Anyone that has read our class blog for very long knows I HEART games that teach!!!  This sweet octopus counting game is no exception!!  Just look at his happy face!  How couldn't you not be drawn right in and want to play with him?!?

Another thing I LOVE about the games we receive from Mother Goose Time is that they are not of a competitive nature, but rather they promote teamwork and a "We ALL win together" attitude.  The children have to work together, take turns, make observations, create solutions, and practice self regulation to reach a common end goal of "winning the game."

This game involves rolling dice and using the round counter tabs in conjunction with the number of the dice to correspond to the amount of counter tabs to place on the octopus tentacle. (At least that is how we played it!)

I had one child roll the dice and the other child count out the correct number of tabs.  Then the child that rolled was able to place the tabs onto the octopus.  Then the children would switch rolls until the octopus was full.  The children would then count all the tabs together and tally how many rolls of the dice it took to reach the end.  The fewer rolls the better, but in the end, they reached the last place on the last tentacle and it was HOOOORAYS all around!!

Our educational partners at Mother Goose Time provided us with an ocean themed matching game with real pictures of ocean animals, and these beautiful shells to count to the number 15 and 16 with (our focus number this month).  We used these little ocean gems to match sizes, order from largest to smalled and reverse, count from 1-16 (and beyond since we had about 40 of them), group into 2, 3, 4, and 5's for skip counting and to imagine what types of animals called them home (not math, but some fun physical science!).  
 
Giving children objects to hold, count, order, and compare is math and science in real time that little minds can concretely make meaningful connections with.

We utilize "teachable moments" with our little learners that encourage hands on learning that is far superior than rote flashcard memorizations.  Yes, the clean up can be a bit more daunting, but the results speak for themselves...

Www.education.com supports this method, " In an attempt to foster their child’s academic development, many well meaning parents may be tempted to provide flash cards as an initial learning tool. This is not the best method for teaching young children math skills with understanding, says Grace Davila Coates, Program Director of Family Math (Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California at Berkeley) and co-author of Family Math for Young Children. “Many three-year-olds may be able to identify a 3, but they don’t understand what 3 means. It's important for parents to understand the difference between conceptual learning and skill development," she says. "Instead of flashcards, look for teachable moments, count things that are familiar to the child as she plays or helps you with simple chores. Counting socks, toy cars, or other toys will maintain her attention and have more meaning for her. Play is learning for three and four-year olds.

Follow their interests and create environments that encourage creativity and exploration.” https://www.education.com/magazine/article/preschool-number-recognition-counting-easy/​

Children LOVE to study oceans and the life inside of them.  Shells, fish, whales, coral, water...especially the octopus!

In all my years as lead "awakener" here at Woolsey Academy, the octopus ranks right up there in preschool land with the dinosaur.  

It has 8 arms or tentacles, it has a squishy body, it squirts black ink it has suction cups!!!  What isn't to LOVE about these amazing creatures of the deep?

This month our educational partners at Mother Goose Time paid homage to this amazing ocean dweller with this sweet study and craft.  

They provided a math study counting it's arms by adding and subtracting to make 8.  We added another lesson to that curing our S.T.E.A.M. project by adding these fun round stickers to create "suckers" on the tentacles as we counted how many we added.  We then brought a little introduction of multiplication as we stated that, "If I have 2 suckers on each arm (8 arms total), how many do I have all together?"  

We counted by 2's and then we observed that we had 16!  

After reading the book, "How To Hide An Octopus", we pretended to be an octopus and find camouflage to hide in, on, and under.  We practiced using these positional words (pre-math and language comprehension) as our older children assisted our littler ones in performing the task.  

This S.T.E.A.M. project required our little learners to practice their fine motor skills as they stuffed ribbons with their fingertips into a shower cap!  We tied off a top portion of the cap and then our preschoolers used scissors to snip eight octopus arms.  The thin lightweight cap plastic was PERFECT for giving the impression of an octopus swimming through the water as it went up and down. 

This project, provided by Mother Goose Time in conjunction with our octopus studies was  a fantastic "Make and Take" activity for our children to excitedly share with their families as they reconnected and discussed everything they learned in their day with us at www.woolseyacademy.com.

As always, we wish you well and we hope you get to play today! 

Even our littlest learners (ESPECIALLY our tiny tots) get to play and learn along side their older preschool playmates.  We do not separate by age, rather, we diligently work to create an inclusive environment for our students of all abilities and ages and by the looks on their faces I would say it is a grand SUCCESS!!!

​"Sensory activities facilitate exploration and naturally encourage children to use scientific processes while they play, create, investigate and explore. The sensory activities allow children to refine their thresholds for different sensory information helping their brain to create stronger connections to process and respond to sensory information." - http://www.educationalplaycare.com/blog/sensory-play-important-development/

"Here are 5 reasons why sensory play is beneficial:

1. Research shows that sensory play builds nerve connections in the brain’s pathways, which lead to the child’s ability to complete more complex learning tasks.
2. Sensory play supports language development, cognitive growth, fine and gross motor skills, problem solving skills, and social interaction.
3. This type of play aids in developing and enhancing memory
4. Sensory play is great for calming an anxious or frustrated child
5. This helps children learn sensory attributes (hot, cold, sticky, dry)"

We LOVE sensory play for calming an anxious child.  We have several children in our preschool with varying degrees and varieties of SPD's. Water beads, sand, and dough's give these children a calm focus and allow them ample self-directed play time's that provide them with total control of themselves and quiet play practice with others.  

We love animals of all varieties, but if you were to ask a preschooler what their FAVORITE animals are to learn about it would be sharks and dinosaurs EVERYTIME!  

That's why we were just giddy when Mother Goose Time announced their April learning emphasis would be Oceans.  This gives us SO much to talk about! We opened the box to whales, sharks, sea snakes, shells, coral, octopuses, fish, lobsters, crabs and MORE.  Our little learners have been delighted to utilize all these little critters to ask questions about, build habitats for, and engage in social/emotional language building skills with (i.e.play!!!)

This above pic is no exception!  We used our homemade dough recipe this month and added a bit of blue and a bit of yellow to make hues of blues and greens just like the ocean for our creatures to dwell in.  This became a cave, an ocean, a wave, a boat, a beach, and more.  Their immense imaginations allow for unlimited potential with the proper educational materials supporting them.  

We added some brown moon-sand and made indoor sand castles and moats.  We added water beads to squish and for our magnetic alphabet fish to "swim" in!

We used our letter stamps, scissors, and tongs in the sand to practice our fine motor skills for picking up pencils properly and our alphabet stencils to press and recognize in the sand.

This sweet tune is a Woolsey Academy original!  We made up this fun finger play song to go along with our clownfish learning theme.  We studied the clownfish and we learned that it has a "safe place" in the sea anemone.  We discovered that the clownfish gets used to the anemone stings during its life and then it does not hurt anymore so it can hide safely in anemone from its predators!  What an AMAZING superpower!!!

Songs, finger plays, animal recognition, habitats, and special animal powers are all part of a fun filled day at Woolsey Academy for our little learners!!

As always, we wish you well and we hope you get to play today.

​L

This week we began by learning that all planets fall into one of two categories. They are all either gas planets or rock planets and this week we focused on the rock planets.

But first....we had to learn one of my ALL TIME FAVORITE space songs.  It is from the old Blue's Clues shows.  This one never gets old...just take a look and a listen!

I love the word pointers that emphasize our site words like "look", "up", and "and".  They draw attention to our special words and make it easy for our little learners to find their site words in these emergent readers and in our other space books too.  We use them to write the words and turn it into a matching game.

We built rockets, a space station, the Sun, and astronauts using diamonds, squares, circles,triangles, and hexagons! Our preschoolers played this again and again and it is the perfect way to teach shapes minus the flashcards!  We observed how we can use shapes to make pictures of things we recognize!!

Tangram puzzles are amazing for developing a math and logic minds and we utilize them daily here at Woolsey Academy. 

"During my psychology training, one of my lecturers used to say that if you gave a child no other math instruction bar Tangrams for one whole year, they would be more advanced mathematically than if you followed the regular math curriculum. The simplicity of this bold statement has stuck with me ever since. Imagine if something as simple and fun as playing with Tangrams could really advance math skills more than a year of regular instruction?! While I have not found anyone willing to try this experiment (yet!), I recently employed Tangrams in my Math Genius club with great success."https://catherinehallissey.com/2012/12/21/tangrams-the-easy-way-to-develop-mathematical-thinking-skills/  

These seemingly simple puzzles are full of potential and possibilities.  They are easily configured to any topic and can be reused and redesigned as the child's logic grows.  

Math, Science, Music, Movement, and Literature! This was a great beginning to our week studying the rock planets!

As always, we wish you well and we hope you get to play today.

L