Welcome December! All the boys and girls in MWF Room 202 have been very busy. We are having a lot of fun being a little family of learners. Here is a look into our world…
We begin every day with our Morning Meeting. This is where our Star of the Day student get to be the teacher and help his/her classmates to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, sing the days of the week song, identify the month, day and year and count the number of days we’ve been in school using straws. We are grouping the straws into groups of 10 and counting by ones and tens. Then we move onto our weather. We keep track of the weather on a bar graph and discuss which weather has the most/least days and also place order (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc). We are exposed to many math skills during our Morning Meeting.
From there we go over our schedule for the day including what our centers will be and our special. Our daily schedule is posted and you’d be surprised that if we don’t follow the schedule, the children will point it out! Although the children can’t all “read” the words on the schedule, or understand the concept of counting by tens, as we do with the straws, we are exposing them all to these concepts because children learn at their own pace and will grasp these concepts when they are ready.
Next we break into centers which revolve around the letter of the week, holiday, season, theme, etc. There are also free play centers where the children can choose to play in the kitchen area, dress up corner, play dough table, corn meal table, writing center, blocks and many more manipulatives, puzzles and games that engage their minds, creativity and social skills.
For example our most recent letter we learned about was the letter Q. We made winter snow trees using Q tips to paint on the snow with white paint. We created a Quail out of the cut out letter Q. We read the Q phonics book and brainstormed Q words to add to our classroom Word Worm. We also made Pattern Quilts creating our own patterns with mini paper cutouts, wrote the Q in our writing journal and had a Q show and tell. In addition, we have been making snowflakes, decorating Christmas tree’s, wreaths, ornaments and special gifts for our families.
After centers, snack and outside/downstairs time, we wrap up our day with a story and sometimes a game. One of the games we might play is Telephone. Where we whisper a simple phrase into a child’s ear and they continue whispering around the circle until it gets to the last friend who relays the message out loud. This is helpful with listening skills and the children feeling comfortable talking to each other. We also might get in Freeze dance…another good game for listening skills!
We love school and hope you enjoyed a sneak peak into our classroom!