Sunny Side Up: ST Week at Preschool

Selah and I joined a preschool co-op this March, which means, every 4 weeks I have two adorable little girls come over to my place and I get to stretch my teaching skills. For those that may not know, I graduated last May with a teaching degree... I just haven't used it yet, well, used it to make money at least. When this opportunity came up I had to jump at it, and I'm having a blast!!

This past week it was my turn to teach and I covered the blend ST. Here is a run down of what we did:

Day 1

To start the morning, I had the girls work on a star puzzle.

I added the extra lines on the yellow star to make it a little easier.

After the puzzle, we did a word sort. I printed and cut out pictures of words that started with S, SH, and ST. Each girl got one picture of each type (so 9 total pictures), then I would ask them to each find the picture they thought started with S. Then, they each got a turn to stick it onto a pre-taped piece of paper in the correct column. We did this for SH and ST words as well (but, obviously, by the last picture it was easy to determine which column it went into, but that was okay since S and SH were already covered, and ST was a new letter combo, worked pretty well).

Next, we talked about an animal that looks like a star...a starfish!! Who knew they were such neat creatures!! We read this awesome book,

Star of the Sea: A Day in the Life of a Starfish by Janet Halfmann.

(We later glanced at the pictures in the book pictured on the right during our craft.)

After we read the book, we headed to the table for a starfish craft.

I pre-cut the starfish shape and had the girls glue them onto their blue pieces of paper. Then I gave them a container of cheerios and let them go to town. We talked about how the Cheerios were the starfish's sticky tube feet that helped them move around (mentioned in the story).

Later, I handed them each a little booklet with fun starfish facts on them (again, covered in the story) and they glued them to the bottom of their papers. We read the following facts together:

Starfish can be many colors, sizes, and shapes.
Starfish are also called "sea stars".
Starfish have tiny tube feet to help them move.
Starfish have two stomachs. (who knew??)
Starfish eat mussels, clams, and oysters. (I had no clue!)
Starfish can grow new rays if one is lost. (Aren't starfish the coolest!?!?!)

Our last activity for the day was to put as many fun star-shaped stickers on a piece of paper, and then later we figured out how many stars were put on to practice counting.

We also found this contraption:

Daniel found this somewhere for super cheap and thought Selah would like it, but we have never really used it...until now! We all went into the dark bathroom, turned this sucker on, and found ourselves surrounded by pretty, multi-colored stars spinning around us. The girls thought it was pretty incredible and kept trying to "catch" the stars! So fun!

We wrapped up our day by singing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star... of course! :)

Day 2

This day was filled with a hodgepodge of ST related activities (stirring, starting/stopping, stretching, stripes...random!).

We started by dancing around and getting our wiggles out with these streamers (I later helped guide them to the discovery that streamers starts with ST).

It was impossible to get a clear picture with all the dancing going on!!

To make these streamers I just cut two strips of each color, wrapped them around a craft stick twice, and taped it on...easy peasy!

Next, we calmed ourselves down by reading A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon...

great book about remaining true to yourself...and a great segway into our art project, painting stripes!

Using a piece of plain white card stock paper, I put lines of masking tape about every inch doing down. Then, I let the girls paint any way they wanted, but I told them they had to cover all the white with paint.

Once the paint dried, I peeled off the tape and...

behold! Our beautiful striped masterpieces! If I did this again, I would have cut/ripped the masking tape in half so that the colored stripes were larger than the white stripes...buuuut, ya live and learn, and I still think these turned out great!!

Next, we ate trailmix for snack, and I had the girls help me stir (get it, STir) the ingredients together :)

We all counted to 20 together during each person's turn to get a little more practice in, and, of course, to make sure everyone's stir-time was totally, completely, without-a-doubt, fair. They're three...

During playtime we all headed out back for a version of Red Light, Green Light. One child went to one end of the yard with me (and Owen), while the other two stayed behind (well, I should pause and make sure to mention that we STretched before participating in this game, gotta keep it safe!). The child with me was the caller and she yelled out "STOP" or "START", and the other two followed her directions until they both made it to the other side. Lots of giggling going on during this one!!

Our last activity involved animals of the striped sort...back to those stripes!! I gave each girl a baggie of 8 cut out pictures of animals (5 striped, 3 not), and they picked out the ones with stripes and glued them onto a piece of construction paper.