top of page

My Learning Experiences

Pinterest Link
Word Document

Learning Experience #1

Thursday, September 22nd, 2016

Apple Alphabet Letters & Corresponding Sounds

The purpose for creating these Apple Alphabet Cards was to provide the children with an interactive, hands-on way of allowing them to practice their letter recognition, as well as test their knowledge on the different ‘sounds’ each letter makes. Based off the theme of Fall, I wanted me to link my first learning experience to the concept of apples, as the JK/SK’s will soon be attending the apple orchard for a field trip!

Materials Used:

  • Red construction paper

  • Scissors

  • Laminating sheets of paper (Hand-held laminator)

  • Print out alphabet cards

  • 2 brown ‘apple’ baskets

  • Apple Poem Printout

Learning Experience #2

Friday, September 23rd, 2016

Math Activity: Apple Race

This hands-on, colorful, math game allows the children to learn early math skills such as; graphing, counting, comparing and understanding basic concepts such as MORE than, LESS than or EQUAL too. Based off the theme of Fall, I created an activity in the area of Math, in which was both equally fun and age-appropriate for JK/SK/s.

Will the Red, Green, or Yellow apple reach the top first?!

Materials Used:

  • 4 printed out Game sheets

  • Laminating sheets of paper- Hand-held laminator

  • Giant Paper Clips (Purpose: used as spinners)

  • Instruction Sheet Printed out

  • Pom Poms (Purpose: used as math manipulatives)

  • Scissors

  • 4 mini containers = 4 team members: Pink, Yellow, Blue & Green

  • Pencils

Instruction Sheet I made for the activity

Learning Experience #3

Thursday, September 29th, 2016

‘Simon Says’ Fall Tree Cork Paintings

Painting for JK's
Painting for SK's

The purpose for creating this activity is to allow the JK/SK’s to create their own fall painting using an unusual loose part that they have probably never used before to paint with; a cork. In this learning experience, children will not be observed based on the product of their work, but on the process of how they created their own fall tree. I will transform this open-ended experience into one of structure, in which the children will be able to use their receptive skills by following instructions, using their creativity/imagination and mostly importantly; having fun in the process. The number one thing that is important throughout this learning experience is listening to what ‘Simon’ tells them to do!

Red, Orange, Yellow  and Brown!
These are the colors we see all around!

Materials Used:

  • Various Colors of Paint; Red, Orange, Yellow & Brown

  • Small Paper Plates

  • Corks used as a ‘loose-parted material’

  • 2 tree templates printed

  • Fall Leaf Poem Print-Out

  • Painting Bibs

  • Lysol Wipes to Clean

Hello,

Learning Experience #4

Math Activity: Apple Patterning

Monday, October 3rd, 2016

This apple pattern activity allows children to work on discovering and making different patterns, while practicing their fine motor skills at the same time. By providing clothespins to grab the different sized pom poms, this helps build up strength in their fingers, which is a benefit as they learn to write. I used pattern strips for the JK’s to get used to exploring simple patterns. For students that are ready to extend the activity like the SK’s, they can record their patterns on the coloring sheets provided. They can color their apples to match their pattern strips or be creative in making their own patterns.

come in different: 
  • Shapes
  • Sizes
  • Colors
​

Materials Used:

  • Various Colored/Sized Pom Poms

  • Printed out pattern strip templates

  • Printed out pattern coloring sheets templates

  • Crayons

  • Containers

  • Clothes pins

Learning Experience #5

Uppercase& Lowercase Alphabet Recognition

Tuesday, October 4th, 2016

The purpose of this learning experience is to provide children with an opportunity to test their knowledge of “Upper Case Letters” and “Lower Case Letters”. Through this activity, children will enhance their cognitive skills, fine motor skills and their ability to quickly recognize between two sets of apple cards. Since keeping in the theme of fall& apples, I allowed the children to sort the apples in two ‘apple’ baskets to enhance the learning experience and make it more fun.

Materials Used:

  • Laminator

  • Scissors

  • Permeant Marker

  • Alphabet Printable Cards

  • Red Construction Paper

Learning Experience #6

Math Inquiry: How Many Apples Tall are You?

Wednesday, October 5th, 2016
For the privacy and confedetionality of the children in the class, I was not able to post how the apple activity turned out with all their names on it.

The purpose of this interactive activity, is to allow the children to work together with their peers to measure “how many apples tall” they are using a non-standard unit of measurement. Through this fun, engaging activity; the children will practice their social skills of working together, cognitive skills of predicting and measuring their friends and their fine motor skills of writing their names down on the big apple. This experience is simply a fun way of incorporating exploration into a non-standard measurement during the fall season.

Materials Used:

  • Large Red Bristol Board

  • Green construction paper

  • Brown construction paper

  • Permeant marker

  • Scissors

  • Glue

Learning Experience #7

Counting with Halloween Characters Using Beads

Thursday, October 13th, 2016

The purpose of this hands-on counting activity is to give the children a visual/physical way of learning to count and recognize how to correspond to the written number (Ex; 8) to a certain number of objects (Ex; the number 8, means 8 beads). The importance behind this learning experience is for children to grasp the understanding that a written number connects to a certain amount of objects. The children will practice their fine motor skills and use their cognitive skills to learn to match numbers to objects and count in and out of sequence.

Materials Used:

  • Various Colored Construction Paper

  • Scissors

  • Glue

  • Print out Halloween Clipart Characters

  • Pipe Cleaners

  • Colorful Beads

  • Laminator

Learning Experience #8

Letter Recognition& Picture Correspondence Puzzles

Friday, October 14th, 2016

The purpose of this learning experience is to allow the children to further practice their letter recognition skills of upper and lower case letters, with an added component to the mix; corresponding the letter to a picture. This activity will help increase their vocabulary skills, practice their cognitive skills of thinking about what matches to what and expressive language skills of saying their answers out loud. In addition, children will continue to practice the sounds each letter makes, as this skill will allow them to match the letter to different pictures.

Materials Used:

  • Laminator

  • Orange Construction Paper

  • Pumpkin Alphabet Template

  • Scissors

  • Glue

*AFTER MIDTERM SUBMISSION*

Group Learning Experience #9

WHAT'S IN THE BAG!?- A Science/Nature Mystery Inquiry

Thursday, October 20th, 2016
include picture of items used

The purpose of this group learning experience is to provide the children with a hands-on experience based on their continuous interest and love for the outdoors! The children thoroughly enjoy activities in which they can use their sense of touch, so I collected different items from nature and incorporated them into a science/nature inquiry: mystery bag experience. Through their sense of touch, the children will be able to use their imagination and critical thinking skills in order to predict what item is in each bag.

​

The children will pair up their sense of touch using their knowledge of how certain things feel based off several different properties and practice predicting and expressing what they think is inside the bag. The children will also be able to write or draw what they predict the item is on a chart I created. Once all the bags are administered out to each child, as a group we will reveal all six mysteries. This child-initiated/ hands-on learning experience will provide endless engagement throughout afternoon circle.     

include picture of all 6 bags

Materials Used:

  • 6 paper bags

  • Permeant marker

  • Hand-made Riddles

  • Glue

  • Items: A scarf, pinecones, leafs, a stick, an apple and a pumpkin

Learning Experience #10

Science Experiment- Fall Scented Halloween Playdough

Thursday, October 27th, 2016

The children in my Kindergarten classroom absolutely love playing with Playdough. Playdough is provided by either the teacher or ECE in a store bought container, or parents sign up and volunteer to make some for the classroom. One day while I was sitting at a table watching some children play with the playdough, one child asked me, “Miss. P, what is playdough made of and can anyone make it?” Instantly this sparked an idea and I promised the children that I would look up how to make playdough; and as a class we would make it the next time I come in.

 

Throughout this child-initiated, hands-on experience- the children were able to learn basic science concepts, enhance their receptive listening skills and participant in an engaging, age-appropriate experiment.

Spoonful of Cinnamon...

Materials Used:

  • Vegetable Oil

  • Flour

  • Water

  • Salt

  • Cinnamon (to make the playdough smell good)

  • Food Coloring: Purple & Green

  • Large Bowls

  • Mixing Spoons

  • Halloween Shape Cookie Cutters

Group Learning Experience #11

Literacy Experience

Monday, October 31st, 2016

THERE WAS AN OLD LADY WHO SWALLOWED A BAT 

The purpose of this group learning experience is to implement an age-appropriate story in which is perfect for the theme of Halloween and provides something that is enjoyable for both the JK and SK students. I created a visually appealing board which incorporated hands-on interactions, which allowed the children to enhance their social (receptive& expressive skills), cognitive skills and incorporated their different senses.

 

Throughout the board, the children will participate in a variety of activities; the left side of the board consists of using their cognitive skills to remember the sequence of the story, the middle of the board is placing the characters in their correct missing puzzle piece and the right side provides them with an opportunity to expand on their vocabulary skills. This hands-on learning experience will provide endless engagement throughout afternoon circle.     

Materials Used:

  • Large Foam Bristol Board

  • Glue Sticks

  • Glue Gun/Sticks

  • Scissors

  • Laminator/Laminating Sheets

  • Various Colored Felt

  • Giant Googley Eyes

  • Grey Yarn

  • Bristol Board Background Decor

  • Various Colored Construction Paper

  • Hand-made Wand

  • Hand-Made Vocabulary Cards

  • Hand-made Character Name Cards

  • Clipart Characters Printe

  • 2 Halloween Character Bowls

  • Giant Mirror Stickers

Wizard's Wand

My Board

The children will match the shape of the characters to the outlined shapes on the Old Lady's stomach!

Storyboard was created all from my own ideas and was based off of my own original design! This is probably my favourite thing I have created thus far& I am so glad all the children & teachers loved it as much I did!!

Children will come up to the board& place the story inorder! This section promotes comprehension skills & memory!

The children will use the 'Wizard's Wand' to find different words from the story. This section enhances their vocabularly& word recognition skills!

As the children are placing the charcaters in the Old Lady's stomach, the children will also need to find the word that matches the character.

Learning Experience #12

Fall Art Activity: Tracing + Coloring Upper& Lowercase Letters

Thursday, November 3rd, 2016

Students will be able to pick from a variety of leafs scattered around the table, find the matching lowercase letters and color in the lowercase letter to match the uppercase leaf letter. The children can trace the letters with a pencil before they color them in; to practice both their fine motor skill development, as well as enhance their ability to write different letters in the alphabet. In addition, the children will be able to enhance their ability to recognize the sequence of the alphabet, and practice in pairing up both lower and uppercase letters; which is an essential skill as they begin to write.

Materials Used:

  • Printable Alphabet Leafs

  • Crayons

  1. Red

  2. Orange

  3. Yellow

  4. Green

  5. Brown

  • Permeant Marker

  • Printable Alphabet Worksheets

Learning Experience #13

Making Letters Using Leaves + Sand

Thursday, November 10th, 2016

This activity will help the children learn how to form their letters without the hindrance of a pencil and paper. This experience provided children with the opportunity to enhance their fine motor skill development. The tactile aspect of it helps the body develop muscle memory and the children will soon be able to transfer their acquired knowledge once they learn how to manipulate a pencil correctly.

When the children trace the letter in the sand box, they are learning and repeating the correct way to form both lower and uppercase letters. Incorporating a touch of nature- I collected 50 leaves- labelling 26 uppercase letters on the leaves and 26 lowercase letters. The leaves will be scattered around the table; whichever leaf they pick-up, they will follow through and write it in the sand.

Materials Used:

  • 50 various leafs collected in nature

  • Permanent marker

  • 2 plastic leaf shaped bowls

  • 2 wooden canvas boxes

  • Red sand

This chart will show me where each of the children are at with regards to their ability to recognize upper& lowercase letters.

Learning Experience #14

Forming Sentences using Colors, Leaves& Sight Words

Friday, November 11th, 2016

This learning experience will allow the children to build sentences about different leaves and their colors. The children will begin the experience off with a game. The purpose is to spin and cover the different leaves that they land on. Once the whole game sheet is covered, the children will learn how to form simple sentences.

The children will select a leaf and create a sentence describing the color of the leaf. Using simple beginner sight words, and proper grammar; the children will learn the basic literacy skills that come along with forming a sentence. For example, a sentence begins with a Capital Letter, ends with a period and within the sentence they will acquire and enhance their knowledge on different vocabulary and sight words.

Materials Used:

  • 4 printed out spin& cover game sheets

  • Acrylic leaf game pieces

  • Leaf pictures

  • Crayon pictures

  • Printed out vocabulary cards

  • Paper clips

Group Learning Experience #15

Fall Words the Begin& End in the Letter "Nn"

Friday, November 18th, 2016

This week, the focus for the ‘letter of the week’ was N.  My site supervisor asked me to conduct a group learning experience about the letter S. Since the Kindergartners are still being given activities that are based around fall, I came up with several fall words that begin and end in the letter N and wrote them on a large chart paper. I included blank spaces where each letter N belongs in every word. In addition, I will have pictures of each word so I can show the children and help them read and understand what each word is. The children will help me identify each word, tell me if the letter N belongs at the beginning or end of each word, and come up to the board and write it on the chart paper. This will help them become familiar with the letter N.  

Materials Used:

  • 1 Large Chart Paper

  • 8 Picture Cards (that represent the fall words)

  • Markers

The Letter of the Week is...

"Nn"

Group Learning Experience #16

Forming Simple Math Equations By the use of Manipulatives

Thursday, November 24th, 2016

This learning experience will allow the children to build sentences about different leaves and their colors. The children will begin the experience off with a game. The purpose is to spin and cover the different leaves that they land on. Once the whole game sheet is covered, the children will learn how to form simple sentences.

The children will select a leaf and create a sentence describing the color of the leaf. Using simple beginner sight words, and proper grammar; the children will learn the basic literacy skills that come along with forming a sentence. For example, a sentence begins with a Capital Letter, ends with a period and within the sentence they will acquire and enhance their knowledge on different vocabulary and sight words.

Materials Used:

  • 1 snowflake shaped plate to hold items

  • 3 Christmas character games

  • White pom poms (as snowballs), Snowflakes, Bells

  • Printed out Numbers 1-10

© September 2016 by Melissa Pohland. Proudly created with Wix.com

bottom of page