Week 1 (Sept. 3, 4, 5)
Our first week of school was a success! Everyone had lots of fun! I just
uploaded 40 pictures from our three days of class... Yikes! Rather than
splitting them up day by day, I'll split them by the type of activity.
Our very first morning circle was mostly spent learning about each
other. The kids loved talking about themselves and learning their
similarities and differences.
The days of the week song has quickly become the favorite, although we also sing other songs on a regular basis. I think they like to be the helper and tell everyone what day it is. Who doesn't love to hold a pointer? Jeff was the first helper, he already understands the quietly raise your hand idea.
We used these caterpillar toys to build patterns. Each student had a turn to show his friends. We also tried to find patterns that naturally occurred. Brown hair, blond hair, brown hair, blond hair was discovered around the snack table and made everyone giggle.
I like to give the kids time to fill sensory needs. Play-doh is an easy
way to get some sensory time in, as well as practicing their fine motor
skills (cutting with scissors, using plastic knives, and rolling with
rolling pins), and some academic work thrown in there too (stamping
letters - phonological awareness and letter recognition). Good stuff!
They stayed with this table time activity for 45 minutes.
After an hour, they were already starting to grow! The kids were so excited!
Then Friday morning after morning circle, we checked on our water beads, and they grew HUGE! They are about as big as marbles now and soaked up all the water. The kids spent lots of time today squeezing them and comparing sizes and seeing who could pick up the most at a time. It was a great sensory activity and very calming for the kids. They seemed to really enjoy them.
Each student has a set of several workbooks that we will be using this year. Although they know all of their letters (with very few exceptions on tricky lower case letters like "p" "b" "d" and "q"), the workbooks also allow them to practice the "school way" of writing their letters. Upper and lower case practice, and also following directions. Each page has a two or three step instruction for the students to finish their work. If they complete the page they get a sticker on top. They have all loved small group work time like this.
Jeff's potato head family took the longest to make. He was very particular about the accessories, purse for mom, hat for dad, smile with a missing tooth for sister.
Outdoor play. It's still pretty hot, and the intermittent rain has forced us to adjust our outside time each day, but the kids LOVE to be outside! We made chalk paint (corn starch + water + food coloring) and the kids stuck with that activity for a while, on two different days.
Week 2 (Sept. 10, 11, 12)
In circle we have been reading lots of dinosaur books. Our favorites are 10 Terrible Dinosaurs by Paul Stickland (which includes the kids doing all the actions that the dinos do), and How Do Dinosaurs Say Good-Night? by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague. I also introduced our "Story Mystery Box" which has question cards inside. The questions include things like, Who is the author of this book?, What do you think will happen next?, Where is the title of the book? etc. After each book we read, the kids choose one or two questions from the box to answer about the book. It's helping them pay more attention to the books we read. Also, understanding different things about literature in general (title, author, etc.), and types of literature (poem, story, etc.) are both kindergarten standards.
Lots of fine motor activities this week! We played with pop-tubes, practiced cutting out big and small pieces of paper along printed lines, glueing, coloring small areas with colored pencils, breaking our snacks into as many pieces as we could (and then counting them), and playing with Color-Clix. Busy busy busy! Pop-tubes are used by occupational therapists to help strengthen kids hands, fingers, and wrists by having them PLAY, perfect! Having strong muscles in there will help with their writing and legibility too. They are simple and fun. stretch them out long, bend them into things, push them back together. The kids loved it.
Color-Clix are a magical toy. They are interlocking pieces in a variety of shapes and sizes and colors. We sorted them one day, and talked about all the different ways we could do it (size? shape? size AND shape? color? how many categories?). It was a good thinking lesson. Then we built with them. Some kids continued with making patterns, some simple A B patterns, and some more complex. They also created things from real life, like bikes and airplanes, and then they started making things from their imaginations. It was fun to watch.
Table time project. We made dinosaurs out of the letter "D". The kids had fun experimenting with the bingo daubers.
We also made drums. Half of a balloon stretched over the top of a plastic cup and a stick makes a really good drum! They were harder to make than I thought they would be and I had to help each kid, but they were a fun addition to our music and movement time during circle this week. If they break at home, just cut off the small tip to another balloon, stretch over the cup and voila, new drum! :)
File folder games are a good activity to slow the kids down. They love to run and play outside and be silly inside with each other, but sometimes they need some quiet time to sit and do something independently.
Practicing their writing all together at the table. Write and wipe activities are favorites of mine, because it saves all the billions of papers that we would be using up, just as practice.
Outside time this week was touch and go with the weather again. The time we did get outside was filled with bubbles, water table, and KING of the fortress!
Waiting for moms to come we pulled the marble track out for the last 10 minutes of the day. It was a hit! They worked separately and realized they couldn't make very big tracks, then, independently, they figured that out and worked together to build some amazing and BIG tracks! Smart kids!
Week 3 (Sept 17, 18, 19)
The table time activity one day, which is usually more creative and less
concrete, was so fun for them that it spilled over in to the time for
our next activity. They sorted and did some beginning reading. Each mat
has space on it for certain objects to go. Some are very easy and
straight forward (purple fish go in the purple fish bowl), but other
require the kids to sound out the words (which pasture do the horses go?
the one that starts with the 'h' sound!). They worked alone and
together for a lot longer than I thought they might be interested in the
activity. Good job boys!
I brought out a few new toys for free choice and kept a few old
favorites. It's been fun watching them to see what their interest are.
Free choice, building a dinosaur floor puzzle together. This puzzle was
hard to do! They worked and worked and worked at it. It glows in the
dark too, but we couldn't get the school room to be dark enough, so we
pushed in down the hall to another room to try to see if we could make
it glow. We did! But the pictures didn't work (sorry Ryan!).
The kids tried out a new toy this week. It has two magnetic black boards
and several tiny colored wooden cubes with magnets on one side. The
kids were allowed to play with it however they liked. They made patterns
and pictures and seemed to enjoy it.
Fine motor game of lacing shoes. Easy and simple but it works out those tiny hand muscles!
Small group was very independent this day. The instructions are in
pictures and they understood what to do. First, they matched all the
letters, to build simple three letter words, then they would say each
letter and "read" the word. Then they take the letter tiles off and put
them on their paper to practice writing the words. They were so proud
that they wrote words! Later on in the year we will begin working on
spacing and writing smaller and more legibly, right now they are all
doing a great job!
Small group time often includes choices for the kids. They can pick out
any 2 worksheets to do before they get to play, but they usually end up
staying at the table until they complete them all. Worksheets include
math, number sense, upper and lower case matching, completing patterns,
practicing letters and numbers.
We were still doing the dinosaur theme, but are beginning to start on
some new things too. They all really love reading books, and listening
to me read books, so we have started reading some folk tales and
comparing the different versions. We started with the 3 little pigs
story and read 2 different versions, then we listened to yet another
version. We talked about how they were similar and how they were
different. Then later on they integrated it into their play. Recess was
outside only once this week, because of the nasty weather. The other
days were spent inside playing three little pigs or bean bag toss.
Our table time artwork took two days to complete. We looked at several
books with mixed media illustrations and talked about an easy way to do
that ourselves. First the kids colored pictures with crayons, even using
white (on white paper), then the next day they painted with watercolors
over the top. The paint doesn't stick to the waxy crayons, and makes a
great piece of art. I felt like these deserved to be framed, so we put
them all in frames before they went home. The kids were so happy to show
off their artwork.
Week 4 (Sept 25, 26)
We had a short week! Wendesday was an HISD 1/2 day, which means we
didn't have school at all. We completed our transition from dinosaurs.
We played lots of games and had lots of fun, despite not having nearly
enough time for anything. 2 days isn't enough preschool for anyone. Fine
motor skills, turn-taking, PATIENCE. This fishing game is lovely.
Lucky Ducks is another game we tried out. The concept is simple enough that they are able to play this without an adult, and naturally with 4 preschoolers playing, problems arose, and they were able to reason it out. Very nice team building activity.
Some of our academic work was turned into games as well. First, cutting, then finding the right sticker, then writing their names. Academic work doesn't have to LOOK like work. It can be fun! :)
We made noise makers a week ago, after we read about different dinosaurs and their noise making abilities. It was fun pretending to be dinosaurs, and talking about what those dinos might have been saying to each other. The noise makers went home in Friday's backpacks.
Jeff took building with Color Clix to a whole new level during free choice. Wow! The first picture was a bird (which later changed to other things), and the second picture was an airplane. The kids LOVE taking pictures to send to their family.
More building, this time with blocks. Ryan built a dog (and he's panting while I snapped the photo), Hawken built a bat, and Jeff built a rhino (who was later a dog too).
More and more and more blocks, and block creations. They took over the room! I know each of these pictures looks similar, but they worked hard on every creation and wanted to show you! So take a look, and tell them how amazing their building skills and imaginations are!
During table time, the kids tried out the stamps pads and dot to dot number stamps. Each stamp has a number on it and a corresponding amount of objects. After they stamp it on their paper, they say the number, or count the objects if they are unsure, and then trace over the dot to dot number.
Also, we made our first MOVIE! Acting out the stories we read is a
favorite activity, so this time, I prepped them and told them I would
film it! They were SO excited. Here is the masterpiece! This video is on
Youtube, and is public, but not able to be saved. I will make copies
for the parents of all our videos at the end of the year in DVD format.
Enjoy!
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