A Peek at Our First Week!

We had a wonderful first week of school! 

When we arrive first thing in the morning, we take our folder out of our backpack and put it in the bottom cubby box. Then, we check out the 3 activities on the tables until all of our friends arrive. We had lacing, paint dotters, ABC tracing, puzzles, legos, blocks, hand toys, mini sticker books, and reading throughout this week. We can switch tables/ activities as we like until everyone has arrived and settled (about 9:15).

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

Then we are off to Circle Time!

After clean up, we find our name cards on the red table and put them in our pocket chart so we can see -and count- who is here for the day. After everyone finds a square on the carpet, we pick a leader out of a can of name sticks. It's random, so we never know who is going to be the leader for the day! Leader jobs include line leader, flag holder, center clip collector, and calendar helper. After a leader turn, that name stick is set aside until everyone has had a turn. Then, all the name sticks go back in the can and we start again.

Circle time always has a story! We had some fun books this week:

 

We *painted* ourselves along with the little girl in the story.... 

   

 

We sang about the wheels and the letters on the bus!

Sometimes we play a pocket chart game at circle time. Everyone loves having a turn to come up to the pocket chart or felt board and help us learn! It also gets us moving- sitting still is hard, so we try to do it in little bits.

  

We are all special and unique, just like this cupcake!

Cupcake tried out all sorts of silly toppings to try and be special- like pickles, spaghetti, peas, pancakes, eggs and even a squirrel. We helped illustrate the story on our felt board as Ms. Heather read the book.

 

 

 

Since it was Ms. Heather's birthday on Tuesday, she brought in a special snack: cupcakes to decorate like the story! We had mini cookie *pancakes*, potato stick *spaghetti*, candy *pickles*, jellybean *eggs*, and sprinkle *peas*. They were silly and delicious!

Ms. Kathleen comes in once a week at circle time to do special music activities. This week we learned about Noah's Ark.

After circle time, we are off to centers! Each day we divide into 3 groups, and move with our group to 3 different activities. One activity is always cooperative play on the rug with one or two of our toys: blocks, kitchen, cars, potato heads, etc. This is where we practice sharing, teamwork, and social skills. It's also a lot of fun to play independently with our friends! Ms. Heather and Mrs. Horton each have a group at the tables. These groups are busy with literacy, math, art, sensory and fine motor activities that change every day.

On the rug this week:

 

  

At our table centers:

September calendars- check here for your fruit helper days!

 Getting our handprints, height, and weight for our memory books:

 

Playdough:

 

Painting! We used water colors and dot painters this week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

excited about finding the surprise hidden on the paper

After reading our story Too Much Glue,  we squeezed and squeezed until we filled the person outline with glue, then we stuck a bunch of art supplies in him just like the character Matty in the story. Our hands were tired, and it will take DAYS to dry. 

 We talked about using glue this week for our projects and learned 2 rules:

 "Just a dot, not a lot!" and "A little line will be just fine!" 

We also learned how to use glitter- a little scoop at a time, and it only sticks where there is glue.

 Pre- K kids can do it all by themselves!

We got our first magazine at our reading center! This one was all about feelings. Our Let's Find Out issues help teach us about concepts of print- titles, direction of text, page numbers, tracking, sight words, etc., along with interesting content information. Early readers can find known words too! The back page usually has some skill practice (sometimes we don't do these at our group, but they are fun to do at home if you want). Best of all, we get to take them home and look at them again with Mom and Dad!

 

 

 

writing our names with glue lines

 Placemats! Every month we make a placemat for snack time. We cut long strips of paper into little squares, then glued them on a frame shape. Mirror pictures and dictated favorite activities all combined to make a cute all about me placemat for September.

Sensory Table! This is a favorite activity. The table contents change each month or so. This month we have tons of colored objects: pom poms, fruits, shapes, letters, numbers, etc. Using a variety of tongs, scoopers, trays and little boxes, we have been sorting, counting and classifying the treasures.

After centers and cleanup, we take a bathroom break, have snack, a book break and head out to the playground! Then it's off to carpool and home.

 

We are looking forward to a FUN year together!!