Hi everyone! The students have been having a great time here at school over the last few weeks! The beginning of the year is mostly about routines, getting the children comfortable at the school and with their teachers, learning how to talk to other teachers and students, learning how to do things for themselves, and learning the classroom procedures and daily schedule. We’ve spent lots of time throughout our school days working on those important social skills and all of the students have come so far in such a short amount of time. I’m so proud of all of them! Keep encouraging those social skills at home as well. Also be sure to ask what they have done at school – if they only say, “I played” or something similar, ask them questions about the parts of our day to see what they can tell you. You can say to them, “Tell me what did you do during small group.” “Tell me about large group.” “What did you talk about at lunch time? “Who did you work with today and what did you do together?”
During small groups the students worked on all areas of learning – fine motor skills, science, math, and problem solving. When they explored the different rocks and pebbles we have in the toy area with our magnifying glasses they worked on their science, math, and language skills. They loved using the magnifying glasses to see the small differences in the pebbles. They also sorted them by color and counted to see how many they had in their collection. We’ve also explored all of the different things you can do with playdoh and their tools and worked on problem solving skills with puzzles.
Fine-motor skills are very important and we’ve been working on those while doing multiple activities. They learned how to safely use scissors and the glue sticks. They each created different types of collages and now really love practicing their scissors skills. This is something you can do at home as well if you are supervising them.
Finally, we’ve worked on our writing and reading skills every day as well. Every morning they practice writing their names, practice letter and number writing during greeting time and writing time, and also started their individual writing journals that they will use all year. Each day I read at least two books to the students. These repeated readings help the children to be able to “read” or retell the story by themselves! During those times they also learn how to treat books, how to turn the pages, how to read the pictures, and what the words “title”, “author”, and “characters” mean.
**Remember that the photo album link was sent through Remind but is also on the side menu of the blog. If you subscribe to the album, you will get updates whenever I add pictures to it. Going forward, I normally will add pictures at the end of the week.