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.
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