T is for Thankful
11/23/2019
A week of turkeys and thankfulness:We created turkeys using the letters in our name! We are getting really good at writing letters and putting them in order to form our name. The kids also cut the feathers out themselves! We practiced letter writing with turkey themed tracing. This is good fine motor practice as well as an opportunity to work on letter recognition. One of my favorite Thanksgiving foods is pumpkin pie! We created "Pumpkin Pie in a Cup". We began by crushing graham crackers to use as our crust, then mixed together pumpkin, yogurt, and pudding mix. Thanksgiving is a time to reflect on what we are thankful for. This special edition of Famous Friday gave the kids a chance to talk about what they are really glad they have in their lives. We also conducted a Q&A for each student to practice language skills. I am so thankful for this class! Have an awesome Thanksgiving holiday!
Morning Meeting
11/16/2019
Responsive Classroom Morning Meeting is an engaging way to start each day, build a strong sense of community, and set children up for success socially and academically. Each morning, students and teachers gather together in a circle for twenty to thirty minutes and interact with one another during four purposeful components:
In our morning meeting we also incorporate several songs to keep the kids engaged. These songs are played every morning to establish routine and repetition. You've probably heard your child singing them at home! This trimester we have been singing: "Good Morning Mr Rooster", "Seasons of the Year", and "The Calendar Song". Each song teaches them an important concept. We use hand and body motions for gross motor development and to aid memory. Included in our classroom jobs are the weather reporter and the calendar helper. Our weather reporter looks out of our classroom window to tell us what it looks like outside. Our calendar helper crosses off the days that have passed on our monthly calendar. The class then counts together on our large calendar to see what day we are on. The calendar helper then adds that day onto our calendar. We discuss the days of the week by addressing what yesterday was, what today is, and what tomorrow will be. The "Days of the Week" song we learned in the beginning of the year helps us remember the days of the week sequence. Our Question of the Day is usually the driving force for the sharing section of the morning meeting. I like to use this time to incorporate another skill such as identifying their name, saying the color of their clothes in Spanish, ect. before they answer the question. Going over our daily schedule is always the last step to our morning meeting. It is important for the kids to know what the day has in store for them and if our usual routine will be interrupted by any events. Morning meeting has aided in the creation of classroom community and is a great model of routine and expectations. It is a daily reminder of the importance of whole group interaction.
What We Wear
11/9/2019
This week was all about what we wear and how we take care of it. Some of our favorite books to read about clothes are: Pete the Cat: I Love my White Shoes, Caps for Sale, and Froggy Gets Dressed. Our clothes can have many different patterns and colors. We created our own on pants, shirts, and dresses using crayons and stickers. We added a washer and dryer to our dramatic play area this week. We talked about how it is important to clean and fold our clothes to keep them looking nice. There is also an iron that we learned is used for getting wrinkles out of our clothes. In art, we created "Fringe Necklaces" which are traditionally worn by Native Americans. Mrs. Jaegar brought in photographs of fringe necklaces and talked about the origins of the necklace in Alaska. Our sensory bin this week was a clothes washing station. We compared this way of washing clothes with the washer and dryer in the dramatic play area. We talked about how before washers and dryers existed, people scrubbed their clothes by hand and dried them on a clothesline. The clothespins provided the students with fine motor practice. A few new addition to the classroom include magnet dolls, a matching game, and ABC mittens! The kids love to dress up their dolls in hats, jackets, gloves, and more.
FaBOOlous
11/2/2019
Parent Breakfast: October 31stWe have four parent breakfasts/lunches each year to create community within our classroom and our school. It is a time to experience PNA with your child and get a glimpse of what your child takes part in after they enter our doors. The Halloween assembly was a great example of what we like to do to come together as a school. For our future breakfasts/lunches, we will do an activity in the classroom that resembles something your child does in the classroom on a day to day basis. Thank you so much for participating and contributing to our first parent breakfast! It is awesome to see so much support for these Otters! This week's activities included all things Halloween! We made ghosts made out of cotton balls and construction paper, used pumpkin candy to count to ten, and created a spooky sensory bin! Our favorite book to read this week was "Halloween Hustle", a rhyming story about spooky creatures doing a silly dance. The Halloween songs we have been dancing to all month were played for the last time, Five Little Monsters and Halloween Down by the Bay will be missed! We had a faBOOlous time with our Halloween activities, but we are so ready to move into November with our new study: Clothing!
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Annalee JohnsonEK Teacher Archives
January 2021
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