Morning routine

I never wrote about our morning routine.  

First we would sing a couple songs.  Then we had a news minute - where the kids got to tell me what ever they wanted - this we always a fun part of the day.

Then we looked to see what our jobs were.  We have calendar, weather, rhyme time, estimation, clean-up, snack, and lights.

Calendar person would come up.  The way most preschools do calendar (including the way I was taught) is not very meaningful to 4 and 5 year olds.  Most preschoolers can talk about the calendar everyday and still not grasp what yesterday was and what date tomorrow will be, by the end of the year.  Their brains are just not ready for it.  But as "educators" we do it anyway.  Well, I wanted to do something different, something that would be more meaningful and visual for the kids.  I kept a traditional calendar (although I considered tossing it all together) but i kept it for 2 reasons: one - it DOES introduce the concept of calendars, how they looks, how they function, the changing of the months, etc and two - who ever was the calendar person wrote in the date, and although it didn't have any real meaning - it did give number and counting practice because we counted the numbers every time.  But BEYOND the calendar I added a chain.  One link for every day we have been in preschool.  Blue to Tuesday, Pink for Thursday, and yellow for "weird days" (sometimes preschool would get changed to a Wednesday or Friday).  We patterned the chain, counted the links, the fine motor skills in making the chain.  It all came together quite nicley. 

Then we did weather.  Who ever was the weather person would draw what the weather looked like on a little strip of paper, and then the class would help me write to word on the paper, "cold, snowy, sunny, windy, etc"  We would sound out the words together and they would tell me what letter to use.  Then we would pin our picture on our weather chart.

Then we had rhyme time (which is that little blue box).  Whose ever job that is they would pick a word out of that box.  For example: cat.  Then they would come up with 2 words that rhymed with cat.  Then we would open it up to the whole class and come up with as many rhyming words as we could.  I often wrote the words on the white board as they came up with them.

See the jar with the pom poms? that is our estimation jar.  Everyday their would be something new in it (it often went along with our theme).  The student would estimate how many items were in the jar, then go pick that number off the white board and put it next to the word "estimation".  Then they would dump the jar and count the times and then put the number next to the word "actual".  We never really discussed how close or far off they were - that wasn't the point and I didn't want it to fill like winning or loosing.  I praised them that they found the correct number and put it in the right place.  No child ever felt discouraged if they were "way off"

After this everyday was different.  I would often introduce what we were doing that day, maybe with a large group activity, or a book, or a new song, you saw those in my previous posts.  But these are the things we did everyday.