WHEN DO THINGS HAPPEN AT SCHOOL?

The children loved our first unit!  It’s hard to believe we have wrapped up our beginning of school study.  The last few weeks of our study we discussed people that work at our school and the time activities occur at our school. We also learned how to form friendships and become part of a group.

One of our focus questions,“When do things happen at school?”, kept us on our toes. Children do not grasp the concept of time until around age six or seven, but we can learn important lessons from our focus question. We discussed our time for events to occur during the day. Your child may not recognize 11:30 a.m. is our lunch time, but they know after P.E. we go to lunch.  The children do understand a block of time , such as circle time or outside time. I use a bell or a drum as a signal that a time for one activity is over and another activity is beginning. The signal helps children with transitions.

Hickory , Dickory, Dock had us moving to a tick-tock beat.  We brought this nursery rhyme to life as we took turns moving the mouse up and down the clock as we recited the rhyme. The large clock I brought to school helped your child with positional words. Positional words help your child with spatial awareness. I used a little mouse and the children took turns placing him UP the clock and DOWN the clock. We expanded on these positional words as we worked in pairs to place the mouse on, beside , above, or below our heads or arms.  These activities help your child grasp where an object is in relation to them.

Sequence of events is an important concept that we touched on during this unit. Each child put together three nursery rhyme puzzle cards in the order in which they occurred in the rhyme. This activity helps your child understand that events happen in a certain order.

Many people work at our school, and we used the topic question, “Who works at our school?”, to explore our campus. The story of the Gingerbread Man was one of our books for this topic question. Does the Gingerbread Man work at our school? A few children thought he did. We did search for him using clues that were read to us by other teachers. Our imaginations have no limits and the children learned how to follow directions and work as a group to find him.

One of my favorite things about teaching preschool is watching the children form friendships. Each child is learning to be a good friend, we are learning to share and help each other. Several of the learning games we play help your child participate in a group. We work together and solve problems. I love see the children help each other to complete a task. I placed geoboards on the table to help us form geometric shapes. Rubber bands are used as each child stretches them to form triangles, squares and rectangles.  We are learning shapes and using our fine motor skills.

October is fire safety month, and we loved seeing the fire truck. The firemen are here to help us and we are not afraid of them. It was wonderful watching the children take turns as they sat behind the wheel of the fire truck. We discussed 911 and practiced stop, drop, and roll. A good friend is ready to take a turn and share!

It looks like we are off and running right into the school year. Our next unit will be trees and I can’t wait!