Confessions of a Homeschoolers Letter Hunt to find Uu's.

 On the left we drew lines from the letter Uu to pictures that began with the Uu sound and we

traced and printed letter Uu's.  On the right we said the picture name, printed the letter the picture

began with, and colored the picture.

 On the left we found the picture in each box that started with the letter Uu sound and traced/printed

letter U's.  On the right we said the picture name, circled the letter it started with, and printed the letter that was circled and we traced/printed letter u's.

Tot Letter Uu Books

On the cover we used dot markers to make the letter Uu from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

 On the right we used Confessions of a Homeschoolers umbrella shape matching to make umbrellas and then we started a book about different animals being under an umbrella (I can't remember where I got this).

 On the left we continued the book from above.  On the right we colored an umbrella from 1+1+1=1.

 On the left we found pictures from clues and colored them according to directions and on the right we found letter Uu's in the umbrella and colored them.  Both are from 1+1+1=1.

The last page in our book was matching pictures (under are grayscale pictures that they matched

colored pictures to and glued them on top) from 1+1+1=1.

We talked a lot about spring.

We talked about spring weather and made a weather wheel.

We decided if we liked summer or winter weather.

We talked about kites and did this kite puzzle.

We talked about how a caterpillar develops into a butterfly.

We made a caterpillar that opens up into a butterfly.

We did a number ordering making a caterpillar.

And we made caterpillars that were a certain number of dots long.

We talked about gardening and how things grow.

We talked about the different tools used in the garden and then role played using the tools.

We sequenced the way a plant grows... we also acted out being seeds and growing into big plants.

We used Musing of Me's what makes a flower grow graphing... we saw pictures of things that

help the flower grow and things that don't.  When we found a picture that helps a flower grow we

would color in one part of the stem.  This is no longer able to be downloaded.

We made a tree.

We sequenced a tree.

We learned the nursery rhyme, "Mary Had a Little Lamb".

We did this coloring sheet after learning the rhyme.

We made some sheep.

And we talked about sheep families.

Hope you enjoyed our week.

Best,

Rose