Mosaics

From previous posts you saw that during center time we had a glue area and also a cutting area.  Well, after snack and recess, we put those two uses together at our large group activity.  We fished out all of our little cut pieces from our sensory bin and glued them down on to a paper making beautiful mosaics.  For our glue of choice on this activity I taught them how to dip q-tips in glue and spread it on the paper.  This provided some great fine motor skills - putting to use those hand and finger muscles we just built up from squeezing those bottles of glue and cutting those papers.

Sensory Table

For our first day I had water in our sensory table with several different tolls, cups, and "floaty" things in the water.  Somethings were in the water when the kids got there and some were in the supply bucket they could add as they wanted.  Eventually everything went into the water.  The kids came back and forth to this activity several times throughout the day.  The children enjoyed pouring and scooping the lids, beads, and jewels. 

I had funnels the that children ended up using the fill glass bottles.  I was pleased to see them make that connection - I didn't get a picture. 

Our second day of preschool I wanted to start introducing them to tools we will be using freely throughout the year.  I put a bunch of colored paper strips into the sensory bins with scissors and even fun wavy scissors.

All the kids are pretty proficient cutters - for straight lines at least.  This is such a fun activity for tem because they can cut as many little teeny tiny pieces as they wanted for as long as they wanted.

We ended up using these pieces in our large group activity later in the day.  Nothing needs go to waste in a preschool - everything can be used for another activity.

Names

One of the first things I am focusing on is each child's name.  Currently we are working on each child recognizing their own name, knowing the letters in their name, spelling their name, writing their name, and also reading the names of the other kids in the class.  Each child is in their own place on that spectrum - but I am confident they will all get there soon.

On the first day of school we read the book Chrysanthemum.  It is a story about a mouse who learns her name is beautiful and perfect for her.  We of courses talked about how each of their names is just for them and how perfect it is.  Then we decorated our names.