Second week 2013

This was our second week of school in 2013.  We continued to work on rules and routines and discover how much time we need with each activity.

I'm going to go through all of the photos and explain what you are looking at for each picture group.

I'm going to apologize - I don't have a lot of photos of the preschool class.  We need to pick up the camera more.  In that class on Tuesday, they freely played with gears, the connectors, and magnetos.  Next week, we are going to group them off again.  We are still adjusting to each other and being in a preschool.  We talked together for 10 minutes during our circle time chat.  We had our snack, outside play with the new toys, and library time.  For story time, we listened to nursery rhymes while I put the pictures on my felt board.  Finally, we ended the day with singing.  On Thursday, we continued with what we did on Tuesday, except instead of music, the children painted with yellow and red finger paints (I have photos of that moment).

Here is the K-Prep class in their third rotation of three working with their small group of four with one teacher 4:1.  These toys are new and each group has had 20 minutes with each.  This photo is of connectors.  The fingers need to be strong and able to put the connectors and straws together.  If they aren't, then this activity is a good exercise for them.

The gears is the second new toy.

These are magnetos and they are our third set of new toys.

Our twins in the K-Prep class had a birthday celebration this week.

Children who finish their writing will build letters with our letter builders.  I needed to reteach how to put these together, because I was finding that the children didn't quite understand that the wooden pieces sometimes over lap each other in order for it to fit on the card.

Time for the class birthday presents.

I realized that the sections of the letter practice book has tracing pages that can also be cut.  They look just like the pages you would get out of cutting practice book.  Here are my K-Preppers cutting on the dotted lines and trying to figure out how their hands need to work in order to cut straight.

This year we have a lot of new playground equipment!!  We have stepping stones, pogo jumpers, a balance board, a baseball practice pole, jump-ropes, new balls, and much more (that will be introduced later).  I'm excited about these, because they teach cooperation and help the children develop in their gross motor skills.

For art, the K-Prep class dipped letter, number, and other symbol cookie cutters into primary color paints and then stamped them onto their paper.

The Preschool class is continuing with their color introduction with finger paints.  We started with yellow last week. This week, we put yellow and a dab or red on their paper to see what happens when you mix the two.  Next week, we'll put yellow and a dab of blue on their paper.  Some children are struggling with the feeling of finger paint whereas others are diving right in.

On this day, the K-Prep class split in half.  One half worked with the new toy - Metro Mags.

The other half put parts of the game "Cootie" into playdo.

While they worked on these centers, I assessed one of my students.  I'll be doing assessments on more students as the class works on centers.  I'm going from oldest to youngest.  I can only work with one child per day.  Assessments allow me to see what areas need the most attention, lets me see how I'm doing as a teacher, and alerts me of a possible problem if a child is not progressing from one assessment to another.

We had another birthday this week in our K-Prep class :).

Time for the class present!

 For the week coming up, we will be learning about the letter Mm, numbers 0 and 1, the color red, and circles.  The K-Prep class' theme is all about "Me!". They will learn how to draw a face and a stick figure.  We'll talk about being special, the different parts of our body, and our five senses.  For centers, we'll finish our playdo with cooties parts and magnetos and do two centers that focus on the letter Mm.

First Week 2013

This is our third year, but it's the first year where I have two assistants and we expanded to 12 students in each class.  It's been a lot of fun and we're fine tuning our routines to make every transition go smoothly.

For each class, we learned what our routine and schedule is like.  The Tu/Th class is the class where most students are new, so most of the students in the M/W/F class knew exactly what to do.  However, we did change how some things are done, which means they have to relearn a routine.

In both classes, we practiced what to do in case a fire broke out.  We practiced escaping out the front door and out the side gate from the backyard.  In the preschool class, we also practiced ducking and cover for an earthquake.

In the K-Prep class, we listened to the book- Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, Rainbow Fish, and an interactive telling of Rainbow Fish and There Was an Old Lady.  For phonics, we went over our letters and sounds, talked about what we can read like our names or McDonald's because of the arches (clue).  We watched a puppet split compound words and we had to put them together and we put together other words that had it's first sound separated from the rest of the word.  For writing, we are tracing dotted lines that follow the appropriate development of preschool/pre-k hands.  For the arts - we acted out "Going on a Bear Hunt", sang some songs, and make a tissue paper rainbow fish on contact paper.

In the Preschool class, we played with trains, tracks, blocks, towns, and wooden people and learned how to build and play together.  We also learned how to play with gears, connectors, and magnetos in small groups.  For story time, we read nursery rhymes.  For art, the children fingerpainted with the color yellow.  **For this class, the children will be learning how to use their fingers, art tools, paints, markers, glue, tissue paper, and other fun materials.  The outcome of the art might not be something you can put on your refrigerator.  If a student paints so hard that they put a hole in the paper - that is a GOOD thing :).  They are learning what happens if...  In fact one student did that I didn't stop him.  I let him keep going.  He was thoroughly enjoying himself.  He could end up being a great artist who understands how to manipulate paint, paper, and pressure and creates a masterpiece all from what he learned in preschool :)!!!  During music time, we sang some preschool favorites.

Here are some photos from this week:

In the week coming up, we are going to continue learning our routine and rules. We'll be getting ready for learning our letters, numbers, shapes, colors, phonics, rhymes, and how to fit letters together to read.