Back in the Groove!

Last week was our first official back to school week that all the sweet peas were here! They spent a lot of time just exploring their new environment and getting to know one another. 









One of the things they discovered about Pre-K was how independent they can be! They can get any materials out to use during free choice time, but they have to know where to return items and how to clean up. They loved the freedom they had to choose, especially at the art table!

 

We began the week with a classic story:

After reading Chrysanthemum we used letter tiles to spell our names and then we graphed how many letters were in our names.

Ms. Leslie worked with the peas at the art table and they created name flowers and added details with paint.

While we were getting to know everyone, we read some great books. Here's just a few!







After reading All I Am by Eileen Roe we made our first anchor chart of what we are! We spent the week re-reading our chart.

After talking about ourselves, we decided to make ourselves! As a snack! :) We made rice cake faces and added our eye colors along with other edible features.



The edible faces turned out pretty cute.



Later in the week we talked about our families and did a house glyph of who we live with.

We also started journals this week. After reading, re-reading and chorus reading our poem, we pass out copies to go into their journals. Then they illustrate them. We do journals every Wednesday and they can go anywhere in the room to work on their journals.

I didn't get all 21 adorable journal entries, but here's just a few. Most of them chose to illustrate themselves. 

One of my favorite activities we do in Pre-K is morning message. We started our morning messages this week during our morning meeting. Our morning message contains a greeting, the date and an interactive request, usually something that has to do with what we are learning about. Our morning message is very interactive. The peas quickly learn the repetitive pattern that contains the greeting and the date and we learn beginning sounds, how to stretch words, sight words and how to track print. You can always see the most current morning message on our easel by the library. 

In math we started simple, by sorting shapes. I made huge shapes out of tape on the table and floor. They really loved it.

 

We also started our handwriting this week. We just did an intro page so that we could assess dominant hand and grip. We use Handwriting Without Tears and we will be working in the orange book this year.

Here's just a few shots of our handwriting in action!

Well that wraps up our first week of learning and exploring in Pre-K! I think it was a great success. I can't wait to see what this school year holds!