Opposites

It is hard to believe that this week was my last one teaching for the school year.  The last nine months have gone by so quickly.  I have loved having these kids in my home learning, playing and growing together.  It has also been a fun challenge for me.  Harder in a lot of ways than I expected, but so much better than I could have ever hoped for.

The theme for this week was Opposites.  I had a couple ideas of things I wanted to do but I found this website; preschool-plan-it.com  It was a HUGE help.  It had so many great ideas I didn’t even get to everything I had hoped to do.

Day One:

• Circle time:  We read “Go Dog Go” by P.D. Eastman.  Sang our days of the week and ABC’s in “opposite” ways (fast/slow, loud/quite, happy/sad).  I also gave the kids different instruments to play and had them make loud and quiet noises.  They LOVED this.  Finally I told them the story of the Tortise and the Hare.  I had a little toy turtle and a stuffed bunny and we talked about how opposite these two animals are (hard/soft, fast/slow, tall/short, Big ears/small ears etc.) 
• After we talked about the tortoise and the hare the kids finger painted their own Tortoise shells.
• The kids then cut out circles to make Opposite faces (happy/sad).  They did the cutting and glued the hair on their little faces.
• Once the faces were done we read a couple of stories and the kids held up their faces to show if the main characters were Happy or Sad.  We also sang “If you chance to meet a frown” and “If you’re happy and you know it”
• We read, “Black? White! Day? Night!” by Laura Vaccaro Seeger.  This is an awesome opposite book.
• Afterwards the kids took turns sorting different opposites (Hard rocks v. soft pompoms, Large v. small pompoms, dark v. light pompoms & things going lefts v. right.) using tweezers to build their fine motor muscles.  
• For Snack time we had sweet and salty snacks.  We talked about different opposites with food (soft/hard, hot/cold etc.)

Day 2:

• Circle Time: We read “Big Dog...Little Dog” by P.D. Eastman.  We sang a couple of opposite songs, “Open them Shut Them” “ABC’s” Loud and  Slow then Quiet and Fast.  Finally we played an opposite finger ‘puppet’ game.
• Dice Game.  I made some dice, one had different movements (jump, crawl, dance etc.) and the other had different descriptions (high, fast, slow, etc.).  The kids took turns rolling the dice and acting out the different actions.  They really enjoyed this game.
• Counting beans.  To work on our counting/math I gave each of the kids two cups.  One was empty the other filled with beans.  Each of the kids pulled a card that had a number on it.  The kids then had to fill their empty cup with as many beans as the number on their card.  Then we talked about who had the most and who had the least.
• Sensory opposite bags.  I gave each of the kids a paper bag filled with small objects with different textures, colors and density.  The kids were supposed to just use their hands to feel the differences and identify opposites.  One on one they did great, but once they were on their own they kind of lost the whole idea of what we were doing.
• Next the kids used stamps with our different letters of the week (Q, R, S & T).  Once they stamped the letter they were supposed to make the noise that letter makes.  They did really well with this one.
• To get some wiggles out after all that sitting we went outside to do an “Opposite Obstacle Course”.  The kids had to jump OVER a stick, crawl UNDER a chair, go IN a box, crawl OUT of the box, climb UP a ladder and go DOWN a slide.  They LOVED this.
• Then we played a game we called “sink or float”  I would show the kids an object and they would guess if it would sink or float.  This was also a hit.  The kids kept trying to find more and more objects to try to sink or float.
• Finally some of the kids wanted to do a little more of the sorting that we did the first day.

That was our busy, fun week.