Last Monday was H’s first day. Technically the first day was right after Labor Day, but we were in Florida. Her school does a couple of phase-in weeks to start the year, and she’s only 4, so we figured if ever there was a time to take advantage of low crowds for our sensory kid, this was it.
Tag: pre-k
I did this unit with pre-k for half of February, reading The Snowy Day, Pet Show!, Goggles, and Peter’s Chair. Our copy of A Letter for Amy was missing, or I’d have added that one, too.
After we read Goggles, we made…goggles. I didn’t have enough cardstock, so we used regular paper. Next year, cardstock.
Last month I read a ton of fall books with the two pre-k classes. After we finished our stories we made these fall collages one week.
I found this tree coloring page online and tweaked the size to make it just right. Then I put piles of cut-up construction paper at the tables and let the kids go to town with crayons, glue sticks, and the paper.
In April I began reading bug stories with the pre-k classes. April is a short month for us, so I only read a few books with them. Frog in the Bog by Karma Wilson (then we played a memory game using the bugs the frog ate) and Bubba and Trixie by Lisa Campbell Ernst. We also learned our new spring song, called “Bumble Bee.” The song is from Simply Super Storytimes, which I just used tons this year with pre-k.
Read more on This Month With Pre-K: Eric Carle “Very” Books…
I’m not sure why, but I never blogged about this last month. In my pre-k classes in March we spent the month reading all of Karma Wilson’s Bear books except Bear Stays Up for Christmas. The kids loved the books, and now when I ask them if they remember the books and what happened to Bear, this is what I hear:
Today was our Read Across America program (Dr. Seuss Day to the kids) at school. It’s the biggest program I organize each year, and this year I teamed up with our reading teacher to get the whole school involved.
Dr. Seuss’s birthday is on March 2nd, but we’re having our Read Across America celebration (or “Dr. Seuss Day” as everyone calls it) on Monday the 1st. Mondays are the only days in my schedule when I can organize giant projects like this.
November is a really short month for my district. The first week is only 3 days due to NJ Teachers’ Convention (the first Thurs/Fri of every November). Then we have 1 regular week of school, followed by a week of half days for parent/teacher conferences. Then it ends with 2.5 days during Thanksgiving week. So with most grades I’ve started a unit that will stretch into December or built on a unit I started in October, but with pre-k I just focused on Thanksgiving this month.
I already posted about the first week of October with pre-k, here’s what’s been happening the rest of the month.
Pre-K and kindergarten at my school use Tools of the Mind as their curriculum, so this year I’ve been focusing (in pre-k especially) on lots of activities and movement. Last year I planned a month-long theme like I still do, and maybe one week we read 3 books, another week we did a craft, another we watched a movie, and another we read more books. After learning more about Tools of the Mind I discovered that I really needed to be varying this every week, with kids doing activities for 10 or 15 minutes at a time only in pre-k before transitioning to something new. So I’ve been changing it up.
For the month of October I’ll be doing a unit on fall with pre-k. It started this week, and the first thing we did was learn the “Fall Song,” from Simply Super Storytimes by Marie Castellano. Just the first verse, we couldn’t handle much more than that. We’ll sing the song at the start of every library class until winter starts.