Community Helpers

We recently read the book Trashy Town.  In Trashy Town the garbage man goes around the town to a variety of community locations. The book has a pattern that students love to repeat.  After reading we used shapes we know to create trash trucks.  They are so adorable!

Over Due

Wow, this year has been flying by.  I am sorry I have not been posting regularly.  As I mentioned, we moved.  Moving and working and having your child go to school full day for the first time and homework  was a lot to handle.  Life is finally starting to settle down a bit and so I thought I would share some of the wonderful, fun, exciting things we have done this year.

Many of my students enter the year not recognizing their name so the first several months we do a lot of name work in pre-k.  Below are just a few examples of things we have done.

At first we wanted them just to recognize the first letter of their name.  We have a resource center available to us in my county that has this 8 in letter cut outs, so I ordered enough to have the first letter of all the students in my classroom and then a few extra of each letter, just in case.  Then I would call students over during small groups 2 or 3 at a time with 5 or 6 letters on the table.  I would ask them to find the first letter of their name and then we would trace the letter, say the letter, and say their name.  Next they got to decorate the letter with dot paint.  The kids were very proud of their letters and started to see it everywhere; declaring that is the letter in MY name.

During the week we learned about R, we made rockets with our names spelled on them.  Some students wrote the letters themselves, some traced the letters, and some just put the letters of their name in order depending on where they were in knowing their name.

To address STEM when we read about The Three Billy Goats Gruff we made a bridge that would hold 3 billy goats.  Students worked in groups with a variety of materials.  the bridge had to hold all 3 billy goats and allow a toy car to pass under.  Here is a picture of one group working on their bridge...

This last picture was a surprise.  During free play in centers I am walking around making notes and observing what children are up to and I came across a this picture below, look at it and see if you can see why I was so impressed...

On their own they decided to sort the magnets by color!  I love it!  They worked together, talked it out and were just going to town on their project.  It has to be one of my favorite moments this year.  You should have seen their proud faces when they realized I was interested in their work.  These are the moments we live for people!

Daily Shared Writing

This year for a daily shared writing experience I am taking 5 minutes at the end of every day and having the kids tell me what we did and posting it to my wiki.  The parents can check it and when their child says we didn't do anything today they know what we did.  It doesn't take much effort and I have gotten some positive feedback on it already.  

Another thing I wanted to share is safe share.  Safe share is great, you take a youtube video and plug it into safe share and it take out the adds.  So you can show an educational video without a youtube add for something inappropriate for children popping up.

Getting Ready to Go Back to School

Even though we are not officially back to school I have been in to get my room together a bit.  While it is certainly not finished here are some pictures of the progress.

This is a picture as you walk into the door, the desk in the back is my instructional assistant's desk.  It use to face out the window, but I turned it around this year because we are switching to all day Pre-K and the kids have to take a nap so she will need to be facing out so she can see them while they nap.

This is a little further to the right, the 3 tables in the middle will be used during our small group time and the centers will be wrapped around the room.

This is the morning meeting, reading carpet, whole group area.  My desk is in the back corner.  The whiteboard on the right has a projector that makes it like a smart board, the rolling white board is where I write the morning message.

I will post more pictures when I am done.  I still have a long way to go, but at least all of my bulletin boards are covered and have boarders and my furniture is close to where I want.  I just need to go through all the boxes, finish setting up my computers and put up some decorative stuff.  

There is a small part of me that is having a panic attach though because I may not be able to pull my late nights at school during the first work week for teachers because we are moving.  The timing stinks.  We were suppose to move back in July, but delay after delay has put us into the end of August.  But I set my entire Pre-K classroom up in one day last year after spending 2 weeks getting my second grade classroom up and running (last minute transfer).  I will be looking forward to the day that I am moved in and the classroom is done and I am a week into this full day pre-k thing.  Wish me luck.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

We are nearing the end of the school year and students are getting a chance to show what they know.  One activity we did this week was we read the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.  The pre-k students loved that they knew the letters in the book.  They had a grand time pointing out the letters they knew and repeating chicka chicka boom boom, will there be enough room?  In small groups they made a coconut tree and wrote letters they knew on the coconuts.  Below are some examples of the completed trees.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

We read The Very Hungry Caterpillar today in pre-k.  So many students are familiar with the book, but they all love it.  I let them chime in and say but he was still hungry each time it was repeated.  We counting the fruits the caterpillar ate.  One of the small group activities we did was to make a caterpillar using 2 different color dots and count how many of each color dot was used to make the caterpillar and how many dots there were all together.  Below are the pictures of the end product.

Parts of a Flower

We are learning about flowers in pre-k this week.  We have read books about flowers, we are planting and caring for flowers, and we are learning about the parts of a flower.  I taught the children the parts of the flower through a poster and a song.  Then the students used some stamps with the flower parts (root, stem, leaf, flower) to create a plant.  At another table the made flowers on a board and talked about each part of the flower and what it did.  Below is a picture of the flower part boards...

The song is sung to Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes

Roots, Stem, Leaves and Flower, Leaves and Flower
Roots, Stem, Leaves and Flower, Leaves and Flower
Roots, and Stem, and Leaves, and Flower
Roots, Stem, Leaves and Flower, Leaves and Flower

I used the song to review the parts while we were working with the flower parts board.  We also sang it and pretended we were a flower and our feet were the roots, our upper leg and torso were the stem, we stuck our hands out to the side for leaves, and then we put our hands next to our face for the flower.  The kids really took to the song and it helped them remember root and stem, which for most of them were new vocabulary words.