Felt Season Tree

I've had some kind of "season tree" in each of my classrooms. I just love the concrete visual that kids can easily connect to, because trees are everywhere. This year I made a tree out of felt so that they could interact with each season. 

It was fun to see their interpretations... :)

Teaching Piano: Thomas Explores the Keyboard

Recently in my preschool piano class, we explored the piano keyboard. First we used my pattern cards to break down the pattern of the keys.

Then we found those same patterns on the keyboard.

Next we made our own paper keyboard, and practiced using the black key patterns to help us find specific notes.

Finally we went over to the keyboard and pulled out a student favorite, Thomas the Train.

We used Thomas to help us explore different white keys on the piano. Thomas can move up and down the keyboard (demonstrating high and low notes) and just barely fits onto the keys enough to park.

Once Thomas was parked, we would try to find a corresponding white key on our paper keyboard and placed a Thomas sticker over it.

Sometimes I would pick where Thomas would park, and sometimes the student could pick. Either way, it was a fun way to practice finding notes on the keyboard.

Tape Roads

Nothing fancy here: just tape, scissors, and cars. But it turned out to be an engaging center that allowed the kids to direct their own learning, and work on fine motor skills, mathematical thinking, social skills, and dramatic play.

"I was going to make a square, but then it turned into a rectangle."

"Can I connect to your road? Then it's one long road!"

"We had to put some tape on these cars because they had boo-boos." 

(An area of the road became a doctor's office.)

I'm excited to extend this play next time with some additional open ended materials that might inspire some buildings to pop up in their little community.

Book Love: Book of Sleep

I have loved A Book of Sleep by Il Sung Na for a long time now, as a bedtime story for my son. But I decided to give it a try with my preschool class since we had been talking about what people and animals do at night. It worked really well for this topic.

This book is really simple and explores the way that different animals sleep (or don't sleep, in the case of the owl) at night. I love the whimsical illustrations, and the patterned rhythm of the text.

Read-Aloud Tips:
We decided to read this book in the dark and pretend it was night. The kids liked the change of gathering around close together to see the pages by the light of a lantern.

 Each animal in this book does something unique when they sleep. We took our time with each one to think about what it might be like to sleep that way, and even acted out some of the ideas, like sleeping with one eye open or standing up.

There is also a little owl on each page, and so naturally they were eager to find it.

Nocturnal Animals Connection:
We used this book as a springboard to talk about other nocturnal animals that stay awake during the night, and sleep during the day. The kids took turns looking through this set of nonfiction books about different nocturnal animals, still to the light of the lantern of course.

Day and Night Sky

We've been exploring another natural cycle of time: day and night.

Day and Night Sky Pattern

Day Sky Art

(using construction paper, cotton balls, and glue)

Night Sky Art

(Using construction paper, stencils, white paint, and pom-pom brushes)