Preschool - the long A sound and "this little piggy"

I taught/hosted preschool last week. Our themes were the long A sounds, as in ape, apron, apricot, and the nursery rhyme, "this little piggy" as in this little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home.

On day one we focused an our sound. Phoneme, if you want to get technical. We talked about how the letter A can make more than one sound, as this was confusing to some (one) of the children. I think he had maybe seen this youtube video one too many times (hee hee). Actually, he was quoting the video so the I suppose I could have omitted the "maybe" in that last sentence.  Anyway, then we worked on a couple of worksheets to make a letter A (long A) sound book. We did about half of the book before snack and finished the book after snack. Other than that we played.

But for snack we used graaaaapes (long A exaggerated there) and cubes of cheese and toothpicks to make aaaaaliens. This was the most fun. What kid doesn't like to play with their food.

This one was mine!

On day two we focused on the nursery rhyme "this little piggy." We did a little role play where each kid got to hold up a prop and hold it high when we said their part of the rhyme. The shopping basked for the pig at the market, house keys for the pig who stayed home, a plastic piece of steak for the pig who had roast beef (these kids don't know what actual roast beef is anyway) and an empty bowl the pig who had none, and the piggy who said wee wee wee all the way home had a little whistle he or she could blow. We did that about 3 times. Then we read a book called "this little piggy" but after the original nursery rhyme, and little toes to illustrate the piggies, the next page says, BUT on the other foot... this little piggy dug dancing, this little piggy sold hot dogs, this little piggy....  Then the first foot of piggies gets jealous so one of them has a costume party, and another plays the drums. At the end all the piggies are tired out so she go through a bedtime routine (this little piggy reads stories) until they all fall asleep. This is one of the cutest and most fun little books I have seen in a long time. Love it.

Then we went upstairs and for snack we ate pigs in a blanket (hot dogs baked with crescent roll around them. But I had forgot to preheat the oven so we stalled by reading another book about piggies with manners and piggies without, which was dragged out as long as possible with intermittent discussions on proper etiquette and general how-not-to-annoy-your-parents tips from myself. More stalling was involved but eventually the pigs in a blanket were done and everyone loved them... of course.

Our second activity was to make little piggy finger puppets out of pipe cleaners. Each child made five so they could tell the story to their moms. It was interesting to me, as they retold the rhyme to their mothers, that some of these children had never heard this rhyme before. It shouldn't have come as such a shock because I'm not sure my children knew it before either, but since I knew the rhyme and have all my life, I guess I figured all kids should know it. My kids probably don't even know pat-a-cake. I have some real back up work to do!

The yellow and red puppet were mine and the orange one is Lukas's. That's a pretty good face drawn on there for a 2 year old boy! I'm was impressed.

Anyway, preschool was a success and I am glad I'm done for another 6 weeks. My next assignment is the letter P, popcorn, and peas porridge hot. That should be lots of fun too.