Our mornings start out reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. We review that we live in the United States of America and the colors that represent our country are red, white and blue. I have a classroom of excited smiling faces volunteering to hold the flag with great pride each morning.
We have all enjoyed getting acquainted over the past 2 weeks and I love hearing about your child's weekend every Monday and Tuesday morning. This gives your child time to adjust to speaking in front of a group and really builds a great rapport between all of us. I hear some great stories and I hope to send some home too :o) Found out that Ms. Lisa, our aide, has fed a beluga whale!
Knowing the classroom expectations is very important to achieve a successful year. We have been going over classroom rules and expectations and a wonderful book that has aided us in understanding this is, "Have you Filled a Bucket Today". This book talks about filling an imaginary bucket with acts of kindness throughout your day. We have created our own little bucket and I will be passing out little hearts called "goodness" when I witness children practicing acts of kindness with each other. I anticipate needing a good stash of "hearts" for this class as there are so many wonderful, caring children.
One of my favorite times of the day is "Circle Time". During this time we go over the month, day and year. We also recite the days of the week and months of the year through singing. The children enjoy being actively involved in song while learning "Calendar". We also started our "Guessing Jar" where the children have to guess how many items are in the jar. The children soon discover that there are more of a smaller object and less of a bigger object. We create a "mini story" together and review letter sounds and letter identification. The children enjoy generating sentences for the mini story and love going on a hunt for a letter that needs to be identified.
Activities during our week include Art, Playdoh, Math, Science, Sensory, Drama and Language Arts. We have enjoyed exploring these areas during centers and I have enjoyed working with your child one on one. I love providing manipulatives that can be explored and then used as a tool for learning. This week we used our colorful gems for sorting and then made an AB pattern with 2 chosen colors. The excitement in their face when they were able to share their pattern was priceless. They also used the gems to make the letter "O" and then search the classroom for objects that began with the letter "O".
Since we are in the "Ocean" room we needed to learn about my favorite place to relax, the ocean. The children have learned about tide pools, kelp forests, and plants and animals that live in the ocean.
We end our day with the infamous "Mystery Box". This box will rotate throughout the year. There are 2 boxes going around with our Monday/Wednesday/Friday class and our Tuesday/Thursday class. If you haven't received the "Mystery Box" it will soon make an appearance at your home. All you need to do is pick a "nonliving" item from home to put in the box and write 3 clues to describe what's in the box. It's a fun way for your child to become confident in front of a group. I have to say, the mystery box is the most anticipated part of the day :o) Yes, I did get a live creature in my years of teaching ;o) Thankfully you-tube wasn't around that long ago to see my expression of what was in the box.
I feel blessed to be apart of this FABULOUS group of students and look forward to building memories filled with Happiness of their preschool experience!
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