August 26, 2014

We are into week two of the new school year and with that we still are working on learning the routines, how the classroom works, meeting new friends and getting to know our teachers a little better.  There may have been more tears today but that is to be expected as what I like to call the "honeymoon stage" is over, but despite the tears we had a great day on Tuesday.  We had fun painting and furthering our studies on the shape of square, the color blue, the number one and learning our ABC's as well as learning about Jesus and how important he is to each and every one of us and learning about the theme of the school year! 

Jesus Time:  Today learned our Bible song that we will be singing every morning during the beginning of Jesus time.  This will help us settle down and learn about the wonderful teachings of Jesus.  Today we looked at pictures to help us learn about the theme of the school year that comes from 1 Thessalonians's 5 16:18.  After we talked about the Bible verse.  We sang Jesus Loves Me.   We got to use markers today to color the different parts of the theme this year.  Markers are a great way to work on pre-writing skills in holding a writing tool and working on taking off the lid and putting it back on. 

Number:  We continued our study of the number one by holding up one finger, saying the number one and then waving our 1 finger in the air.  We practiced counting 1 blue square today during our morning meeting.  We also got to use the glue bottles and glued one baseball onto a brown baseball glove we also stamped a blue number one on our baseball.  Using the glue bottle is a great way to work on strengthening our hand muscles as we have to really squeeze the bottle to get the glue to come out.  We also stamped one blue sailboat in the sea.  This will be the start of our number book that will come home at the end of the school year.  

Shape:  We continued our study of the square.  We talked about how it has four sides and often looks like a window.  We also found other objects in our classroom that look likes a square we found a table, the window and the tiles on the floor not only have small squares but bigger ones to.  We then used a blue paint dauber to outline the shape of a square.  As we did this activity we said the following phrase over and over to help us remember a square... Up and Down we trace the lines to make a blue square. 

Letter:  Today we  continued to practice singing our ABC's and colored a picture of an alphabet hearts.  Many of our students knew either a part of the ABC song or all of it.  Some of our friends were able to identify different letters on the alphabet hearts that they colored. This activity came home with them today in their red folders.

Color:  We are continuing our study about the color blue this month.  During our morning meeting we identified different blue objects and during center time we had fun painting a picture of a blue fish we would find in the water.  These beautiful paintings are in our hallway on the way to the cubby rooms be sure to look at them.  It was so fun to see all my friends with blue on today!  We had fun see what everyone had on that was blue! 

Music and Movement:  Technology was not Mrs. Horn's friend today but we did manage to get to do some music and movement.  We clapped our hands, stomped our feet, shook our friends hand and gave a friend a hug.  We practiced being different animals and practiced our jumping and turning around skills with our eyes closed! 

Outside Time:  We did go outside today for about 10 minutes today to play in the water tables after we were done outside we took a walk through the new early childhood wing and got to play in the commons area with our other friends from the PDO program.  We had fun crawling through tunnels, throwing balls and playing with hula hoops.  

We are settling into our routines and each week will come with a better idea of how things work and that makes for a lot of fun.   Enjoy all the pictures below and get an inside look as to what all we did today!

Free Choice Play

This is the time in the morning when my friends are arriving that we are able to explore the rooms and activities are set out on the table for us to use.  Today we had the opportunity to play with blue play dough and work our finger and hand muscles, we also were able to work our problem solving skills to work on different  puzzles.  We also worked on our counting skills as we tried to build towers out of small wood blocks. 

MORNING MEETING

This is the time that we come together as a class and dress Mr. Weather Frog, do the calendar, talk about the number of the month and identify objects for our color of the month board.  We also spend time learning about Jesus and reading a morning story.  

The number one and our blue square 

Ask your child can identify these objects. 

Our calendar for the month of August.  

Mr. Weather Frog has his sunscreen and looks like he is ready for the pool!  

Singing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, this is a song that we will sing every day during Morning Meeting. 

Sitting and listening look at all our blue! 

This is the book we read during Morning Meeting, typically a book will be focused on counting and numbers. 

TRANSITION TIME/ WASHING HANDS/SNACK TIME

 As we get ready for snack each child is handed a foot or a hand in the color red, yellow or blue.  When their color of hand or foot is called they are asked to bring it and put it on our square table and find a pink or purple mickey mouse to stand on to line up to wash hands for snack.  This activity help us learn to listen, helps with taking turns, and patience. 

Look at what I have Mrs. Horn!

Making a nice neat stack 

We are already doing a great job at standing in line!  

When we go to wash our hands we all stand on the wall and wait to be called into the bathroom. 

When we are done we sit down so Mrs. Linnemnan and myself know who has washed their hands and who has not. 

We then get ready for snack! 

We love eating healthy yummy snacks! 

All of our friends are sitting in big kid chairs and are doing a great job! 

We use this time to talk about how we sit in a chair, with our feet in front of us our tummies to the table and our hands on the table. 

We also work on staying at the table till all of our friends are done. 

When we finish our yummy snack we work on getting out of our chair pushing it in. 

We also work on putting our drink back in the proper place. 

and throwing our trash away.  

Circle Time/Transition/Outside & Common Time

This takes place after snack we have fun singing our ABC's doing a few songs that help us strength our hand and finger muscles, practice our letter sounds, work on color identification as I draw a picture on the board and read a story.  We then play a transition game to help us line up to go outside or to the commons 

We are tapping our toes!  Technology was not my friend today so we were limited in what we could do song wise:(

Color identification board, I ask the children what color marker I am going to use and after they identify the color I tell them what I am drawing.  We also practice counting today we counted how many flowers, clouds and birds.  

Letter sound book I say a phrase and the sound that letter makes and they repeat it after me.  It is a great introduction to the alphabet what the letters look like and sound like 

During this Circle time I try and find a book that talks about the alphabet in some form.  

We had a chance to stay cool by playing in the water table for the 10 minutes we got to play outside

This is a great way for us to explore and practice pouring and dumping. 

Climbing and jumping using our gross motor skills 

Driving to hopefully somewhere cool today! 

This was our first opportunity to play in the new commons area in our beautiful new Early Childhood wing.  

We have a big open space and are able to bring a variety of gross motor activities for us to experience. 

The boys loved to play with the balls 

The hula hoops were fun to swing on our arms and hips 

We had a taste of the beach with our fun beach balls we were able to toss around 

We were given time to just act silly and work out some energy! 

We had fun crawling through tunnels 

Or just hanging out in the tunnels 

We had a great time as you can tell by this cute little face! 

We had lots of fun running too! 

When we got back to our center we practiced standing on the shapes look at all that blue! 

Center Time

This is the time of day where we focus on things we have been talking about through out the day.  

Evan getting ready to glue on his 1 baseball 

Julija squeezing the glue bottle, this is a great activity to work on strengthening our hand muscles 

Shake Shake the red glitter onto our baseballs

This helped us with our self control

More squeezing to put our 1 baseball on our mitt 

Shaking the glitter all over the glue we worked together to squeeze onto our baseballs 

We also worked on exposing our minds to the letters of the ABC

We had fun picking out some of the letters we were familiar wit 

Coloring is a great way to work on our pre writing skills with holding a crayon. 

We also used our markers today to work on coloring a picture of our theme of the school year.

Taking a break and looking at a book working on those pre-reading skills 

Today we introduced the paint daubers as we worked on tracing the outline of a square 

Working hard at coloring our picture 

Pulling off the lid of our markers helps us with our fine motor skills 

Putting the lids back on helps with fine motor skills 

Up and down around the line to make a blue square with four sides 

We talked about not pressing down to hard 

Paint daubers are also a great way to work on our self control skills 

As well as working on our pre-writing skills as we are working in a concentrated area 

Working on stayingon the lines to make a square 

These girls had a great time using the markers. 

Landry getting a little help with his paint dauber as he worked around his 4 sided square 

MUSIC/MOVEMENT

Is a time for us to show our silly side and to work on listening to different types of music.  We use this time to work on different body parts and working on more gross motor skills.  As I said above technology was not my  friend today but we found plenty of ways to keep us busy during this time in the day! 

Brushing our teeth! 

Jumping up and down 

Swinging our legs

Book we read before lunch!  This mouse really made a mess. 

Standing in line getting ready for lunch we are doing great! 

Story Time

Since we were not able to go outside after lunch we spent sometime reading some fun books and singing some more songs. 

We had a great day working and playing hard.   As you can see we work a lot on our fine motor and gross motor skills.  I hope you all have a great evening and look forward to seeing all my friends soon

Mrs. Horn