Preschool - Whales

Sorry for the overload of posts but we had preschool today and I figured I better do a quick post now or it will never get done!
This month our preschool theme is focused on Ocean Life (whales, sharks and coral reef) although we are throwing in some Christmas fun for the next couple weeks.
Today's class was a bit crazy with a child joining in last minute that we had thought would be away but I managed to pull it off in the end.
We started out with our routine circle time for Calendar, days of the week and weather. I always label the girl's circle they sit on with their name so this week it was on a whale. I also always label their spot at the table with their name just to practise name recognition.

We headed to the table and the girls practised tracing their names with dry erase markers as part of our routine. I introduced the topic of whales with a word strip of "Whales" posted on the wall (I always point out the letter the word starts with and post a capital and lower case word strip of the letter for them to see "W w")
I had a bowl of whale facts that they took turns pulling out. As they pulled them out I showed them pictures from library books that illustrated the fact (ie. "Whales live in the ocean" "Whales breath through a blow hole"). I showed them 2 video clips from sesamestreet.org and then when we got to the factstrip about how big whales are we unrolled 100 feet of ribbon across the house to show just how big they are! They loved that.
We worked on a paper bag whale craft next. We stuffed paper bags with paper, tied the end off for a tail, painted them blue and then glued on eyes, fins, blow hole spouts etc.


While our whales were drying, we practiced writing the letter "W" and then glued on colorful pom poms to cover the "W". (google any letter to get these templates to use)


I had a basket full of scientific whale books from the library for the girls to look through after snack time. We read this online book together.
We had some music time and did "Five Little Speckled Frogs" again and another song they love from nursery called "Slippery Fish". I also had a whale puzzle that I had found online for them to do and a coloring sheet. We ran short on time (that and I didn't have enough copies since we had an extra girl) so I just sent them home with the girls to do with their parents. We finished off with some playtime (a favorite for most of the girls).

Another successful preschool day!