January!

Boy! We have done some fun things in January.

We were learning about Winter. The students were learning about proper dress in the winter as well. For Large Group Literacy (LGL), we read the story "Froggy Gets Dressed".

After reading it and discussing what we wear in the winter, the students had to get me dressed! Here are some fun photos.

I had a bunch of different options to choose from and they had to choose the appropriate ones.

 

We also listened to the story, "The Emperor's Egg" and watched a real life video in order to connect it to real-life situations. I wanted the children to see illustrations and then real video to connect that the story is non-fiction and applies to the real world. 

 They have such concentration! We tried marching around the room with them! All we used were cotton balls. I told them those were their precious baby penguin eggs!

It was so icy that we missed a lot of outdoor play time. In order to prevent another full blown center time, we set up stations the students were able to go to. These stations included the following: puffy paint, ice hockey, and ice melting. I used these to make a matrix of who explored ice.

 For the ice hockey, we used our rectangular blocks to create a border around the table. On each side we left a hole for a goal. There were groups of two on each side. We gave them sporks (spoons would do too) and a piece of ice. Once they started hitting it back and forth,  they were having a great time!

 To make puffy paint, we mixed shaving cream and glue. I do not have exact measurements, we just sort of eyeballed it! We added glitter to make it beautiful!

 

To enjoy ice melting, give the students two pieces of ice.  One green and one red. The green one is for salt and the red one is for water. We gave the students droppers to add drops of water to each. They waited to see which melted faster! 

Winter Plans

So I have been thinking a lot about what I would want from a blog being a new teacher...I thought and thought and thought and came up with an idea. During my very first year of teaching Pre-K, I would try and find examples of lesson plans to see what I am doing compared to everyone else and how does it look. Georgia recently switched standards to the GELDS so it is a little more comprehensive than last years standards.

I have decided to provide an example of my lesson plans for this week coming up. We are learning about winter and the winter weather. As we do the activities I will add pictures and more examples.

Here are my small group plans and some resources that I have found or made myself. I just Google certain images or clipart and use them. I am not selling them or own them, I am just using them personally.

click the image to view or download. These standards are only useful if you teach Pre-K in Georgia! I am so sorry! But the ideas are great!!

For the Building a Snowman group, I tried last year and it went alright. I had die-cut three different sized shapes and a hat and nose and so on and they would gradually build the snowman piece by piece. This got a little overwhelming for some of my students because there were no visual cues, just verbal directions and an assigned step for each value. But I found this link on Pinterest that has it laid out in a visual form for the students to see. It also shows them what to draw.

The website has such great winter ideas! Check them out!! 

For my Reading Group, I found a winter letter sound match online that cost money, so I used graphics from Google images and the search to create my own. Remember, these are not my images. 

Here

Here 2

Here 3

The third document I won't use in my small group, I will use that later on. Maybe even next week with a different group.

Here are some of my Large Group plans for the week as well. I have not included any of my books yet. They are such a pain in the butt to me! Errr!!!

If you are wondering what Higgledy Piggledy is..it is a great tool to teach syllables to kids! It goes a little something like this:

Higgledy Piggledy Bumble bee, 

Will you say your name for me?

(name)

Let's clap it!

Let's snap it!

Let's stomp it!

Let's clap it!

I start out doing the kids' names in the beginning of the year and then move on to other words. It really helps them start to segment words into parts. 

The other Phonological awareness game is the "I'm going on a trip..." game. This game is great for beginning letter sounds. This week we are trying the letter W. Anyways, the point of this game is to sit in a large circle and name items with whatever letter sound you are focusing on that you would bring with you. 

There are plenty more great ideas for PA here!

Okay, I hope this is helpful...I will definitely add more picture and progress of what we are doing. This is just my general outline for the week. :)