In February we talked with kids a lot about different kinds of transportation. It was an intro to the topic of Slovakia.
When we start a new topic, it is very easy just to say "Hello guys, this week we will talk about...". But even I am bored with such introduction, so this time I invited a special guest - a hand puppet, Fred the Moose :) Children had a chance to talk to a stranger, who had a little problem: he wanted to go for vacation to America, but he did not know how to get there! Kids' task was to propose him different means of transport. It was not just a simple fun exercise, but it was a serious problem solving! When children run out of ideas, I showed them pictures prepared earlier. In the end we decided that the best way to get to Italy (children changed the journey destination :) is to use an airplane. Fred the Moose was delighted :)
After that we divided the vehicles on water, air and land vehicles. Together we created a big board with many means of transport.
On diagnostic tests it turned out we're not that good in composing pictures from pieces, so I decided to practice it more. Everybody chose one set of puzzle and made a picture. This time it was easy - just 4 pieces. (I covered the names, but you can ask your girls which picture is theirs).
When we had a board of vehicles, I added paper tags with their names. Then we tried global reading exercise - we recognized words written on big flash cards by comparing them to tags on the board. We read: BUS, CAR and BOAT.
We can count very well, we practice it everyday with our calendar. This time we started to add numbers :) Number is a very abstract thing for children, so it is quite important in the beginning to help them with concrete objects. In our classroom, we added toy vehicles - cars, airplanes and trains. Nevertheless, children usually add like this:
Teacher: How many cars we have?
Children: one, two, THREE!!!!!
Teacher: How many airplanes we have?
Children: one, TWOOO!!!!!
Teacher: So how many vehicles we have together?
Children: one, two, three, four, FIIIIIIIVE!!!!
You can see, that they count every piece anyway - slowly they're shortening that long way to find the result of addition.
Next we practiced fine motor skills - we had two worksheets:
We had dotted traces - vehicle tracks and letters. First worksheet was about cutting properly and the second one was about rolling the play-dough and sticking her on the letter traces. It's not that easy to roll the play-dough, as you can see on the worksheet above, but at least we can read the words :)
One day we saw a presentation about vehicles now and in the past. Children were guessing what vehicle is on the picture. Some of them were easy to guess, but with other kids had quite a problem :) If you are interested in watching the presentation, contact me on my email (irenawanot.pl [at] gmail.com) - I can send it in .pdf or .ppt format :)
To repeat vocabulary we used a very simple song, your child can sing it for you without a problem:
How did you get here? How did you get here? x2
I came here by car... (or any other vehicle), by car, by car :)
Once I found girls standing by the board (during their play time), singing that song and showing pictures one by one. It's always amazing for me, that a simple thing, which we repeat everyday, is still fun for them! I experienced, that even when I think that something is already boring and we have to change it, children ask for it. One girl came once to me and said reproachfully: Irena, you forgot something! We didn't sing "Good morning everybody" song! :)
Other exercises connected with vehicles?
Making sounds: brrrrrrrm, shhhhhhhhh, choo choo choo choo - good speech exercise
Moving like vehicles - a simple drama activity where children have to imitate the vehicle
Workshop ideas:
Making vehicles (cars, trains) out of carton boxes (e.g. after tea),
Making sail boats out of piece of polystyrene and paper on a stick (if you put it on the water and blow, the boat will float :)
In next post: How we got to know our home land - Slovakia :)
Greetings!
Irena
