Community Week 2 December 12-16

Reminder: Our Gingerbread Musical is on Friday December 16 at 10:45 promptly

Community Week 2 December 12-16 
Unit Book
A Day in the Life of a Firefighter
Weekly Question and Vocabulary Related to book:
What do workers in our community do? 
(firefighter,emergency, equipment, protect, community helper, rescue)

Literacy Small Groups

-Letter Kk- We will learn what the uppercase and lowercase letter Kk looks like.  We will sort magnetic letters to find matches for Kk.  We will hunt for them in our names and the names of our classmates.  We used crayons to hunt for them on our papers too.

-Letter Aa- We will learn what the uppercase and lowercase letter Aa. looks like.  We will sort magnetic letters to find matches for Aa.  We will hunt for them in our names and the names of our classmates.  We used crayons to hunt for them on our papers too.

-Journal Writing-We will be writing in our journals about people who help us in our community.  We will focus on the directionality of our writing (staring at the left and continuing to the right of the page) and continue our  practice turtle talking and listening for sounds in our words.  Remember, writing is a developmental skill and we are all working at our own pace and improving each week.

-Picture Perfect Pairs- We will learn how some words begin with the same sound and some words do not.  We will then identify pictures on two cubes.  Then each child will roll the two cubes and named the two pictures.  We will identify if the pictures had the same sound in the beginning or not.  For example, mouse and map are the same.  Duck and nest are not the same. 

Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down- We will identify rhyming and non-rhyming word pairs. We will listen to two words and give a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Then we will cut and sort word pairs based on if they rhyme or do not rhyme. 

Math Small Groups
-Take Away- We will use the skill of taking away to feed a hungry boy some cookies.  Using playdough, students will feed the boy a given amount of cookies to tell how many cookies the baker had left.  

-Geometric Sorting- After reviewing geometric shapes, we will sort real world geometric shapes.

-Rectangle Hunt-We used clipboards and searched our classroom and our school for rectangles.  Every time we found a rectangle we recorded it on our clipboards.

Handwriting/Letter Groups

-Handwriting Without Tears Books- Letters K  and A.

Centers

Art Table- red, yellow, and orange paint(fire colors)

Block Area- blocks and community people

Sensory Table- Squirting water on "fire numbers"
Book Area- Exploring Books about community
Easel-Markers and paper
Writing Table- Fire Equipment Lists/Dr. Kits
Dramatic Play-Airport/Firestation
Math, Puzzles, and Manipulatives- Band-Aid letter matching activity
Rug- tracks and roads

Science/Social Studies/Math Circle Concepts
-Take Away Stories
-Locating things in our neighborhoods
-Giving Directions
-Safety in our neighborhoods
-Prisms
-Jobs in our community

Preschool Life Skills 

- We will be focusing on our curriculum of Preschool Life Skills during this time to help us transition into our new classroom.

1. When I call your name, stop what you are doing, look at me, and say ,"Yes".
2. When I give you an instruction, do it "right away"
(Ask your child what do you do when your teacher tells you to do something.  They should reply "I do it right away." You can reinforce this at home too.  "Put your legos away and do it "right away""
3. When I give you  instructions, do them "right away" (multi-step directions)
4. When something is too hard say "Help me please"

Songs, Word Plays, and Language

-Syllable Sound Off, Compound Boogies

-Compound word break up game song

-Neighbors Chant
-Firetruck Song
-Nursery Rhymes: Hush Little Baby, Hickory Dickory Dock

Classroom Motivational System
We will be learning classroom routines and expectations within our new classroom.  In order to create a successful and rewarding environment, each child will have a motivational system. Our classroom system promotes positive classroom behavior through positive peer modeling and teachers providing positive reinforcement for desired behaviors.