Friends Unit - Week 2 Sept.30-Oct 4

Reminder: Back to School Night is October 3 at 6:30
Parents are invited to visit our classroom and learn more about your child's school day.  We look forward to seeing you!!

Unit Books
Corduroy

Read Aloud: Friends Share

Weekly Question and Vocabulary Related to book:

What is a friend?

(friend, play, laugh, admire, together, enormous)

Meet our Letterlander of the Week: 
Firefighter Fred

This week we will be doing the following letter activities in small groups: 
Sorting Uppercase and Lowercase: F and f
Fine motor activity to reinforce letter this week: Magnet Boards to create letters with magnet strips and magnet chalk to trace them
We will be reinforcing "alligator fingers" and "always start your letters at the top.
(How to make an F: " Start at the Top, Big Line Down, Frog Jump up, Little Line at the Top, Little Line in the Middle")

Small Group Letter Book: Decorating F to look like a firefighter

(Each week we will be adding a page to our letter book which will be staying at school until we complete all of our letters.  We are creating our own individual Letterlander books

Small Groups

-Corduroy Sequencing Story Pictures

-Is it a Letter Sorting- We will be talking about letters and why they are important.  They make our names, words in a book, signs all around us, etc.  We will then cut, sort, and glue letters into a chart.  We will also sort all of the symbols and numbers that are not letters. 

-Corduroy Lacing- We will color pictures of Corduroy from our unit book.   Then with help, we will put holes on him and lace a string around our bears.  We will then stuff the bears to create our own Corduroy bears.

-Train Words- We will be learning the phonemic skill of tapping words in a sentence.  Using a train, we will tap each part of a train for each word in a sentence stated aloud.  This reinforces 1:1 correspondence and listening skills for reading development later on.  These early skills need to be developed to have a strong phonemic awareness. 

-Button Five Frames- First we will use real buttons to place inside our five frames.  A teacher will tell a "math story" while students place each button on. (ie: "Cordoroy found 2 buttons, put 2 buttons in the 5 frame, Lisa found 3 more, How many do we have in the 5 five frame? Let's count") Then we will be color our own 5 buttons on our papers. Then we will cut out the buttons and put them into a 5 frame.

-10 fingers.  We will be reinforcing our concept of 5 frames by pointing out how our hands are like 5 frames.  Each hand has 5 fingers and all together we have 10 fingers.  We will trace and color our hands then put dot stickers on our hands to show the 2 sets of five. 

Centers
Art Table- Piggy Banks/ Corduroy Bear Project

Block Area- blocks and bears (building bed for Corduroy)

Sand Table- buttons
Book Area- Exploring Books about friends
Writing Table- crayons and paper
Dramatic Play- Shoe Store (related to Corduroy)
Math, Puzzles, and Manipulatives- Letter Puzzles
Rug-

Science/Social Studies Circle
- 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".
-Discussing how we sit and listen in a group (our community classroom)
2. When a teacher tells me to do something, "I do it right away."

Friends Unit (Week 1) September 23-27

Unit Books

The Lion and The Mouse 

Weekly Question and Vocabulary Related to book:

What makes each of us special?

(thank, help, protect, kindness, patient, mighty)

Meet our Letterlander of the Week: 
Lucy Lamp Light

This week we will be doing the following letter activities in small groups: 
Sorting Uppercase and Lowercase: L and l
Fine motor activity to reinforce letter this week: Chalk Boards with chalk and wet sponges
We will be reinforcing "alligator fingers" and "always start your letters at the top.
(How to make an L: " Start at the Top, Big Line Down, Little Line at the Bottom")

Small Group Letter Book: Decorating L to look like a lamp
(Each week we will be adding a page to our letter book which will be staying at school until we complete all of our letters.  We are creating our own individual Letterlander books)

Small Groups this Week:

-Sound Search- We will use Ipads to listen to the sounds we hear.  We will use descriptive language to describe each sound. This game reinforces listening skills and gets us ready to listen to sounds in words which a beginning sound in phonemic awareness.

-Letters in my name game- Each child will have their name card.  Letters will be in a bag. Each child will pull out a letter from the bag.  If they have the letter in their name they will keep it. If it is not in their name they will find a friend that has the letter and give it to them.  The goal for everyone to make their name. We will compare letters their letters in their name to a friend.  

-Digging for Treasure-In sand, each child will dig and find objects in the sand. We will find 5 objects then we will find objects based on size, color, shape. Each child will be placing the objects into a 5 frame. Five frames help us with the later skill of subitizing which is knowing how many objects there are without count them one at a time.

-Mouse Tails- We will color and cut out paper mouses.  Then we will put on a tail. We will then count out 5 beads and place them in our 5 frames. Then we will put on 5 beads on the mouse tail to help develop fine motor skills.

Centers

Art Table- Lion faces using forks to paint on the lion mane with yellow and orange paint

Block Area-  making homes for jungle animals with blocks

Sensory Table- sand with colored collections
Manipulatives-Gears for building together
Book Area- Exploring Books about friends
Dramatic Play- Role Playing Jungle (like in our story)
Rug- Jungles

Science/Social Studies/Math Circle Concepts:

- 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".

Social Thinking Concepts for this week:
-Thinking a Thought and Feeling a Feeling

First Weeks of School (Sept 9-13 and Sept. 16-20)

First Weeks of School
We will be establishing routines within our first two weeks of school. Below are the small groups we will be
working on before we begin our Opening the World of Learning (OWL) and Letter Land Curriculum. We will
be assessing where each child is and planning how to best serve each child during this time.

Books:
The Kissing Hand
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
Thinking a Thought and Feeling a Feeling (Social Thinking Curriculum)
Little Miss Spider Goes to School

Small Groups
-Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Bowling- We will roll a "coconut" to knock down bowling pins with letters on them. 
We will stamp on our bowling recording sheet which letters we knocked down.

-Coconut Tree Letter Bean Bag Throwing- Each child will receive a bean bag with a letter. 
They will name the letter, then gently toss it onto a coconut tree(brown paper with green leaves on top)

-Feed Chester- We will be cutting letters both in our name and not in our name. 
Then we will use the letters in our name to make our name on our papers.
The letters not in our name we will feed to Chester Raccoon. 

-Patterning- We will create patterns using pictures from the Kissing Hand. We will be cutting and then assembling
patterns.

-Kissing Hand Graphing- We will spin a spinner that has pictures from our story. 
Then we will record by coloring one box to show which picture the spinner landed on.
We will then count to see which picture we recorded the most and least.

-Coconut Pick up- Using clothespins we picked up "coconut" pom poms and move them into cups. This will help strengthen our fingers in this fun game. 

-Theraputty with Beads- We will be using our fine motor "alligator fingers" to pinch in putty to find beads.  

-Kissing Hand Roll a Dice - We will roll a number cube. We will identify the number then find the same number on our papers then color it. 

-Self Portraits and Name writing samples (We will add these to your child's portfolio to monitor the wonderful progress they will make in preschool this year)

-Playdough Pinching and Rolling to create letters to place on coconut trees

-Squeezing sponges (to develop pincer grasp) to transfer water into a cup

- Handwriting Without Tears Books (Focusing on colors and shapes)

-Letters in my name sensory sorting- We will be finding the letters of our name in colored rice.  We will then match the letters in our name on our name cards.  Then we will write our names to practice.  To extend this activity we will compare our name to a friend in our small group. (Who has a L like Lisa is their name?)

-Letters in my Name using "eyeglassess"- We will search for the letters in our name using special letter glasses.  Then we will use these letters to make our names.  To complete this acitivity we will rainbow 

Centers

Art Table- Tissue Paper Collages for the first letter in our names to make letter mosaics/Bingo Dobbers

Block Area- blocks, blocks with coconut leaves

Sand Table- Sand/ Chicka, Chicka Trees, beans(as the coconuts), and letters, Sand with containers to pour and sift

Book Area- Exploring Books about school, sharing, friends

Manipulative Table: Magnetic Tiles, Puzzles

Dramatic Play- dishes, cookware, and food (restaurant role play)

Rug- Legos, Trains

Science/Social Studies Math Circle

-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".

-Discussing how we sit and listen in a group (our community classroom)
-Following Directions
-Watch Me count (reinforcing concepts of one: counting objects, letters, words, etc)

Songs, Word Plays, and Language

-Action Bingo Song:

There was a class that had a boy/girl, and _____was his/her name-o

(Each child chooses an action for others to follow)

Jump, Jump, (name), Jump, Jump, (name), Jump, Jump, (name) ,

We're glad you're in school today.

-If your happy and you know it.

-Our Good Morning Chant

-ABC Rock by Steve and Greg

-Number Rock by Steve and Greg

-Dino Stomp

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.  This system can be explained more thoroughly in a tab on this blog.