First Day of School

I had such a great time with your kids this week! They are so eager to learn and love making new friends. We had fun with our puppets practicing our classroom rules this week. They were so quick to tell piggy what he needed to do better. We also read the book The Kissing Hand. This is such a cute book about a little raccoon that is scared to go to school and so his mom gives him a kissing hand to remember that she always loves him and thinks about him even when he is at school.

We made a fun craft to go along with this and practiced writing their names. We also put as many kisses as we could on a hand and counted them up. The kids got to keep 2 for a fun little snack.

We made lots of new friends and played some friendship games. They each picked a sock and then found the friend with their matching sock. Another game we played was to a fun song about friends. We took turns passing a ball to a new friend. To finish we made a paper doll and connected them to each other to make a big wall of friends. I encouraged the kids to draw hair, eyes, noses and mouths and to even draw clothes on themselves. They thought it was so funny if I would ask where their hair was or if they were bald. :)

I can't wait for another fun week! Don't forget our color theme next week. Monday/Tuesday will be Red Day and Wednesday/Thursday will be Blue Day. We also will be starting show n' tell next week. It will be on either Wednesday or Thursday. It would be fun for them to find a show n' tell with one of our colors from the week.

First week and absolutely no tears!

This last week was a blast! I have such an adorable class and was completely shocked that nobody cried on the first day when they had to leave Mom and Dad. It was fun to see some of the kids that were 3 last year and so nervous, just run right inside this year as excited as ever! 

The first day is always really busy with learning how everything goes. We went over rules, and all the expectations while at preschool. We also read the book, "The Kissing Hand". I love this book because it talks about a little raccoon who is scared to go to school so his mother tells him the story of the kissing hand and she kisses him right on his palm. She reminds him that he can put his hand on his cheek and it will make his heart feel warm and always remember that his mom loves him. I gave each of the kids a heart sticker to put on their hand to remember that their moms and dads love them even when they are at school. Later we made "ME" masks. It was cute to see how creative they were. I did an example before hand and reminded them all the parts of their face, "nose, eyes, eyebrows, freckles maybe, ears, etc." They were excited to show them off to the class and the camera. 

 Love the big smile!

After making these we played the m & m game. Always a favorite! I made up a simple chart. Each child gets to pick 2 colors and based off of what color they pick they tell us something about themselves. 

Green: favorite animal  Yellow: Favorite Book  Orange: Best Friend   Red: Favorite food  

 Brown: favorite thing to do outside and Blue: Favorite Sport

Every kid loves seeing a school bus at this age! And even though they don't ride the bus to school we made a little treat and made our own buses. Nothing too fancy!

On Thursday we did our normal routine in the morning and then did Apple day to introduce the letter A. I always love apple day and telling the kids the story of the Little House with no windows and no doors, with a star inside. This year I even made the story about a little boy in our class. He loves sharks so we even made him visit a shark in the story. :) At the end I cut open the apple and show them the star inside. They always think it is so neat. Afterward we made carousels out of our apples. 

We also played a little math game with these apples to see who could find the number I called out first and cover it. They all did pretty well at knowing their numbers and being able to recognize them. There is also a fun game you can play with this with your more advanced learners. It is called Stinky 7. All you do is have 2 dice and some counters. One player rolls both dice and then adds up the 2 and covers the sum of what they rolled. They keep going until they can't go anymore. For example if they roll a number that has already been covered or if they roll a 7. (There are no 7's on the board, therefore the name Stinky 7) then the next player rolls.  The first person to fill up their chart is the winner.

It was such a fun week. I am really looking forward to this year! We also took class pictures. You have no idea how hard it is to get everyone looking at the camera with a smile. O well. I think our shirts turned out really cute this year. I love the lime green.