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.