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!