Showing posts with label activities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label activities. Show all posts

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Beginning of School Activities for Preschool - All About Us

If you're searching for fresh ideas for beginning of school activities for preschool, try this one. Some of the most memorable activities I have done are ones that span the school year. Parents and children love to see how they have grown through the year!

Parents are anxious about their children starting their first year in a setting other than home. They want to be reassured that the teacher and staff recognize and value their preschooler's unique qualities.

The preschool teacher also has the responsibility to teach the children to get along in a group and begin the process of respecting other's unique qualities as well. This is a year long goal, as well as a life long goal for all of us!

All About Us Preschool Activity

The project that I call All About Us is one that helps the students, teachers and parents have a visual display of how the class is changing throughout the year. This display is not left out continuously but rather brought out at different times during the school year to note new changes, abilities, differences of any kind.

This is one of those preschool activities you can use for teaching many skills such as color recognition, numbers, counting, comparisons, opposites, etc. You can also identify abilities such as letter recognition, name recognition, favorite books, toys--the range is up to the teacher to decide.

At the start of the preschool year, I make one chart per child on a piece of cardstock or heavy grade paper that will last the school year. On the left side of the chart I list: name, birthday, height, hair color, number of siblings, favorite food, colors I know, letters I know, favorite book, etc. (This is your own list to create so feel free to add other things if you wish.) Then across the top, put columns where you can record dates of entry. If you have access to a camera, take each child's picture and put add this to the chart.

I have a hallway or wall set aside for everyone to see. Another way to display this is to attach the papers to a long piece of ribbon to make a banner that can span the wall or a corner. I use this often the first month of the year at circle time to show how to measure height, ask children their eye color or hair color. We count how many siblings are in a person's family.

You can record the children's answers to the list on your sheet and then add these to the charts. I also I think it's important to give them the opportunity to decorate their pages with stickers or crayons. Customizing a part of their banner.

After a few weeks I'll take this down and then bring it back every few months to see how things have changed. As the years pass, children will have acquired the ability to enjoy and lots of action "level", count, learned presented in the letters they have. Some, like add the information next to their name such as "maycut with scissors", "can stand on one foot", "can hop", "made new friends". Listen to their ideas for inclusion here. This is an excellent way to hear from their own mouths how they think they have grown!

The self esteem that this promotes will be evident when you bring this out throughout the year.

Parents love to have this visual chart for them to see and at the end of the year--what a wonderful gift for your preschooler to take home. It is his/her validation of how much they have learned and grown throughout preschool.

These beginning of school activities for preschool will provide fun throughout the year and will be a welcome gift at the end of the year.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Top 10 Delightful Daycare & Preschool Activities

As a daycare provider, it is important to have a long list of activities that your children enjoy, as well as plenty of daycare supplies, such as art supplies, toys and games. Active play is essential to brain development, so bring out the active in your daycare activities as much as possible!

Dancing

Move the daycare furniture aside and encourage your children to move freely around the room with colorful scarves or fabric used for dress-up time. Spinning around in circles, jumping, and moving all relieve stress, promote brain development, well being, and believe it or not, restore a sense of calm in young children.

Sing Along Time

Teaching nursery rhyme songs, seasonal songs and other simple songs to your children is always a big hit. Most young children love to express themselves with their voices, and sing along time provides them with an appropriate way to do so.

Look for songs that teach simple life lessons about sharing, manners, cleaning up and healthy eating. Your children will enjoy singing the songs, as well as retain the lesson.

Circle Time Rhythms

Circle time is also a perfect place for practicing rhythms and getting out the sillies. Have the children sit or stand and teach them simple rhythms that incorporate clapping and stomping combinations. Once they learn the rhythm, speed up the tempo until everyone is rolling on the floor laughing and exhausted.

Shaving Cream Art

You can not usually think of shaving cream as the provision of childcare, but when working with children who carry with them in the mouth are all shaving cream is a wonderful means of art. Spray on a table with shaving cream and support the children draw pictures, letters and numbers. There are children with their enthusiasm, fresh, soft, mellow and natural.

Puppet Theatre

Capturethe attention of your daycare children by turning story time into a puppet show. Simple puppets can be made from old socks, miscellaneous fabric pieces and imagination. And, most young children will enjoy hearing familiar stories told by a puppet!

Face Painting

This activity has nothing to do with actual paint, but is a soothing activity when little ones are grumpy. Invite the children to come to you one at a time to have their faces painted. Then, gently draw all over their faces with the tip of your finger. Most children will feel soothed by this little bit of touch, although some will be tickled by it.

Shape Sorting

Very young children love games and toys that involve shape sorting. Provide children with plenty of shapes in the form of wooden or plastic blocks and containers to put them in. You can also have them sort objects by color and shape for a little variation or to make it a little more interesting. This helps children learn the names of shapes and colors.

Tall Towers

Plastic food containers collected over a period of time are great for stacking. Children can build towers taller than themselves, but will mostly enjoy knocking the towers down. The advantage is that the containers are very lightweight and won't hurt if they fall on a child. They are also easy to clean up by having the children stack them together again.

Play Dough

Play dough is a classic child's activity and an essential part of the daycare supply closet. Moving hands are essential to child development, and play dough is fun, creative, and builds hand and finger muscles.

Indoor Parade

The indoor parade incorporates music, dance and dress-up. Have the children pick their outfits from the dress-up closet, then chose several songs that everyone knows and march around the room singing, dancing, stomping and clapping. It uses up excess energy and generally puts a smile on everyone's face.

This list of delightful daycare activities can be implemented easily with a few simple daycare supplies.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

A better understanding of closure activities

One of the most important parts of each lesson is how it ends. Teachers need to have some kind of closure activities at the end of each lesson, if you really interested in improving the understanding among their students.

A better understanding of the closure activities should not be difficult. closure activities, any activity short and simple, the lesson objective (s) are increased.

For example, in a lecture on "The Causes of World War II," I can onlystudents to create a test question and 1 test for each response on the causes learned from that date. If there is time, I also have student exchange their questions with each other.

This simple closure activities have little time, gave students the opportunity to reinforce the objectives of this lesson a day, and gave teachers the opportunity to see whether these goals have been achieved.

Here are five more simple closure activities that contribute to the improvement of the course:

1.Ask students to keep a record of learning. At the end of the class must write something they have learned (or found interesting) from class that day.

2. When the time is enough to have two students and share the answers to some questions about the teaching of the target.

3. Students draw a picture that somehow shows that the lesson has been reached.

Write a fourth letter. As a social studies teacher, this is one of my favorites. I often have studentsWrite a short letter to the person we were studying.

5. Write a journal entry. Just as with the students to write a letter, this closure activity also allows students to be creative and add their own flare to the assignment.

Each of the above closure activities are simple and each can be adjusted depending on the time remaining at the end of the class. It 's very easy for the teacher to skip this part of the lesson, especially if you always feel so depressedfor the moment. However, if teachers are truly interested in improving the understanding of not skip this very important piece of the lesson.