What Did You Do in School Today?
“Played.”
Let’s face it, that’s usually the answer you’ll get from a preschooler. In effort to keep parents informed and promote discussion at home, I try to send emails after class to let parents know what happened that day. Here’s the email I sent home on April 4, a “Just 3’s” day.
Hi all! I haven’t yet uploaded the photos, but boy, did we cover a lot today!
After circle, I showed them the numeral 0 (zero). There was some discussion as to whether is was an o or a zero. I said if it’s a letter, it’s an o, if it’s a number, it’s a zero!) Then I held out my empty hand and asked “How many elephants on my hand?” I went around asking “How many dogs on your head?” and other silly questions. Some children preferred answering “none.” I explained that while there are many ways of saying it, when we’re counting, we say zero.
We switched gears and I had them get out their people blocks. I brought out several fairy tale characters (some bears, a wolf, a girl) and invited them to create stories using the props. Lisa typed frantically trying to keep up with them!
Snack time: Homemade mango bread and carrot sticks! Thanks Kellie!
Children’s choice: some painting, some sensory explorations with water crystals and marbles. More story creations on their own. More dramatic play than I’ve seen in awhile. I worked individually with each child on patterns to see their understanding. What’s great is that it is such a GREAT pre-reading skill. The children “read” the pictures from left to right, then had to figure out what picture would come next. What was interesting, was that some children were randomly choosing new pictures, until I said, “It’s just like our calendar, finding the pattern,” (then I repeated the pattern) THAT they understood!
Since we weren’t going outside, I invited children to roll up the rug to see our “stage” underneath. (a taped rectangle.) Children sat in chairs around the outside. I read each child’s story they created earlier, and they got to choose which part they wanted to play, and who got to play the other characters in their story. They then acted out their stories! The LOVED this! When all of our performances were done, they rolled the rug back. (THAT was fun, too!)
We read a 1, 2, 3 Counting Book.
At the very end of the day, we sang and created Handwriting Without Tears’ Mat Man. “Mat Man has one head, one head, one head, Mat Man has one head, so that he can……..” (children fill in what we do with our heads!) The we added eyes, nose, mouth, ears, etc, etc, etc.
A GREAT day! I just LOVE your kids! 😉
G