Author of the day

Every Tuesday we have show and tell and every Thursday we had Author of  the day.  Who ever was the author of the day got a story box with some items in the box.  The used these items to tell us a story and I dictated it exactly how they said it on the board.  Then we went to the table and each child drew a picture of a different part of the story and then we put it together to make a book.

The children loved watching me write every word as the child said it.  Some children would even follow along so closely they would catch mistakes as they were learning to read by hearing the child speak and me write.  

Christmas Program

Forgotten Post:

We did a great Christmas program.  Since I am the teacher I didn't take any pictures (even though I had 2 kids in it).  If any of you have some pictures.  Please send them my way!

Christmas Pillows

Forgotten Post:

I can't believe I never posted about this.  For our parents Christmas present we made pillows.  I took several months to gradually prepare the kids.  Last fall you may remember my posts on sewing/stitching and how good it is for several developmental reasons.  Well our sewing skills culminated in making Christmas pillows for our parents.  We would just do one step a day.  The kids worked hard and were SO PROUD of them selves.

New things

Forgotten Post:

I am always adding new things to the shelves of my preschool.  It is fun to watch the kids discover them.

Birds nest

Forgotten post: 

Back when we were talking about spring we spent a day on birds.  At the art table I used the direction board to have the kids build a bird nest.

They were to glue paper onto the plate (I decided to pre-cut the paper), then draw their own eggs, cut out the eggs and then glue them on the nest.

Getting ready for school using dramatic play

We did a school themed dramatic play back in fall.  This time I had a few different goals.  I wanted to introduce the children to things they would do in Kindergarten - that we haven't really done in Preschool - like writing on lines, tracing letters, using flash cards, etc.  But I wanted to introduce it in a way that would be meaningful, engaging, and of course, fun.  So I set up another school in our dramatic play area and had lots of kindergarten material.

As you can see it worked great.

Names

As I start to do things to prepare the kids for Kindergarten I have introduced writing on the traditional line-dotted line- line paper.  Every morning when the kids come to school there is a question on an easel.  They write their name and tape their name to the correct answer.  All year they have been doing this with strips of plain white paper and markers.  A few months ago we transitioned to "kindergarten" paper and pencils.  This lined paper is large sentence strips - so we still started out big - eventually we got down to "normal" sized lines.

Chain for summer

A few weeks before preschool was over we made a chain to count down for summer.  This wasn't the first chain we had made.  If you remember we have made several - each time adding a new "element" that the kids did themselves.  This time they did it 100% by themselves.  They picked 2 different colors of papers, drew lines using a ruler, cut the lines, made the pattern, wrote numbers, and then put the chain together keeping the numbers in the correct order and on the outside of the chain.  Phew!  Chains are great because they have SO MANY different skills involved.

Small, medium, large bugs

A simple bug sort.  This kids of sort is great because it is not so black and white - like sorting colors or something that just has 3 different sizes.  These bugs had LOTS of different sizes and they just needed to be sorted relative to each other - so there had to be a lot of decision making and discussion.  I loved listening to them negotiate and debate the reasons why one bug should go in one pile and another bug should go in another pile.

Play dough bugs

I made these bug eyes out of outlet covers for our bug play dough center.

The kids came up with some great bugs!