Today we read Froggy Goes to School and talked about feeling nervous or embarrassed to try new things. Then, we decorated our very own name plates (just like Froggy did in the story), which we are going to keep in our spots at the family table. Seeing our names will help us learn to spell and recognize them. We also reviewed bucket filling and dipping and practiced our friends song, "If You Want to Make a Friend." The kids also enjoyed playing a round of "9 Fat Sausages in a Pan." We are having a blast in preschool so far! Some of us need a little extra reminder of where to stand while waiting for the potty. Miss Nicole created this lovely and might we add, very artistic, label of where to wait.
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Today we (re) introduced the concept of bucket filling to our class. We read How Full Is Your Bucket? by Tom Rath, Mary Reckmeyer, and Maurie Manning. This book is about the invisible "bucket" that everyone walks around with. People can choose to fill each others' buckets by doing nice things like sharing, being a good role model, and helping others. People can also be bucket dippers by doing not-so-nice things like name calling and bullying. Our class is going to practice being bucket fillers! We decorated our very own buckets that will be posted in our classroom. Each day that we are a bucket filler and our clips stay on green, we will get a sticker. When we reach 10 bucket filler stickers we get to choose a prize from the treasure chest!! The Clip System
Each child has a clip with their name on it. Everyone starts on green (bucket filler level) each morning. Throughout the day students may need to move their clip to yellow (warning), red (time out/think time), or blue (phone call home). Students always have the opportunity to move their clips back up a level if they exhibit bucket filling behavior. We like this system because it helps our students take ownership for their actions and choices. They are in charge of moving their own clips and making good choices. We are sad to have said goodbye to our students moving on to kindergarten, but we are happy to welcome a class full of new faces into our preschool room! We celebrated today as the "first day of school" since it is the first day of preschool for half of our class. We started the morning with ABC centers. In circle we learned a brand new good morning song, talked about September, and read a story. We read Llama, Llama Misses Mama, a story about a little llama going to school for the first time. Some of our own little "llamas" were feeling sad this morning from missing mom, dad, and siblings. At the end of the story Llama is happy because he made friends and had fun learning in school. We hope our own little llamas enjoy their time here too!
We are both sad and excited for some of the wonderful students in our class to make the transition from preschool to Kindergarten. This week we are reading books about transitioning to Kindergarten, and also doing some really fun crafts and activities that the students wont have anymore at elementary school (ex mud!). Below are the lesson plans for this week.
Changes Lesson Plans Also, please email me at cpapalek@gmail.com if you will be attending the graduation ceremony on Thursday, so we make sure to make enough food. Thanks! This week we have been learning about the genre of fantasy. We've talked about knights, castles, and dragons so far. On Monday we made castle collages out of rectangle shapes and on Tuesday we made knights in shining tin foil. We have been reading a lot of fantasy books too! We read The Kiss That Missed, Little Red Riding Hood, and The Library Dragon. This week in our literacy centers we have been going through the writing process with the students. We are working on writing letters to our favorite Disney characters and when we finish we are going to mail them to Disney! On Monday we started by brainstorming in our journals, then on Tuesday we wrote our rough drafts, and today we started writing our final drafts. Look at the pictures below to see some of our work.
Everyone is enjoying mystery week! Can you solve the missing cookie mystery using the clues above? We did! It turns out that Miss Carey was the cookie thief!! We've been reading mystery books all week and working on our case cracking skills. We even made our own magnifying glasses.
We loved studying the poetry genre so much that we decided to try another genre study--mystery! This week we'll be reading mystery books, solving classroom mysteries, and doing other detective work. Here are our plans.
Here are a few pictures from literacy stations this morning. We are working on letter tracing, letter hunt (finding letters around the classroom and sorting them on our paper), parking lot (parking cars on various letters called out by a partner), and letter clues in our journals.
Wednesday we read "The Crocodile's Toothache." It was about two silly things that don't go together- a crocodile and a dentist. Our craft was using marshmallows to make teeth in a mouth. We also made some very creative poems. Students chose two things that don't go together (a cricket and toothpaste??) and wrote a poem about it! We spent a lot of time laughing :)
Our poem for today was called "Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too!" by Shel Silverstein. It was about three little men called Ickle Me, Pickle Me, and Tickle Me who flew around in a flying shoe! We brainstormed as a class what our own flying shoe would look like, and this is what we came up with-------------------------------------> Since making our own flying shoes could get a little dangerous, we created paper airplanes instead! For our poem of the day, we wrote about what we think happened to the flying shoe when it left "the world as they knew it." Check out what your child thought when you pick them up, poems are hanging by the cubbies.
Thursday we read Shel Silverstein's poem "Homemade Boat" and created our own homemade boats out of tinfoil. After we made sure all of our boats would float, we tested them to see which was the strongest! One by one we counted how many house keys we could each put in our boats before it sank. The strongest boat held 31 keys! Each day we have been reading poetry from Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends, we have also been creating our own poetry. Today our poem was called "Sometimes I Forget." Come check them out hanging on the classroom wall! We have some creative little poets in our class.
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