Quick Glance - Week 1 of Preschool

This week is the beginning of our Preschool program! I am very excited to have the pleasure of teaching your children each day this year. Thank you so much for enrolling in Faith Lutheran Preschool. I look forward to getting to know each of you better as the year progresses. If you ever have any questions or concerns about your child or children please let me know. 

Our classroom is very full this year. We have 18 students officially enrolled right now. Claire and I will be splitting the students into two groups for parts of the day. I just wanted to give you a glance at what our first week will look like! This time next week I will update the blog based on what we will be doing during our second week. These posts will normally happen during the week and tell you what has been done and will be done for the week. Due to such a short week - I thought it would be best to fill you all in on what your children will be doing this week! Our blog will be based on each part of child's day. If you look at our schedule for the day this will all make sense :)

Morning Stories: First Day Jitters by Julie Danneberg, First Day - Curious George, I Will Take a Nap! by Mo Willems, and If You Take a Mouse To School by Laura Joffe Numeroff

Work Time:  During this time, the students will be using the Plan-Do-Review process. This is from the HighScope Curriculum. The students will be separated into two groups (between myself and Claire) and will be able to plan what they would like to do during work time. To do this, we will be doing a planning train. The students will get a tour of the classroom and given details about each of the areas of the room. This is especially nice for the new students in the classroom. After getting a tour of the room, the students are then free to "hop off the train" when they know where they want to work today. After work time (the 'do' portion of Plan-Do-Review), the students return to their groups to recall what they did today. The students are free to speak about their work time. Claire and I will encourage the students to expand and give detail on what they did today and who they worked with.

Small Group Time: We will be exploring with shapes this week. KDI #34: Shapes: Children identify, name, and describe shapes. In our small group time this week the students will be doing various activities relating to shapes. On Wednesday, the students will be working with tangrams to create different types of pictures. On Thursday, the students will be building with blocks and shapes to recreate a picture. On Friday, the students will work on building a dinosaur and other animals with shapes. It is important for the students to do fun activities that relate back to the given KDI. Since this is their first week in Preschool, we decided to ease the students into small group by letting them do a lot of manipulating with shapes and freely decide what they would like to do with them (while asking them various questions about their thought process and the shapes).

Movement Time: The students will be working on recognizing their name cards. As you noticed, the students are given a picture to help them recognize their name each morning. They will take their picture in the morning when they arrive and place in our morning message area. By having the picture card, the students are able to recognize their first letter of their name, and hopefully continue to recognize letters as they get older. In movement, the students will be taking these name cards and placing them with each child. It will be a form of tag for the students to do while getting to know their classmates.

Music Time: In music this week, the students will learn that they can use their voices to produce a variety of sounds. The children will be able to explore the capabilities of their voices and learn to distinguish between the ways in which their voices can be used. The students will be working on a song called 'Good Queen Isabella'. Since it is the first week, the students will be working on singing familiar songs and get use to hearing their voices, especially in a group.

Bible Time: This week will be a little different for Bible time. Every week we will be focusing on one specific bible story. This week (since it is a short week) we will be talking about Jesus and some information we might know about him. This will help transition the students who are new to the classroom as well as students who have not heard many Bible stories. On Wednesday we have Chapel. We will be joining the rest of the school up in the Church to hear a devotion from our Pastor at Faith Lutheran Church. His name is Chris Ewings. You will become familiar with his name seeing as we have Chapel once a week and he comes into our classroom once a week to have devotion with the children.

Afternoon Activities: The students will have an afternoon table time. This will change from week to week. We will have magnetic shapes, foam blocks, drawing and tracing, and introducing our water table to the students. Due to it being the first week, we will change things based on the students needs and their comfort level. We do not want to push the students too hard this first week. We want them to get to know each other as well as their new teachers. The afternoon story the students will be hearing is 'About a Bear' by Bucher.