Letter language
Children will strengthen their understanding of the name, shape, and sound of selected letters.
Review:
Be Prepared: Select five letters that would be helpful for children to review. Use results of the Week 43 letter assessments and your understanding of children’s letter knowledge to inform your letter selections. On a beach ball, write the selected letters (uppercase and lowercase) in random order, spaced equally around the ball.
If you anticipate the activity described below may be too challenging for children, offer activity plans that introduce several of the letters you selected. See the Sequence of Skills and Learning Goals chart in the ELM Curriculum User Guide: 3–5 Years for a quick reference to when specific letters were introduced.
Gather children in a circle. Display the beach ball with letters written on it. Display each letter, one at a time. Review how uppercase and lowercase letters are written, the letter’s name, the letter’s sound, and a word that begins with the letter.
Explain that you will roll the ball to each child. The child who catches or picks up the ball is invited to look at the letter that is nearest to one of his/her hands and:
You may wish to invite a volunteer child to demonstrate the process. Continue the activity until each child has a turn to hold the ball and describe a letter.
Number knowledge
Children will strengthen their understanding of one-to-one counting.
Review:
Offer the Week 7, Day 3 activity to review counting items.
Engage children in a book-focused discussion of a simple counting error.
Introduce Five Silly Fishermen. Touch each fisherman on the cover as you lead children in counting aloud the number of fishermen. Read the book, pausing at the point the little girl enters the story. Invite children to suggest why the fishermen were counting only four fishermen when they counted each other. Read the rest of the book to verify children’s responses. At the conclusion of the book, remind children that each fisherman forgot to count himself when he counted.
Provide each child with four counters. Invite children to make a group of counters that is equal to the number of fishermen in the book. Wait for children to recognize that you have not provided a sufficient number of counters (each child needs one more counter). Talk about your error. To confirm children’s claim (they are short one counter), open the book to the first page and read “One fine day, five fishermen went fishing. One, two, three, four, five!” Providing four counters is similar to the fishermen in the book thinking (incorrectly) that there were four fishermen.
Executive function
Children will understand how to focus on facial expressions and body movements of others.
Review:
Be Prepared: If time permits, offer the “Silly Faces Song” from Week 45, Day 2 as a second activity. If the game described below is too challenging for a majority of children, stop at an appropriate place and offer the “Silly Faces Song” from Week 45, Day 2. The game for today may be less challenging when offered again at a later point.
Today we are going to play a game we’ve played before called Mirror, Mirror. During this game, we will pretend we are looking in a mirror. Remember, when we pretend, we make believe we are a different person, or we make believe a toy we are playing with is something different. We will pretend this craft stick is a mirror.
I will go first to remind you how the game works.
[Stand face to face with another adult.]
When I hold up my craft stick and look at (adult helper), I am going to pretend I am looking in a mirror. When I pretend to look in the mirror, I will pretend (adult helper) is what I see when I look in the mirror. Whenever I do something, (adult helper) will copy me by doing the same thing!
[Demonstrate by making silly faces or moving your body. Each time you move, the other adult is to move in the same way.]
Now we are all going to play. We will each have a partner for this game. As we play the game with our partner, we will take turns holding the craft stick and pretending to look in the mirror. After the person who is pretending to look in the mirror does several things, we will switch and the other person will hold the craft stick and pretend to look in the mirror.
[Observe as children play Mirror, Mirror. Encourage children to copy the other person’s movements as they pretend to look in the mirror. Invite children to switch roles after a few minutes.]
Today we pretended to look in a mirror during the Mirror, Mirror game. What would happen if we didn’t pay close attention to our partner? (we wouldn’t know what to do)
Extra support
Enrichment
Encourage children to take turns playing Mirror, Mirror. Provide a craft stick as a prop.
Play Mirror, Mirror while outside. Encourage children to mimic each other while playing on the swings or playing with a ball.
Inquiry Skills, Knowledge of earth and space
Children will understand how scientists learn about dinosaurs. Children also will begin to understand fossils.
New:
Review:
Be Prepared: Hide several plastic bones around your room. Leave a little bit of the bone unhidden.
Today we are going to talk about how scientists learn about dinosaurs.
Scientists who study dinosaurs look for clues about dinosaurs. The more clues scientists find, the more they can learn about dinosaurs.
Scientists look for fossils to learn about dinosaurs. Fossils are the remains of an animal, like bones or teeth. Fossils are hidden in rocks or under dirt in places where dinosaurs used to live.
To be fossils, animal remains must be left behind for many, many years. Fossils are many years old. We know that bones are the hard pieces inside a body that make up a skeleton. Remember, when all the bones are put together it makes a skeleton. A skeleton gives a body its shape.
Where are some bones in our bodies? (arm, leg)
[Display picture of dinosaur head bones.]
This is a picture of bones in a dinosaur’s head. The picture shows the dinosaur’s teeth and a hole for one of the dinosaur’s eyes.
[Display picture of dinosaur head next to picture of dinosaur head bones.]
This is a picture of what the dinosaur’s head may have looked like.
[Help children compare the location of bones and teeth in the two pictures.]
Scientists sometimes find nests of dinosaur eggs. These nests and eggs are fossils. Remember, a dinosaur hatches from an egg.
Marks on a rock or in the soil are another kind of dinosaur fossil. The feet of an animal can leave marks in the soil. We call this a footprint.
Have you ever walked in sand or dirt and left a mark where you stepped?
Sometimes the footprint of a dinosaur gets hard and stays for a very long time. Then after many years, the footprint may become a fossil.
Scientists have found places where there are many dinosaur footprints along a path.
[Display and describe picture of dinosaur footprint fossil.]
Scientists have also found the marks of dinosaur feathers in rocks or in hard soil.
[Display and describe picture of dinosaur feather fossils.]
[Display picture of farmland.]
This is a picture of a farm. Do you think people could find dinosaur fossils in land like this?
Sometimes dinosaur bones and other types of fossils are found on people’s farms. A farmer might find part of a dinosaur while plowing or digging in a farm field.
Dinosaur fossils can be found in different types of places. A place called the badlands can be a good area for finding dinosaur fossils. A badland is a dry area with steep rocks. The word “badland” does not mean that the area is bad. Dinosaur bones and other fossils are usually buried under rocks in a badland.
[Display and describe picture of a badland.]
Bones and other dinosaur fossils are usually broken. Dinosaurs died a long, long time ago. Lots of dirt can pile on top of fossils that causes them to break. Rocks may fall on fossils. Some fossils are in water that moves around and causes things to break when they bump into hard things like rocks.
Fossils from the same dinosaur usually are not found in the same area. Bones from the same dinosaur may be found in different places. Later this week we will learn how scientists put together different bones to figure out what a dinosaur looked like.
Let’s pretend we are scientists looking for dinosaur bones. We are going to hunt for pretend dinosaur bones in our room. We do not have any real dinosaur bones in our room.
We know that dinosaur bones and other fossils are usually buried in dirt or under rocks. The pretend bones in our room are hidden.
[Form small groups of children to find a bone if you do not have a bone for each child to find. You may wish for individual or small groups of children to take turns finding a bone. Children who are waiting could provide clues to children who are searching for a bone. Encourage children to sit after completing their search.]
Scientists who study dinosaurs are like clue hunters. They look for dinosaur bones, teeth, and other types of fossils that will help them learn about dinosaurs. Some fossils are the marks of a dinosaur, like a footprint.
Extra support
Enrichment
Provide plastic bones, paper, writing utensils, and toy dinosaurs in the block area. Encourage children to arrange the blocks to be part of a pretend area where scientists look for bones and other fossils. Encourage children to draw maps of where fossils were found.
Pair an older child with a younger child to hunt for a plastic bone. Younger children and preschoolers may want to do this activity more than once. Encourage school-age children to hide the plastic bones for younger children to find. Remind school-age children to hide the plastic bones in ways that younger children can find the bones. Encourage infants to crawl to find a favorite toy.
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