We had a great first weeks back with this brand new group of kids! We are spending a lot of time learning the routines of school, and they're catching on quickly. Here are some of the things we did these past 2 weeks.
Dramatic Play
School
They really enjoyed being the teachers and having me be a student. I'd often have 3-4 kids teaching me at the same time, since they all ran over when one started playing teacher. It took a little more encouragement to get them to take turns being the teacher and student, and teaching each other, because I couldn't always be playing in this center. They had a lot of fun.
Blocks
The wood blocks are new this year, and are always on the shelf and available for building and playing. There were some other puzzles and blocks on the rotating shelf too. Then each day, I put one thing out as an invitation to play.
Wood blocks
Cars and road 2 days
Floor puzzle
Art
This week was like an introduction to fun things we do at art, and to learn how to do them and take care of our supplies. They learned about wearing smocks, where to put pictures to dry (and also the trust that they get them the next time they come to school-this is hard for some kids who want to take it home immediately), and how to properly use our supplies. So art was pretty basic this week.
Painting with primary colors
Gluing
Play doh with rollers and ABC stamps
Water Colors
Small Manipulatives
ABC lacing beads
Bristle Blocks
Number Pegs
Lacing Cards
The magnet board has ABC magnets they can place in ABC order
Writing Table
This area always has paper, markers, pencils, crayons, scissors and glue sticks. It will also have extra items in the side containers by the paper later, like stencils or stickers. Then, each day, I add something extra for them to use. This group of kids loves cutting and are often over here cutting and cutting! They're learning to clean up after themselves, how to hold scissors, and how to use glue sticks (they like coloring with the glue, so we've been working on coloring with the coloring supplies, and gluing things together with the glue). Also, we repeat that scissors only cut paper. And we'll keep repeating that until they know it!
School-themed paper
Colored pens
School stickers
Twistable crayons
Alphabet Center is on the wall for them to explore. Right now, it just has letters for them to put in the matching letter pocket.
Reading Center
Our reading center got a little face lift with these great new pillows from Oriental Trading! They have made it such a cozy corner to look through our theme books!
Outside
Our sensory table had water with balls and scoops.
Large Group
Our new song we sang each day was Hello Neighbor. It's a fun one to get up and moving and meet new kids.
Our word of the week is Learn, and each day we learned a new name by doing a name cheer. As this friend stands in the front, we give a cheer for each letter in their name, and then their whole name. It's written on a card, then we also spell it as we cheer and add each letter. We'll do this over the next month until we've done each name.
Day 1, we read Backpack Bear Learns the Rules and talked about those rules and our rules as we read the book. Then we went to the hall to measure and mark how tall they each are now.
Day 2, we read Froggy Goes to School, then hopped like a frog all around the room and learned a few rules in each area. (example, paint stays on the art table, it's ok to spill on the art rug, scissors only cut paper, clean up after you leave, don't knock over someone else's block tower, don't throw blocks, etc.)
Their attention span is limited, so it was 1-2 rules per area, then hopping to the next one. Many rules will be learned as we go.
Day 3, we read David Goes to School and practiced our inside and outside voices.
Day 4, we read How Do Dinosaurs Go to School? and played I Spy to name the different areas of the classroom.
Small Group
This year, I'm having half of the class work with me in small group, while the other half does a simple activity on their own. These first 2 weeks, we swapped the same day, the next weeks, we'll do one half on one day, then switch the second day.
Day 1, they drew their self-portraits while I took a 1st day of school picture of each child.
Day 2, we skipped to have extra show and tell time.
Day 3, my group colored while I wrote about their favorite part of preschool so far in their journals. The other group played with my bear math manipulatives.
Day 4, my group made handprint leaves for our summer tree, while the other group played with my small people math manipulatives.
(side note, having them play with the math manipulatives is purposeful, because the kids always want to play with them. That makes things tricky when I'm trying to teach them to count, sort, or make patterns, because they just want to play with this new thing. So, they get to play with them several times before I start using them for math, so the new-ness wears off a bit).
Singing Time
I tried something different this year. Usually, I just taught 1-2 songs at a time, and those are what we rotate through and choose from. This year, we started with several song cards on the wall, and I started choosing names to choose a song from the first day, so they're helping choose what songs they want to learn, besides the themed songs I add throughout this year. We were introduced to lots of songs already including 5 Little Monkeys, Tootie Ta, Apples and Bananas, Tiny Tim, There was an Old Lady, 5 Little Ducks, 5 Green and Speckled Frogs, Miss Mary Mack. They're learning about taking turns, as I pull out names on popsicle sticks to choose songs, or help with a song, and they learn to be ok while someone else gets a turn. That's a hard thing at 3 years old, but they're doing it!
