Alex and four little friends and the mama's are doing a little co-op preschool once a week. We each take a turn teaching and hosting our little 1.5 hour class, and Tuesday was my first time teaching. We choose our own topics and I went with Eric Carle (author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar).
My lesson consisted of some pretty basic stuff ... reading lots and lots of Eric Carle books and acting them out. a simple craft, a matching game using characters from Eric Carle stories (if you want a copy of the cards, let me know and I can email you the PDF) and lots of free play outside.
Cindy was the first to teach and her main piece of feedback was, the kids aren't into crafts. With this in mind, I went with a coffee filter butterfly to go along with The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I did a trial run Monday morning, and Monday night when the kids got wind of what I was doing, this little craft turned into an impromptu FHE activity. They had such fun! We have butterflies all over the house! They have a life span of about 14 days right?
As part of my prep for teaching, I went to the library and picked up a big stack of Eric Carle books - holy cow that man has written a TON of books! - to go along with some of the ones we own. It was nice to have a book for each of the preschoolers to hold and look at, but more than that, my own kids have loved having all of them around the house to look through. It's been such a positive experience, that I'm now in search of other authors to "feature" in our reading basket here at home, rotating them every week or two.
One of the things I love about Eric Carle book's is that Sam can read them. They aren't too long, and the vocabulary is on his first grade reader level. I'm thinking we'll try some Fun with Spot books by Eric Hill next, and we'll see what the librarians suggest, but I'd love to hear your favorite authors for preschoolers - both for independent reading and for reading aloud. A definitely bonus for beautiful, interesting, and creative illustrations.
4 comments:
my preschooler really likes Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are", you could plan your own "wild rumpus" for the kids! I've heard he has also written other books...but I haven't looked.
We are also big fans of Kevin Henkes books, "Owen", "Julius, the baby of the world", you can see all of his great mouse books here:
http://www.kevinhenkes.com/young.asp
my kids have liked all of his mouse books- and as a parent there are fun to read and talk about. I highly recommend them!
We LOVE the Elephant and Piggie books by Mo Willems http://mowillemsstuff.blogspot.com/search/label/Elephant%20and%20Piggie. So much fun to read together since it is written in dialogue form. I also agree with Heather...our favorite is Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes.
A Sound Like Someone Trying Not To Make A Sound by John Irving.
Fantastic illustrations and a great story about not being afraid at night.
I miss coop preschool. My kids are too big. We love Kevin Henkes as well and the Max Lucado's make good FHE discussions. Have you seen, You Read To Me, I Read To You? They're cute, short and fun.
Post a Comment