Preschool Starts Monday

I have made a decision about preschool...finally. We are going to do Montessori activities on Tuesday and Thursday mornings and Before Five In A Row on Monday and Wed. afternoons. There is going to be lots of trial and error with our Montessori work and I am going to start with 20 minutes and 8-10 activities. If she doesn't want to do any of the activities then she can quietly look at books during this time but if she wants to do the activities longer then she can do that too (I sure hope she wants too). I know 20 min. doesn't sound like a lot but for Ellie it is. I am going to talk to her Monday about what we are going to start doing and basically the "preschool rules". For the Montessori work I will have two activities from each of the following categories: Math, Language, Sensory and Practical Life and a couple of holiday activities too.

Math activities:

Farm File Folder Game - Roll the dice and count the spaces until you reach the end.

My First Number Pairs game- Match the number with the number of objects.

Language activities:

Sand writing - practice writing her letters with her finger in the sand

Rhyming houses - put the card in the house that it rhymes with

The Rhyming Houses came from Lake Shore Learning.

Sensory:

Sound bottles - I will have several jars with items like beans, marbles, etc. in them. Each bottle will have a match to it and she has to match the sounds. ( I haven't made these yet)

Mystery Bag - I will show her several items and she will have to pick the items out of the bag (or stocking since its Christmas) by touch without looking.

Practical Life:

Tweezer Activity - Use tweezers to get the pom poms from the small bowl to the suction cup.

Lacing Cards - Use shoe string to loop through the holes of the shapes

The BFIAR is pretty self explanatory with very little prep work except for checking out the book at the library and getting a few activities together. The first book we are going to do is The Little Rabbit by Judy Dunn. The first suggested activity we are going to do is match some of the colors in the book to crayons from the 48 count box of crayons.

I still have to get a few of the activities together, put everything is baskets, and set up the cabinet where it will be stored. Wish us luck!