Preschool Morning Board

I've been looking around at a few different homeschooling blogs and finally decided to create our morning board for the preschoolers.

After two long nights of printing, laminating, cutting and pasting -- it is almost done! The board was complete enough to use this morning and the little ones just LOVED it! Braden even enjoyed playing a part in our morning board time together. =)

Most of these ideas were taken from other bloggers like Carisa at 1+1+1=1, Jolanthe at Homeschool Creations & Erica at Confessions of a Homeschooler. Huge THANKS to these ladies for going above and beyond and sharing their teaching prowess with the rest of the world! =) I will try to link directly to the printables I used from their pages, or if it's something I created myself, I'll link you to my google doc. =)

Here is a pic of the whole board then I will show close-ups of each  section and show you how we use it.

Here are the Lesson Plans for our Morning Board. I actually printed these off and laminated them so I will have something to go by everyday. I can mark it off as we go, or just use it as a guide to keep us moving along.

I also created a "Calendar Notebook" page that could be printed and used each day to record Calendar activities, etc. Good practice for handwriting, a little drawing, some patterning, etc. For Caleb, however, I printed off the notebook page, cut it out, and pasted front and back onto a piece of cardstock I'd decorated then laminated it so he can re-use it everyday.

Here's a pic of the lesson plan & reusable notebook page:

Our Lesson Plan says...

1) Mom changes the Helper Card -- The Helper of the Day leads us in singing songs, chooses our book for the day, chooses our daily virtue card, leads us in the recitation of the Monthly Poem, leads us in counting ordinal numbers, places our star on the hundreds chart and chooses our exercise card for the day.

The Helper card isn't on the board yet, unfortunately. =( My plan though, is to get a pic of each of the kids and put their faces on a Popsicle stick that will be placed in the Helper slot each day. =) The Helper card slot will go right beside our Sing & Learn songs, pictured here:

The songs we plan to sing each day are: 

What's the Weather?, The Days of the Week, The Months of the Year

I got the song ideas and lyrics from the 1+1+1=1 Calendar page and just made a google doc with the words to match our font, etc. Here is a link to my version of the Morning Board Songs.

2) Braden reads our Virtue of the Week.

We will have a weekly Virtue card that Braden reads aloud for us each day and we will swap the card out weekly. This will be our memory verse for the week as well. I printed out a bigger set of the cards at 4/pg and a smaller set at 12/pg (I think -- here's a great tutorial from Carisa on How to re-size pdf files), then made laminated cards from them (front & back have a different virtue on each card). 

Big Cards:

Smaller Cards:

The big card will be used for our weekly Virtue and the small cards will go on popsicle sticks and be placed in our Daily Virtue card slot.

The Godly Character Traits and Virtues cards were printed from Sarah's Sweeties.

3) Caleb checks the Temperature and we color in the thermometer. We don't actually have an outdoor thermometer yet (fear not! it's on The List!) so we just checked the thermostat today! =P

The idea with the Temp Change Section is to plot the temperature on the (wipeable) thermometer and then write the temperature next to it on Temp Change line provided. Below the line I am going to put up 2 small adhesive strips of velcro and use coins with velcro dots to "make change" out of whatever our temperature for the day is. Caleb will check our temp and Braden will make the Temp Change until Caleb catches on to counting money. =)

4) Julie attaches today’s weather icon to the Weather Calendar.

The Weekly Weather Calendar and Weather Icons were printed from 1+1+1=1's Calendar Page

5) Today’s Helper adds the Date to the Calendar and the Today’s Date sticks to their pockets.

This Magnetic Calendar came from the bargain bin at Rainbow Resource.

 The labels for Month, Year, Day, etc will all be going on Popsicle sticks so they'll be easier to see sticking out of the pocket.

 6) Caleb tells us our letter of the week and word of the week. We spell our word of the week together and write on our Calendar Notebook Page.

7) Julie chooses a Shape and Color of the Day. We will sort our shapes to find
the shape of the day & play “I Spy our Color of the Day”.

I printed these shape cards from Mr. Printables. I will probably use the ABC cards on this site for our Letter of the Week cards as well.

8) The Helper chooses our Virtue of the Day card & Braden reads it
aloud. Together, we discuss how we can each apply our virtue of the day to our
daily lives.

9) Mom leads Let’s Tell Time.

I cut this clock face out of a placemat I found in Target's dollar spot. I also cut out some small clocks that were on the placemat so the kids can use them to practice drawing the hands of the clock, etc. Right now we're just discussing time, the clock, etc but at some point they will be using this a little differently than we are right now. I will add velcro dots to the arrow area for us to put our clock faces on the board when we practice telling time.

10) Our Helper leads us in the recitation of our Monthly Poem.

I made a google doc of nursery rhymes from Mrs. Cook's Nursery Rhyme Unit and just printed and laminated them. We'll swap them up monthly, or whenever they have both mastered the rhyme.

11) Mom reviews with us the Day of the week, The Date and asks the
kids for Another way to write the date. Fill in the three date review
spots.

12) Today’s Helper tells us today’s Ordinal Number (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc) for the 100 Days of
School. Mom writes the Ordinal Number in the Today is the ___ Day of
School spot. Practice counting ordinal numbers.

13) Today’s Helper adds a sticker to our 100’s Chart showing the coinciding Day of School.

14) Braden writes in the Place Value.

15) Caleb changes the sticks in the Place Value Cups. (not yet setup)

16) Julie shows us our Pattern Beads. Practice making patterns with Colored Counting Bears.

17) Braden reviews our 8 Great United States. We go over 8 states and their capitals each week. We got a kick out of the preschoolers trying to say, "Montpelier, Vermont & "Madison, Wisconsin". =P

The United States Cards came from Target's Dollar Spot

18) Caleb leads us in Counting Together.

We just pull out the number lines and point and count. We may also try adding counting bears to the number lines as we count, or shapes, beads, whatever they can think up! =)

19) Mom assigns Afternoon Jobs.

(not on board yet)

20) Our Helper chooses our Exercise Card for the day.

(not on board yet but I found these nifty physical activity cards that I think we'll use -- Thanks, Iowa!)