This first week is all about routines and learning how to be Pre- K! In order to have a great year all year long, we need to learn how to sit at circle time, how to do centers with a group, how to be the daily leader, how to clean up, pack up, and take care of our snack stuff. And, no surprise at all, we did a great job learning these things!
After coming in from car pool in the morning, we find our cubby, take out our folder and put it in the cubby, and hang up our backpacks. Then, we start our learning with a "table job". This might be a set of free play manipulatives, a paper, an art activity or really anything that takes a few minutes to do at the tables before we head off to the rug. This week, we had pattern and bristle blocks one morning, dot painting another day, a big Mm to color and cover with macaroni, and an Mm practice page. On days when we have a paper on the table, you might see children's names on the back in highlighter. This is so each child can trace the letters with a pencil, and get a little name practice in each morning.
After our table job is done, we push in our chairs and take our name cards over to the window pocket chart. Then it is time to play! Each morning, there are 2 large group toys out, and we get a few minutes to enjoy whole group play. Then it is cleanup and circle time. An exciting part of the morning is picking the leader! Ms. Heather has a can full of names, and each morning we draw out a name to be the daily leader. When the can is empty, all the names will go back in for 2nd (and 3rd/4th/5th) turns- everyone loves to be the leader! Our leader has a lot of jobs in the morning- he or she uses the pointer during calendar time, counts everybody to make sure we are all there, and leads our lines anywhere we need to go. Circle time is also when we read stories, sing songs, and play games. This week, we really enjoyed The Letters on the Bus All Make a Sound song and flannel board set, and playing a counting and color word matching game based on the book Peanut Butter and Cupcake.
For centers this week, we made our September calendars and placemats, created designs with pattern blocks, built some funny face potato heads, played with play dough, built with blocks and dinosaur buddies, created some kitchen masterpieces, practiced making little glue dots and painted our big art portfolios. In order to do all this, we had to learn how to divide up into groups that can work and play together as a team. Each day, we get a color clip that divides us up into 3 color groups. For about an hour, we switch activities with our color group, until every group gets to do everything. It's also a great way to get to play with new combinations of all our new (and old) school friends!
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| Letters on the Bus calendars |
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| cars are always fun |
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| peeking in the mirror for self portrait placemats |
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| pattern block pictures with friends |
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| blocks and dinosaurs |
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| preparing for a picnic |
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| Just a dot, not a lot! |
Painting our art portfolios with water colors was exciting: letters and words appeared on the paper while we painted!
We started our All About Me theme unit with our mirror portrait placemats last week, and will continue this week. After reading Looking Like Me, by Walter Dean Myers, we took a peek in the mirror to see what we would see: sons, daughters, dancers, swimmers, ninjas, artists and many others all looked back at us!
See you next week!
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