Yellow chair chant & trusting your friends

This is a song/chant I've not used in class for ages, and I'd forgotten how much children enjoyed the challenge of listening hard for detail...when they really want to do something like colour a picture! An extra way I like to exploit the material is colour coding the lines in the song - our pre-schoolers are pre-reading stage for now - and it helps them sing-a-long/remember the song later.(The Yellow Chair Chant, from Let's Sing, Let's Chant 1, OUP)

Establishing trust and helping your friends is a very important part of growing up, and we've noticed with our kids a certain tendency called 'me firstism' closely followed by tantrum alert if frustrated. It was therefore very pleasing to see the girls lending each other a hand to walk along the wobbly causeway they'd designed, and telling each other to 'be careful'.

We have been working on combining short vowel sounds with consonants recently, and this game was a step ahead of where we really are in terms of learning, but it served a purpose which was to generate 'oh wow!' and also to notice there was a recurrent theme - ie a/e/i/o/u tend to get used a lot  "again?" they kept saying! Even a couple of weeks ago this game (My first scrabble) was 'too hard', but letting it 'settle' and having another go worked like a charm. I like the set up as it is colour-coded and self-correcting, the pictures are clear and colourful, and pieces unbreakable.

Another awesome day in pre-school :)