What does it mean to be green?
"Green" is more than just a color. It also means taking special steps to protect the environment - the water, the land and the air we breathe. Why green? Plants are green, and without them the Earth wouldn't be such a lovely home for us. What can we do? A whole lot, actually. Here's a four-step guide to being green:
Let's watch a video about going green!
Now it's quiz time...
Do you know about the implementation of 3R practices among preschoolers in Malaysia?
That's all from me!
Let's go green together!
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Gardening has many health and therapeutic benefits, and can be enjoyed by everyone. Not only older people, but children too can find it especially rewarding to spend time in the garden tending plants and growing their own food. Hence, with some planning and thought, we can create an interesting, productive and pleasant space outside our preschool that can be used as an edible garden. So what is edible garden? An edible garden is a garden that contains flowers, herbs, seeds and plants that we can eat.
I had created an edible garden with my preschoolers during my internship at SK TTDI (2) two years ago and it was really fun and interesting! And it came out with... This year, I involve my parents to create a hanging edible garden and it really works out! Our hanging edible garden looks like... How about yours?
Our preschoolers often can be fussy eaters, so fruits help to provide the requirement of many nutrients such as potassium, folic acid and vitamin C. Especially, fruits make great alternatives to desserts and can also be easily combined with children's diet because they are healthy and delicious. There are a lot of exciting and creative fruit salad recipes for kids ensuring that they eat various kinds of fruits! Here I introduce a kid-friendly fruit salad that I did with my preschoolers. The fruits chosen are apples, bananas, grapes, watermelon, pineapple and peaches. After sharing around our circle, it was time to turn all those beautiful fruits into fruit salad! Each child had the opportunity to wash and cut the fruit they just explored. Some of our fruits required big knife, which only I was allowed to use. The children were given plastic knives to cut the fruit into smaller, bite-sized pieces... When all the fruits were cut and mixed in a big bowl, we had a delicious rainbow fruit salad. My preschoolers had pride in knowing that they helped to prepare this yummy snack! Here is another simple recipe for a fresh fruit salad with yogurt dressing! Now it's your turn!
Spring is the perfect time to teach little ones about plant life. This simple project is a hands-on way to show kids what really happens to seeds buried in the earth. Growing seeds with kids! My preschoolers have been doing lots of indoor growing recently and planted some beans at the same time. This is a really easy, visual way to teach children about root systems and is something I used to do with my preschoolers each spring time. Plus it's very exciting to watch how FAST the plants grow! Getting Ready All you need for this easy activity is a clear plastic cup, some cotton balls and few green beans! Growing Beans
In any case, we had a few that didn't grow... The interesting thing is that we were able to talk about why some didn't grow as well as why we think some did.
Great science discussions based on natural happenings in our classroom! Happy planting! Spring with the new plants and growth is perfect to start or to continue exploring science with your kids no matter how old they are. Last year my kids explored how plants drink using celery but this year I used cabbage leaves with my preschoolers to explore how plants drink. We had fun with this experiment. It was very cool to watch the colors change! I used food coloring and cabbage leaves to show the kids how plants absorb water up through their stems. To conduct your own experiment, you will need:
How to explore how plants drink?
And the cabbage... Such amazing results! Nature is a wonderful thing!
I hope your kiddies do like it too! When young kids go to any formal education, their knowledge of colors is checked. Colors is an easy way to check learning and it is possible to start teaching the colors at early ages. So how to teach preschoolers colors? It is very important to understand the process of learning when teaching preschoolers abstract concept like colors. The understanding of what this thing is NOT is greatly helpful in forming color concept. We call these "negative examples".
How do kids learn colors?
Do you get the idea? Let's have some resources to help on! Preschoolers LOVE songs and I believe it is very important to bring music into the classroom. I hope these songs about colors from teachingmama.org will be helping to you! Also here is an example of color mixing learning video for our preschoolers: That's all about colors!
Happy colorful teaching! Whether at home or at school, naming numbers and counting has been at the core of preschool mathematics. It is the beginning of developing number sense. If your preschoolers do not ace these seemingly simple skills in a timely manner, don't fret: even math whizzes need time to blossom. But with age appropriate techniques, helping your preschoolers to master these math milestones will be as easy as 1, 2, 3! Let's check out with Traci Geiser's article on Preschool Math: Mastering Number Recognition and Counting at www.education.com/magazine/article/preschool-number-recognition-counting-easy/ Find out more with a research brief below: For us to really kick it into high gear... our preschoolers MUST know their letters and sounds for the alphabet... like HAVE to know it! Much of the first semester is spent building this foundation of reading, mastering letter identification and sounds, working on blending sounds into words, segmenting words to isolate the sounds, etc... At one of her conference sessions, Jessica Travis presented all about the ALPHABET and this led me to really sit down and share a post about it. Getting up close and personal with the alphabet and just exactly what this may look like in a preschool. So here we go... If you are a preschool or a kindergarten teacher... then the alphabet is something that you could probably teach in your sleep. We do it year by year, day by day, and this is one of our goals for our children to master throughout the school year. Even though the alphabet seems like a pretty simple thing to teach, we always have children who struggle to master letter identification, beginning sounds, often leaving us (the teacher) wondering what else we can do for our children! Is your current alphabet curriculum working for you and your preschoolers? Here are FIVE tips to think about when teaching the alphabet: Let's take a quick look at what research says about the alphabet! If you need to pick an order to teach the alphabet in... consider one of these: Are you teaching one letter a week? Maybe you are transitioning into trying two, maybe even three letters a week? Below are some examples of how to introduce and teach the letters when doing multiple or three letters a week: Whew! That was A LOT... but hopefully we can take something back to our classroom with us as we start the second half of the school year!
Just remember... don't go into our classroom and make a complete change tomorrow! Find what works best for us and our children and go from there! Baby steps... get us success! Happy Teaching!
News flash!! Most of my preschoolers come into my classroom on the first day of school and know their name, but cannot identify it.
And most likely, this is the same for your kinder class. I typically spend the first week(s) of school doing lots of different activities with their names. I try and incorporate and integrate as many different skills into these activities as possible. Some of these activities have counting, some have reading, some have writing, but they are all fun and hands-on! This year, I have found some new great ideas to try on!
Hereby, I attach an editable name tracing worksheet from totschooling.net.
I hope you have enjoyed this round-up of name activities.
Do you have any name activities that you use in your classroom? I would LOVE to hear about it or even see a picture! Feel free to leave a comment on this post! Teaching little learners is HARD (and sometimes messy). The first week of school is exhausting for both teachers and children! So many routines to teach and so many little learners to get to know! Ahhh... the first day of kindergarten! It's such an exciting day! An exhausting day! But what do you plan for that day? So many things you are excited to do with your children, but you have to remember it's the first day and keep it all in perspective! Remember, your new kindergarten students:
For me, I actually plan my first day very loosely and I focus most of my day on learning to walk in a line, go to recess and lunch, and how to go home. If those 3 things don't happen smoothly that day, you will have issues. Hence, I ditch my formal lesson plans on the first day and decide to just focus on learning the procedures to get through the day. Today, we have come across uncountable educational blogs written by worldwide early childhood educators, helping us unleash our teaching superpowers! We're not in this alone!
Let's drop a visit to some of them about ideas on first day of kindergarten!
How about you? What do you teach on the first day of kindergarten? Hope to hear from you all! |
Welcome!I'm Christine, a preschool teacher who enjoys every bit of my job. I'm passionate about early childhood education. I believe in learning through play, finding new ways to inspire creativity and using our imaginations to explore the world around us. I'm so happy that you drop by here! What do you want to read?
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