Doggie, Doggie Where's Your Bone

Doggie Doggie Where's Your Bone

This week for Large Group, we played the game Doggie, Doggie Where's Your Bone?

This game helped us work on using the /d/ sound in words.  It also helped us work on asking and answering "wh" and "yes/no" questions. We talked about how dogs like to chew bones and how sometimes, they hide their bones.   We all got a turn to wear the dog mask and be the dog.  When we were wearing the dog mask, we would hide our eyes while Teacher Heidi hid the dog bone behind one of the other kids in the circle.  When the dog opened his/her eyes, we tapped our knees while we chanted, "Doggie, doggie where's your bone?".  The dog moved around the circle asking kids, "Do you have my bone?"  If we had the bone, we said "YES" if we didn't have the bone, we said "NO" and the dog would then ask someone else.  If some of our friends sitting in the circle had a hard time using words to ask the "Do you have my bone?" question or to answer "yes or no", they were able to use the BigMac switch to help them.   

You can play this game at home by hiding an object and using questions to get hints on where the object might me.  This will help your child work on attributes (it's under something red or big) and prepositions (it's on, next to, under, behind etc..).  This will also help your child work on asking questions and answering questions. 

Musical Hearts

This week in Large Group, we played Musical Hearts.   We played some music and danced in the middle of the rug.  When the music stopped, we froze and Teacher Heidi had one of us choose a heart with an action on it.  We used our words to tell the class what action we were going to do and then we all did the action. 

  

 We did jumping jacks, touched our toes, froze like statues, sang a song, hopped, pretended to shoot baskets, ran in place and marched.  It was a lot of fun to move to the music and then do some of the actions.  We talked about the actions as a way to work on using verbs in speech.

To work on this concept at home, talk about what you are doing or what you see other people doing.  Use "ing" verbs to describe what you see.

Animal Yoga

Animal Yoga

Last week for Large Group, we continued to talk about the "d" sound.  I brought my friend Tiny Tony.  Tiny Tony is a dog.  We sang a song about Tiny Tony.

We also talked about different animals.  We looked at pictures of animals and named them.  We also talked about how the animals look, how they move and what sounds they make. We talked about animals that we could think of that started with the "d" sound.   We moved our bodies different ways by doing animal yoga.  We used the pictures you can see above to help us do our animal yoga.  We each took a turn choosing an animal and then we did a yoga pose like that animal.  We were ladybugs, snakes, lions, monkeys, giraffes, peacocks, dogs, flamingos, elephants, lizards and turtles. 

 The book You Are a Lion! byTaeen Yoo, is a good book to check out from the library if you want to talk about and try some animal yoga poses at home.  

The Mitten

This week for Large Group we read the book The Mitten by Jan Brett.  This is a book about a boy named Nicki who wants his grandma to make him mittens that are as white as snow.  It isn't long before Nicki loses his white mitten in the white snow and it becomes a warm home to some animals.  The story ends with the bear getting tickled by the mouse's whiskers and letting out a HUGE sneeze.  This sneeze sends the animals and the mitten flying through the air.  When Nicki finds his mitten it has been stretched and pulled and is bigger than his other mitten.

We all loved this story.  We learned that if you look on the side of each page, there is a picture that gives us a hint of what will be happening next.  We talked about the animals in the book and used descriptive words to describe them.  We made predictions as to what we thought would happen next and we even drew some conclusions about what happened based on the pictures we were looking at.  We talked about mittens and how they help us.  We sequenced which animal went into the mitten first and which animal went into the mitten last.  We talked about which animal was the biggest animal and which animal was the smallest animal.

We played a game where we pretended that a large sheet laid out on the floor was a huge mitten and we were the animals looking for a warm place to go.  When teacher Heidi said the name of our animal, we crawled in the mitten.  We had to squeeze so that everyone fit inside.  The mouse was the last to go in the mitten and then we all let out a big A-A-A-Choo and the sheet flew off all of the animals.  

When we were finished with the BIG mitten, we put all of our animals back inside a big paper mitten that teacher Heidi had.  We listened for our animals and as we put in in, we sang this song to the tune of Farmer in the Dell.

The (name of animal) squeezes in the (name of animal) squeezes in;

Help us please so we don't freeze,

The (name of animal) squeezes in.

You can read the book The Mitten at home by checking it out from the library or you can watch an online version by going to YouTube and searching Online Storytime: The Mitten.

Shake, Shake, Shake To the Ground

This week for Large Group we played with the parachute.  We took some pretend snowballs and dumped them on the parachute and said a rhyme while we tried to shake the snowballs to the ground.

The rhyme went like this:

Snowball, snowball cold and round.

Shake, shake, shake to the ground.

After we shook the snowballs to the ground a few times, we played another game where we counted so many shakes and then went under the parachute.

We took turns telling our friends how many times we would shake the parachute before we went under.

We had a lot of fun going under the parachute!!!

This activity helped us follow directions and use words in phrases.  We also worked on understanding the preposition under, answering yes/no questions and answering "wh" questions.

You can play parachute games at home by using a sheet or blanket.  You can ask your child how many times you should shake the blanket before you go under.  When you are under, point out that you are "under" the parachute to work on understanding the concept "under".

Snowman Games

Ring Around The Snowman

Last week for Large Group, we reviewed the "s" sound and sang songs about "snow".  We played some snowman games.  We played Ring Around the Snowman, 10 Little Snowmen and Snowman Hokey Pokey. 

To play Ring Around the Snowman,  it's just like Ring Around the Rosies except you hold hands and move in a circle around a snowman.

As we moved around the snowman, we sang; 

Ring around the snowman,

Pocket full of snow.

Snowflakes, snowflakes,

We all fall down.

After we played it a couple times, we took turns deciding if we should sing the song fast, slow, high, low, in a whisper or really loud. This activity helped us use our words in phrases.  It also helped us work on following directions and answering "wh" questions.  

We also played 10 Little Snowmen.  To play this game, we pretended to be snowmen.  We talked about how when the sun comes out, snowmen melt.  We counted how many "snowmen" we had on our rug and then said the following rhyme:

10 little snowmen having lots of fun.

The sun came out and melted some.

Now (child or children's names) is/are  all done.

When we said the part about he sun melting some, Teacher Heidi took some of our pictures off the board and if our picture disappeared that meant we melted to the ground.  After we melted we then counted how many snowmen were left and did the rhyme again.  This helped us with our math skills as we subtracted each time snowmen melted to figure out how many were still left.  We also worked on the "who" question by answering Teacher Heidi when she said, "Who melted?"

We also played Snowmen Pokey.  This game is played just like Hokey Pokey, but we would say "do the snowman pokey" at the end.  This helped us work on naming and identifying body parts and moving our bodies to a beat.  We each got a turn to say which body part we were going to put in and out of the circle.  We used our hands, arms, knees, legs, hips, heads, hair, noses, feet, elbows and even our cheeks.

You can play any of these games with your family at home.  

Snowball Snowball Cold and Round

Snowball, Snowball Cold and Round

This week in Large Group we talked about snowballs.  We pretended to make snowballs with our hands.  We held our pretend snowball up high and down low.  We held our snowball in front of us and behind us.

We played a game called "Snowball, Snowball Cold and Round".  To play this game, we all closed our eyes and Teacher Heidi hid a snowball under one of the colored mittens.  When we opened our eyes, we tapped our knees with our hands while we said...."Snowball, snowball cold and round.  Under which mitten can you be found?"  We each took a turn guessing what color mitten we thought the snowball was hiding under.  

As we played this game, we worked on identifying our colors, answering "wh" questions and using "yes and no" to answer questions.

You can easily play this game at home by cutting out a white circle for a snowball as well as some colored mittens.