All About Me - Week 3

We are almost done with our All About Me Book! Next week we do that last page, and then I bind it into a book and send it home. I'll post a picture of the finished product next week.

Question of the Day

I asked this question on the day that we had our lesson on families. 

I asked this question on the day we had our lesson on favorite things - food and color.

Centers
Art: This week for the art center I brought out chalk. Remember that I always start small and then add more each day to make the centers new and exciting every day. So on the first day of the week I put out only chalk and blank paper. I modeled for the students how to draw with chalk and how to shade with chalk. Students enjoyed just drawing whatever they wanted and using different techniques.

On the second day of the week, I added stencils to the art table. They LOVED it! A lot of students stayed and did chalk the entire center time...which is about 30 minutes! 

Blocks: I put away the cars this week and brought out the trains. A great way for the students to work cooperatively on a task. 

Computers: I finally brought out the computer center. A lot of students have been asking me since the first day of school, "when are we going to play on the computer?" I change the computer game every month. I have two computers, and both computers have the same game on it so there is no fighting over which computer to play. When I bring out a new game, I take a few minutes and show it to the students and explain how to navigate the game and play each game (though in this technology-crazy world, most of the kids pick up how to play the games VERY quickly!). I also show them how to hold, move, and click on a mouse. I have a mouse like this that I bought on amazon. I love this mouse because it is small and fits the kids' hands, and it has color-coded buttons. So it's easy for the kids to know which button to push. 

Another aspect of my computer center is I have a "Computer Sign-in Sheet," that the students write their name on if they want a turn. Then I start a timer for about 5 minutes, and when it beeps it is their turn. I love this because it's a great motivation for the students to learn how to write their name. 

Candy Land Castle

I bought this version of Candy Land at Walmart a few years ago, and then the company must have stopped making it because I never see it anymore. My students love it though. It's supposed to teach shapes and colors, and it's pretty good at that. I just wish it had some more of the basic preschool shapes on it like a rectangle and circle instead of an octagon, but my kids like it so we play it every year. 

Small Groups/Teacher Directed Centers

Math: We started working on shapes this week. We started by introducing the shapes by playing this shape sorting game that I bought from Lakeshore Learning. I put all the shapes in a bag, and the students took turns pulling a shape out and matching it to the bigger shape mat on the table. The first day we did the four basic shapes- circle, square, triangle, and rectangle. On the second day we did the shapes - diamond, heart, star, and oval.

Literacy: 

Digging for Letters: Students dig for the letters and place them in the puzzle. On of the puzzles is capital letters and the other one is lower case letters. 

Race to the School: I just came up with this game a few days ago. My students really liked it. I had seen a few version of a game called "Race to the Top" on Pinterest, but I felt like it was a little too challenging for my preschoolers. So I adapted it by only focusing on four letters, and by making it easier to reach the "top" by only having five spaces until the letter reached the end. Since it's still the first month of school, I made a school version with buses and schoolhouses. Students rolled a dice and moved that letter one space closer to the school. The first letter that gets to the school first wins. A great game to work on matching letters and letter recognition. 

Here is a link to download Race to the School Game

Race to the School

All About Me

My Family: Each student brought a picture of their family to school. They took turns telling who is in their family, and then we counted how many people were in each students' family. Then we used unifix cubes to build a tower as tall as the members of your family. We compared all of our towers to see who has the biggest and smallest family in the class.

Then the students used clipart and crayons to create a picture of their family. 

My Favorite Things: Students cut out food from grocery store ads to represent their favorite food. Then they colored the bottom of the page to represent their favorite color.

My Family page/clipart and My Favorites page are both available at my TPT store in the All About Me Unit here. 

All About Me - Week 2

We finished two more pages in our All About Me Books this week. To see details about these All About Me pages, please visit my website here. During small group centers we continued working on color recognition in the math center, and I introduced some letters for our literacy center. For free choice centers I brought out some new games. Enjoy!


Question of the Day
Questions to go along with the All About Me Theme. My favorite was the "Are you tall or short?" question. It was interesting to see how the children perceived themselves. Some of my really short students said they were tall, and some of my really tall students said they were short. I loved it!

Centers
Everyday I add something new to a center to help make it exciting for the kids. We usually keep the same center for two weeks, and I just add something new so the children don't get bored. This week I added playdough mashers to the playdough center. The kids LOVE these things.

I have building signs, so I added these to the blocks. The students used the blocks to make buildings and labeled each building with the sign. Pretty soon we had a big community. It was so much fun! I also added cars. 

And I brought out the Lego Table. Good for talking about colors and shapes, and it helps work on social skills like taking turns, sharing, and working together. Love this table!

Small Group/Teacher Directed Centers

Color Fishing:
A fun twist on memory. Students use a fishing pole to fish for a color and try to create matches.

Color Memory:
Classic memory game. I have an owl version on my TPT site here. The version I used here was one I already had in my filing cabinet from last year.

Dot Art Letters
I got this product on Teachers Pay Teachers and I tweaked it to fit the needs of my kids. Since I teach Title 1 Preschool, most of my students come to school without being able to recognize any letters. So I spend the first half of the year focusing just on letter recognition. In this activity, the students are matching capital letters to capital letters. The students took turns flipping over a star in the middle of the table, stating the letter, and then dotting it on their rocket ship printable.

Where's the Bus?
My students love this game so much, that I made a version for every month/theme/season. This one is Back to School themed. Students close their eyes while I hide the bus under one of the schoolhouses. Then they take turns guessing a letter to find the bus. I usually start with just a few letters, and add more as the children get the hang of the game.

Here is a link to download Where's the Bus? Game

Where's the Bus?

All About Me

My Age
Students colored a birthday cake, and put candles on to represent how old they are.

My Stats

This lesson is a little complicated, but it turned out well this year. I tweak this lesson every year, and I think I've finally got it to the point where I like it. This year, I put the large crayons on the wall and the students stood next to it while we all counted how tall they were (Last year I had the children take turns lying on the floor and we placed the large crayons next to them. This took FOREVER and the students lost interest very quickly). Having the large crayons on the wall helped me keep a good pace for the lesson and the students stayed engaged. 

After we measured ourselves, the students went back to a table and drew a picture of themselves next to the crayons to represent how tall they were. I talked about Mat Man and encouraged them to draw themselves with all their body parts just like Mat Man. Then they glued little crayons next to their picture. 

Finally, the students had to look at their weight on the page (I weighed all the students when they first came to class and wrote how much they weighed on page) and find the numbers to glue onto the scale at the bottom of the page. For example, if a student weighed 32 pounds, they had to find the number 3 and 2 and glue them on the scale. Last year I had the students copy the number onto the scale, but most of the students could not write the numbers yet since it was so early in the year that this year I decided to cut out numbers for them and all they had to do was find the numbers. Next year, I think I'll take this component out altogether. The lesson/activity is already pretty complicated, and I don't think the students understood why they were searching for these numbers. So, I think I'll still weigh everyone and write it in the scale for the students, but that will be all. 

The Birthday cake printable and My Stats printable are available at my TPT store in the All About Me Unit here.

First Week Back

Here's some pics from the first week of school. Our theme this month is All About Me. We are also working on color recognition, shape recognition, drawing people correctly, and of course social skills. For details on how what I do in my All About Me Unit, please visit my website here.


Question of the Day
Here is the Question of the Day for the first two days of school. I always try to add a picture with the question to make it more kid friendly, and help the children feel empowered that they can "read" it.

Centers
Here are some centers we had this week. I always start out the school year with only a few centers, and then we add more as the year progresses. The centers I have at the beginning of the year are: Art (play dough), blocks, dramatic play (house), library, and some games (puzzles, coloring books).

Small Group/Teacher Directed Centers
Small Group Centers this week focused on drawing people and colors. The first day we sang the Gummy Bear Song by Dr. Jean and the children had to find the correct gummy bear. I gave each student a penny and when I sang their name in the song, they had to find the right color gummy bear and "buy" it. I downloaded these gummy bears from Karen at prekinders.com, but she only had the five colors that are in the Dr. Jean song, so I used Paint to make a few of my own so we could practice more colors.

In our other Small Group we worked on drawing people correctly. I usually work on this the first week of school because we draw people often in preschool, and I like the students to be able to practice it all year long. I went to a fine motor conference a few years ago I learned about Mat Man. On day one, I taught the students the Mat Man Song and I built Mat Man while they watched. I talked about the importance of all the body parts (especially the body which is what most preschoolers leave out when they draw a person). On day two, I gave each student a part of Mat Man and we sang the song again while the students built Mat Man. Then we drew him on white boards. You can watch a video of the Mat Man song here.

Monster Rules
On the first day of school we read the book, "The Day the Monster Came to School." It's not a book that you can buy. I googled the title and then downloaded the story and pictures and bound them together to make a book. There are only a couple of pages. To summarize, the monster goes to school and breaks all the rules. The children decide to make a list of rules to help the monster learn how to behave. After we read the story the children color a monster and each come up with a rule we should have in our classroom. We write the rule on the monster's stomach.

Here is a link to download the monster for free

Monster Printable

All About Me

We have completed two pages in our All About Me Book so far. Here are some pictures of our completed work. To see the activities in greater detail, please visit my website here.

My Name - Names are so important to preschoolers. For this activity, students colored a picture of themselves and then covered their name with star stickers. This is the first year I have done the star stickers and my students LOVED it. 

Here is a link to download this activity

Self Portrait Printable

My Gender - Students color their body and then state if they are a boy or girl. For older children (Kindergarteners) you could have the students write "boy" or "girl." For preschool, the teachers wrote it for the students. 

My SUPER CUTE number line

Okay so I know this doesn't really have anything to do with the first week of school, but I had to show off my new number line in the classroom. Last year my students had the hardest time lining up. They would always crowd each other and cut in line causing all sorts of problems as you can imagine. This year I decided to make a number line to help my sanity. I don't have any tile in my room, and my custodian said that I absolutely could not put tape or contact paper on the carpet, so I came up with this solution. I found these clear, vinyl floormats in the office section at Walmart. They came in a big rectangular shape, and I cut them in half because I only needed a long strip. Then I made shapes in different colors and put a number on each shape. Voila! I love this thing! My students have never learned how to line up and walk in a line so quickly! And so far there has been no fighting, pushing, or cutting. It's amazing!