The Little Mouse, The Red-Ripe Strawberry & The Big Hungry Bear

One of my favorite books for working on concepts and descriptive words is "The Little Mouse, The Red-Ripe Strawberry & The Big Hungry Bear."  

The Little Mouse, The Red-Ripe Strawberry & The Big Hungry Bear

For Large Group next week we will be reading this book and then acting it out with our very own felt strawberries:

Felt Strawberries

Everyone will get a strawberry and we will use this to act out the story as we read it the second time: 

First we will try to hide our strawberries, then we will disguise them just like in the book:

The future's so bright, even strawberries have to wear shades….

Last we will use our hands to cut our strawberries in half and then share one half with our neighbor:

Strawberry halves

Here is our learning card:

Because we will be focusing on descriptive terms, our weekly handout is on teaching adjectives or descriptive words.  It is from Speech and Language Kids.  

The Cat in the Hat

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!!! March 2nd is Dr. Seuss's Birthday, so to celebrate we are having a very Seussical Large Group next week.  Below is our learning card:

We are going to read the first part only of "The Cat in the Hat."  In case you don't have it at home, you can get a video reading here.

After reading it, we will each get to pick an item out of this box:

Once we have our item we will label it and then figure out different ways to balance with it, just like in the book.  We will have this fun music to move to as well:

Last we are going to toss our "Thing 1" and "Thing 2" dolls around the circle:

Whoever catches the "Things" will have to show us their object and tell us what it is.  It should be as fun as a ham-ikka-schnim-ikka-schnam-ikka-schnopp!  Our weekly handout is from Speech and Language Kids.  It gives some great ideas for working on vocabulary at home. If the file she provides includes pictures your child already knows, cut pictures out of a magazine with more advanced objects to work on.  

Monster Trucks!

For the next two weeks we will be talking all about Monster Trucks during Large Group!  I will be in meetings on Wednesday and since we don't have preschool Thursday I will be in Miss Jeana's class on Monday and Miss Ange's classroom on Tuesday.  Then the following week I will swap (Monday, Miss Ange's and Tuesday, Miss Jeana's) since there will be Valentine festivities going on the last 2 days of that week!  Anyway, In High Scope, the curriculum our preschool uses, they really encourage lesson planning around children's interests.  Well, we have a little guy who absolutely loves everything Monster Trucks, so I was excited to plan some activities around this.  Here is our learning card:

We will talk about some fun facts related to monster trucks.  To help the children understand how loud monster trucks are, we will listen to a little of this clip from youtube.  After talking about the fun facts, we will all figure out if monster trucks are big or little, tall or short, heavy or light, and loud or soft.    

Each student will pretend to be a monster truck, name and all, as they go through our obstacle course: 

We will talk a lot about our obstacle course, with picture cues to help the children see where they will go.  Our VERY mini monster truck is in each picture to show us where to go: under the triangle table, behind the circle table, through the tunnel, over the bridge, and on the road.  

Each monster truck will be announced and when our stoplight turns green they can start their engines and take off through our obstacle course:

Our traffic signs will help each monster truck go in the right direction.  These signs will also be a great way for the students to work on environmental print:

It should be a fun, crazy day!  Because we will be working on several basic concept terms during this large group, our weekly handout is a wonderful post from SpeechGal Therapies, of course on basic concepts!  

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

Next week for Large Group we are focusing on the alphabet.  There are several kiddos in some of the classes that really seem to enjoy playing with the letter toys we have in the classrooms.  Because of that I wanted to plan a large group time around this.  Plus, it's a great way to focus on some articulation as well!  We will read the classic "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" book by Bill Martin Jr and the children will be encouraged to help "read" the book with me, especially during those repeated fun parts!  Here is our learning card for the week:

We will also be doing some fun things with our big coconut tree:

For this week, there are 2 weekly handouts, depending on what your child is working on or what you would like to focus on at home.  The first one is for the kiddos who are working on speech/articulation skills.  Heather over at heatherspeechtherapy.com has created some great! free worksheets.  This link has a huge list of freebies, but just focus on the first section ("Speech Sounds in Syllable Wheel").  If your child has speech goals, just chose one of the first 10 or so sounds (the last ones are later developing sounds).  Play a fun game by placing candy or cereal on each circle and after the consonant-vowel combination (pa, pe, po, etc.) is produced, you can let your little one have their treat.  5-10 min. of practice is plenty!  For more of a language focus, this weekly handout talks about the ways that we follow different types of directions.  You can decide what level your chid is at and focus on those types of directions throughout the week.  

September is National Yoga Month

Next week during Large Group we will be focusing on yoga to celebrate National Yoga Month!  We will be reading the book "You are a Lion!: And Other fun Yoga Poses" by Taeeun Yoo (can also be viewed in my Shelfari on the right).  It is a great book for following directions and imitating actions. 

We will also be trying some of the poses from "The Kids' Yoga Deck: 50 Poses and Games.”  While working on following directions and imitating actions, we will be talking about all kinds of body parts as well! It will be a fun Large Group filled with all things yoga and because of that our weekly handout is, of course, on yoga!  It's a great Super Duper Handout again, that talks about the benefits of yoga and how to incorporate it into your daily routines and activities!