As my last post mentioned, we start off the school year slowly...learning the routines & procedures are key to a successful year! Doing this with 20 3, 4 & 5 year-olds can prove challenging at times but it is also a beautiful thing to see it all come together. In order to acclimate all the students to the classroom work environment, we typically have the older preK & K students (most of who are returning students) work in the classroom with me for the first few weeks. We review our work habits & expectations for working as well as going over old & new lessons. During this time, our new preschool students are typically working in a contained environment out in the hallway with Mrs. Mikhail. Everyone did great during this introduction/review time & this week, we finally combined everyone into one happy, classroom family! Here are some photos of the great work that took place when we did: (click on the photos to enlarge)
Each morning we start off with our morning meeting. This is a time for us to do the calendar while exploring math, literacy, science & social studies standards. We spell the name of the month, sing about the days of the week & talk about yesterday, today & tomorrow. We count the days, check our pattern on the number cards and graph the weather. After the calendar, we begin our morning message. This always begins with completing the following sentences: Today is (day), (month) (date) (year). It is (weather). We explore various language standards by filling in the missing sounds, writing in sight words & putting periods in the right places. After this part of the morning message, there is always another activity. Sometimes it is related to a theme. Sometimes it is a math/language activity. For the the last few weeks, we've been focusing on our sounds. Each morning, we sorted pictures by their intial sound. Here are some examples:
Another time we take advantage of is during dismissal. We often spend this time using online resources to incorporate our learning standards. This week, we've also been exploring graphing in order to learn more about ourselves. We graphed our eye color, hair color, if we have brothers/sisters/etc, and how many letters are in our name. Check out our graphs below:
Hope you've enjoyed this little peek into our days! Check back soon for more!