When the children walked in Monday morning, they were excited to hear that they had brand new seats. I will change seats at the start of each month so the children get to know everyone in the class :)
I'm sure you've all heard by now that your children were able to see a real firetruck up close and personal Monday morning. They couldn't contain their excitement when I told them they would be able to meet real firefighters! I was so proud of your little ones during our fire safety assembly today. Not only did they sit nicely during the entire presentation, but they also answered some of the firefighters questions in front of a large crowd. They are all so smart!!!! I am so proud of them all!
This week, the children learned all about fire safety! We read several books including "Stop, Drop, and Roll" as well as wrote in our journals about what we knew about firetrucks. Then, we read an emergent reader chorally as a class titled "I see a Firefighter." Each child received their own copy of the book. First, I reviewed our two sight words in this story "I" and "see" and then we took a picture walk. I explained to the children that the pictures give us clues and help us read. After we read the story together, I walked around the room and asked the children to read me their favorite page as they were coloring in the pictures. I was so proud of them!
We also made cute little firedog hats. The children wore them proudly and "barked" all the way to the bus! Thank you all for spending time with your children to discuss your meeting place in case of a fire. Many of the children shared their meeting place was their mailbox or a nearby tree. Check out some of our fire safety pictures below:
Then I changed the sentence by replacing Tommy with one of the children's names and asked a volunteer to erase the word that needed to be changed. We then wrote the new sentence and read it chorally as a class, pointing to the words as we read them.
In math, the children were introduced to our Triangle shape poster and did the following:
• Named the shape and drew the shape in the air with large arm motions.
•Identified if it had straight sides or curved sides.
• Described the shape (number of sides, corners (vertices), compared length of sides)
• Generated a list of objects that looked like or reminded them of triangles and sorted triangles/non-triangles.
I also taught the children two new games this week- Match up with Dot Cards and Top-It with Dot Cards.
Match up With Dot Cards:
- The goal of the game is to turn over two cards (a pair) that have an equal number of dots.
Before we began playing, I showed the kiddos that the deck holds more than one card for each number. I explained that although the cards don't look exactly the same, they each have the same number of dots. The children LOVED this game and were so excited when they found a match!
- Players turn over their top cards, and then say and compare the number of dots on the two cards.
- The player whose card has more dots (a greater number) takes both cards.
- If the cards have an equal number of dots (the same number), both players turn over another card and the player with the greater number of dots takes all four cards.
- Play continues until one partner has all the cards or until time runs out.
We also colored number boards to show the numbers 0-10. For each number, we counted out the appropriate number of boxes to be colored. When I asked the children what they noticed about the board, we discovered that every number is one larger than the number before it. They also told me it looked like a "staircase" and a "rainbow triangle".
I showed the children my pocket (made out of paper) and gave each child ten counters. I directed them to watch as I did the following: Showed three counters and placed them in the pocket. Showed 1 more counter and put it in the pocket. The children used their counters to show how many were in the pocket now. Then, I asked a volunteer to take all the objects out of the pocket and lead a class count to confirm the total. We repeated this process with larger numbers as the children grew more comfortable.
- Math Center: Children played Top- It with Dot Cards
- Tablets: Children read leveled texts on Raz-Kids.
- Write the Room: Children walked around the room and recorded fire safety words on their recording sheets.
- Journals: Children wrote true stories in their journals by stretching out the sounds they heard.
- Guided Reading Group-- I reviewed the front of the book, the back of the book, the spine, the title, the author and the illustrator. After reviewing some sight words, and reading some sight word sentences, we took a picture walk and discussed how to use pictures to help us with the words in the book. We also looked at the beginning sounds of words to see if we could figure out what the words on the page could be.
I'm looking forward to another great week ahead!
Warm Regards,
Miss Visicaro