Wednesdays we focus on Music and Movement for the lesson portion of our schedule. And since it's our first long week together, we broke the ice with a finger play with the letter of the week, focusing on...letter A. We learned the very catchy "Teasing Mr Alligator" finger play. After we practiced the chant, the kids made an alligator sack puppet that they were able to pair with the finger play.
[Your little ones are probably chanting variations of something about an alligator snapping monkeys out of trees]. If you haven't heard this before and are wondering what how the whole dialogue goes, here it is:
Five little monkeys swinging in a tree
Teasing Mr Alligator--"Can't catch me! Can't catch!"
Along comes Mr Alligator, quite as can be--
And snapped that monkey right out of the tree!
(Repeat, with four, then three monkeys, etc.)
During playtime, some of the children really enjoyed building tangrams. It's AMAZING what holds their interests and keeps them occupied for longer chunks of time. I saw of a lot of tactile exploration going on without them realizing it what they were learning.
We listened to some classical music by Mozart and pretended to lead the music with our batons. I had to chuckle because some of them started complaining about their arms hurting from all the waving (all of about a minute). I skipped the part of the story about how some of the classical pieces lasted over 20 minutes each and the conductor didn't get a break....Anywhoo.
We made shaker instruments that were a big hit. The plates were deep and sturdier than most paper plates. To make it a little easier for assembly, I folded the paper plates first, putting a bit of a crease in the plate. I had the kids use bingo daubers to decorate the outside part of the plate. They are like paint, cover a lot of area quickly, but are so much easier to clean up and hardly any mess. When it was dry, I folded the plate in half, using the crease to help give it form. The kids added a small scoop of dried split peas and then I stapled around the edges with colored staples. The depth in the plate means that it's about 1 1/4" deep after it's stapled. That gives a lot of room for those peas to smack the edges and make lots of noise. And what we learned from this cute project: the louder the noise, the happier the kids!!
Our book for the day was "I'll Always Love You." Alex bear learns that Mama Bear will love him no matter what he does wrong. And even though he broke her most favorite honey dish, she still loves him. Just like our Moms and Dads love us, no matter what! It was a great preschool day.
No comments:
Post a Comment