We are already into our third week of school and we have been busy making new friends, learning new things, and having lots of fun.
During our Morning Meeting each day the children are learning math without even realizing it. At the calendar, we not only go over what day of the week it is, but we count forwards and backwards and we review what the pattern of the month is (Sept. is ABAB). We are counting the days of school until we reach 100. Once we get far enough, we then start counting by 10’s and once we reach 100 days we begin counting by 5’s. During our meeting we will review our letter of the week and the sound it makes. We also have a sight word of the week. The leader of the day will write the letter and the sight word on our white board. We will also read many stories during the week that begin with our letter, so they hear the sound of that letter in many ways. On Fridays they bring in an object beginning with our letter of the week. They each have a turn to come to the front of the class and tell us about their object. Some have a hard time at first being the focus of attention for that short time, but as the weeks pass their self confidence grows and they are up there telling about their object like a pro.
Once our meeting is finished they have some free time to choose what they play with. We always have a variety of educational and fun things for them to choose from. As we all know, “Play is a child’s work.” Playing together helps them in so many ways. They learn to communicate with others and to negotiate and respond to their friends feelings by sharing and waiting for their turn. Sharing and cooperating are stressed in our program. Helping them find the words to ask for something they want or solve a dilemma are very important in our class.
During this time the teacher will call one or two students at a time to work on a project. It may be writing in their journals or cutting and gluing, but they are getting one on one attention to help them learn.
It is very important to us to have a variety of fiction and non-fiction books in our library. They have time to look at books after snack each day. We change the books out every month to give them variety.
Another thing we love to do in the 5 day class is sing and dance! We love the smiles and giggles as we dance to songs like the Tooty Ta, the Freeze Dance, or the Funky Monkey. These dances are great for learning to follow directions and remembering lyrics. We love hearing them sing the songs we sang that day as they walk out of the classroom.