We're Back!

I need to apologize about the time since the last blog post, it was entirely unintentional! I wrote and published a post from my phone the week of the 13th that included pictures from our Pre-K Family Night, but apparently it did not actually post. Since it seems to have disappeared, we will assume it is floating around out there in the internet cosmos! Get ready to settle in for a long post this time! =)

I hope that everyone had a great Christmas Vacation! Ours started off a little bumpy, but we soon settled in and enjoyed the time we got to spend with our family and friends. The students seemed happy to be back at school! Almost all of them came running into the classroom Monday, ready to jump back into our activities.

This week in class we are focusing on author/illustrator, Jan Brett. She is one of my favorite children's authors! The students were already familiar with her from her version of The Gingerbread Baby that we read before Christmas. 

One of the favorite activities that we do with this study is a retelling of the story, The Mitten. 

After they've had the story read to them a couple of times, the students are given masks that represent the animals in the story. We then use a white afghan for our mitten and act out the story as it is read. We usually do this a couple of time so each child is able to play the part of one of the animals.  It gets a bit wild and there is a lot of static-y hair involved from being "inside" the "mitten", but the students LOVE it!

One students gets to be the narrator (with teacher assistance).

The bear sneezed and the mitten flew into the air!

The afternoon class making room for one more animal under the mitten.

The mitten is almost full, but there are still a few more animals to go...the rabbit is asking to climb inside!

This is one of my favorite activities to do with my classes because it gets all of the children involved, even those that are usually a bit shy. The whole class helps with the characters' lines and the acting out of the story...it also doesn't hurt that they all love to pretend to sneeze a bear-sized sneeze! Make sure to ask your child about The Mitten!

This week I also had time to work with each child on either recognizing/naming the letters in their name and/or writing their names. Next week I will be sending home a simple activity for each child that involves one of these skills. It will include a set of laminated cards that are a name puzzle (3's) or tracing/spelling/writing practice for 4's and 5's. This is a skill, along with uppercase and lowercase alphabet recognition that we will be hitting heavily this second semester. Thanks in advance for all of your help! I have seen improvement in many of my students since our first conference in October!

This Week:

Theme: Jan Brett Stories

Letter of the Week: Dd

Nursery Rhyme of the Week: Georgie Peorgie

Skills: Retelling a story, name recognition (3's), name writing, letter recognition, number recognition