Preschool Lesson Plan: Shapes

Opening:

-Welcome Song

-prayer

-pledge, weather, calendar

-Nursery rhyme book

-Dance to nursery rhyme music

-Show & Tell

-Read some Shape Books

-Have each child find a shape in the room and tell the class about it.

-Music: -Get instrument triangles for kids to play

-Create : Shape finding spy glass out of tp roll. Decorate with shape stickers.

-Play: Using spy glass, go on a scavenger hunt for shapes. Take pictures of shapes children find (e.g.: door is a rectangle, window is a square, etc) that we will make into our own shape book they will get later.

 

-Using shape foam stickers do shape sort worksheet where kids put all the circles on one side and all the other shapes on the other side.

 

Play Free play outside

 

Preschool Lesson Plan: Colors

Opening:

-Welcome Song

-prayer

-pledge, weather, calendar

-Nursery rhyme book

-Dance to nursery rhyme music

-Show & Tell

-Read some books about Colors: A Color of My Own, color books, etc

-Have each child share their favorite color

-Music: -Give each child a musical instrument 

Hold up a colored piece of paper 

Have them play how the color makes them feel

-sing: Sing/learn The Rainbow song

-Play: Color mixing activities in stations: 1) with ice cube trays mixing basic colors 2) with Ziploc bags (red, yellow & blue) 3) color wheel activity with clothespins

-Create Paint the venn diagram color mixing worksheet to see how it works, then just free time to paint

 

Play time-play house in the playhouse if warm enough

Preschool Lesson Plan: More and Less (Sharing)

Opening:

-Welcome Song

-prayer

-pledge, weather, calendar

-Nursery rhyme book: read and act out

-dance to nursery rhyme music

-Show & Tell

-Read some books about Sharing/More & Less: Little Red Hen

-Have each child tell something they could/have shared

-Music: -get music instruments have them play some while singing songs about sharing

-sing: I love brother , I love you, You love me

TAKE TURNS SHARING THE INSTRUMENTS

ALSO: Give two instruments to one child and none to another. Ask who has MORE instruments? What can we do? SHARE

-Play: Memory-taking turns and see in the end who has more matches and who has less

I made Memory game pieces using pictures of the children in the class. 

-Create Worksheet with two bags. Have kids put stickers on bags putting more on one and less on the other. Discuss if they had a bag with MORE and their friend has a bag with LESS, what could they do to be nice? SHARE

-do the more/less wksht 

(click on link then click "more or less worksheet")

Play Free play outside

Preschool: The foundational skills

Once the semester was over, we decided we were ready to branch into some more academic based lesson plans. The Moms felt strongly that it was our role as a Mother to provide the core of academic instruction to our children and that the preschool would be more of an opportunity to enhance skills and allow them to be practiced in a more school type setting with peers. Since the children were on various levels, we opted for something we could easily accommodate/generalize.

We decided to focus our instruction around the foundational pre-primer skills children need in order to be successful in reading and math (as seen below in bold). We then combined the main theme with a sub-theme that helped us in our lesson planning ideas.

Below is a brief explanation:

•       Bigger/Smaller: Children need to identify the differences between big and small in all areas of their environment. This helps in identifying that things have differences and how to group these differences.

•       Animals

•       Children can identify which animals are big and which are small

•       Geography

•       Children can identify things (buildings, parks, homes, etc) as which are big and which are small

•       More or less: Children need to identify when something has more and when something is less in all areas of their environment. This helps in seeing growth, regression and progression.

•       Sharing  

•       Children can identify who has more and who has less

•       Measurement

•       Cooking or measuring activities with the focus being on more and less

•       Same and different: Children need to identify when things are the same and when they are different in all areas of their environment. This helps is identifying how things do and do not work together.

•       Cultures/world

•       Discussing how things are alike and different in other cultures/places

•       Patterns

•       Focus on looking at patterns and which ones are alike and which ones are different

•       Matching: Children need to practice to proficiency the skill of matching like objects, pictures and words. Matching is the foundational skill in beginning to use symbols and representation, which leads to strong phonics skills.

•       Memory/matching games

•       Play these games with focusing on matching

•       Letters to words

•       Children can match the first letter of a word to the whole word or picture of the word

•       Basic colors: Children need to identify basic colors in all areas of their environment. And how these colors aid in identification of people, places and things.

•       Signs/community/mixing colors

•       Children can identify various colors on signs in our community. Could also do a color mixing activity here.

•       Seasons

•       Children can identify various seasons based on the main colors that are associated with those seasons

•       Shapes and sizes: Children need to identify basic shapes and sizes in all areas of their environment and how these shapes and sizes interact to create the things all around them (e.g: a house is made up of a rectangle shape, square windows, triangle roof, etc). This aids in comprehending that a whole is made of pieces and pieces make a whole.

•       Patterns

•       Children can create patterns use various shapes

•       Scavenger hunt for shapes

•       Children can find shapes in their environment

•       Categories: Children need to practice to proficiency the skill of putting items into categories as to train the brain on how all things fit into groups.

•       Healthy eating 

•       Children can categorize healthy and unhealthy foods

•       Bugs/animals

•       Children can categorize bugs and animals

Last day of class is a party/graduation

Preschool Lesson Plan: Families

When I taught the lesson on families, I actually had a completely different set of kids so I did the same activity with the service pillow I posted previously. So for what it's worth, the lesson looked like this:

Schedule:
9:30-9:45
Opening/Carpet Time:
-Welcome Song
-Prayer
-Pledge
-Music/Singing Time
-Rhymes
-Calendar
-Show & Tell

9:45-10:15 
Read: I'm a big brother now


Music Exploration: While using instruments sing songs about families: We are a happy family, Families can be together forever, I love you . . . you love me . . .


10:15-10:30
Play Time


10:30-10:45
Activity: Have each child make a service pillow. I made each child a small white throw pillow and let them decorate it with sharpie markers (they LOVED doing this). 
Once the pillows are made explain that when they do something to serve a family member, they can put the pillow on their bed. Then that family member will see the pillow on their bed and know someone did something nice for them. They will then do something nice for someone else and put the service pillow on their bed.

We then role played this idea. Lucy said something she could do to serve me was to give me a hug. She then gave me a hug and we all watched while she took her service pillow and put it on my bed. Then I took the pillow and had the students help me think of something nice to do for Lucy and I did what they said and then I said, "Now what should I do?" and they were all excited to inform me to put the service pillow on Lucy's bed! We then continued to practice as we put the pillow on different beds throughout my home.

Service: Students were challenged to take the pillows home, think of someone they could serve in their family and then put the service pillow on their bed.


10:45-11
Art: Making the pillows was art project here.

Preschool Lesson Plan: Imagination

I taught about Imagination on Halloween day. The Moms didn't want the focus to be on scary things so we opted to focus on imagination for the day. The kids came dressed in their costumes and the lesson went something like this:

Schedule:
9:30-9:45
Opening/Carpet Time:
-Welcome Song
-Prayer
-Pledge
-Music/Singing Time
-Rhymes
-Calendar
-Show & Tell


9:45-10:15 
Read: Where The Wild Things Are
Let the children act out what it would be like to be a wild thing. Have them imagine they are in the jungle of The Wild Things.


Music Exploration: Imagine we are in a parade showing off our costumes to people watching all around. March all around waving and dancing for the people watching as The Monster Mash song is playing in the background.


10:15-10:30
Play Time


10:30-10:45
Art: I got these foam stickers of faces (lips, eyes, noses, etc) from Oriental Trading Company and the children each got to decorate a gord using the stickers.

10:45-11:00
Activity: I had each child decorate a trick-or-treat bag. I bought canvas bags from Oriental Trading Company and the kids decorated them with Sharpies. 

The children then took their trick-or-treat bags into the hallway. Each child got to take a turn being in a bedroom and imagining it was their home while the rest of the kids came up to the "house" and knocked on the door to imagine they were trick-or-treating there. I had small toys/bracelets for the child at the door to give to their "trick-or-treaters". 


Service: Students were challenged to take one thing from their trick-or-treat bag and share it with one of their siblings.

Preschool Lesson Plan: Service

Schedule:
9:30-9:45
Opening/Carpet Time:
-Welcome Song
-Prayer
-Pledge
-Music/Singing Time
-Rhymes
-Calendar
-Show & Tell

9:45-10:15 
Read: Lucy likes to help


Music Exploration: While using instruments sing: When we're helping we're happy
Sing: Do as I'm doing while acting ways we can serve people (sweep the floor, wash the dishes, etc)

10:15-10:30
Play Time

10:30-10:45
Activity: Have each child make a service pillow. I made each child a small white throw pillow and let them decorate it with sharpie markers (they LOVED doing this). 
Once the pillows are made explain that when they do something to serve a family member, they can put the pillow on their bed. Then that family member will see the pillow on their bed and know someone did something nice for them. They will then do something nice for someone else and put the service pillow on their bed.

We then role played this idea. Lucy said something she could do to serve me was to give me a hug. She then gave me a hug and we all watched while she took her service pillow and put it on my bed. Then I took the pillow and had the students help me think of something nice to do for Lucy and I did what they said and then I said, "Now what should I do?" and they were all excited to inform me to put the service pillow on Lucy's bed! We then continued to practice as we put the pillow on different beds throughout my home.

Service: Students were challenged to take the pillows home, think of someone they could serve and put the service pillow on their bed.

10:45-11
Art: Making the pillows was art project here.

Setting up a neighborhood co-op preschool

I got together with some Moms in my neighborhood with a goal to set up a co-op preschool together. This is what we came up with:

-Meet once a week for 90 minutes
-Each child was 3 or 4 years-old
-Each Mom would teach 3-4 times a semester
-The lessons would be based around values that we selected. We felt strongly that we wanted our children's first experience in a school setting to be founded on core values.
-The values/themes we chose: sharing, respect, citizenship, honesty, imagination, Thanksgiving, Christmas, nature, families, service, obedience and kindness.
-We also decided what should be included in each teaching time. The key pieces we felt that would be important to include were: prayer, the pledge, nursery rhymes, read a-louds, calendar, weather, music time, show & tell, a lesson, an activity , a service project, art time and free play time.
-Here is a sample schedule:


9:30-9:45
Opening/Carpet Time:
-Welcome Song
-Prayer
-Pledge
-Music/Singing Time
-Rhymes
-Calendar
-Show & Tell


9:45-10:15
Story/Lesson Time/Music Exploration


10:15-10:30
Play Time


10:30-10:45
Activity/Service


10:45-11
Art

And thus began our little preschool. Stay tuned . . . I'll post lesson plans, art projects and more ;)

Reality check for Parenting

If you: need a good dose of honesty when it comes parenting, need to give yourself a little slack for not being the perfect parent or you just need a good laugh: READ THIS and Don't Carpe Diem!