I have to admit- when I heard today's forecast, I wasn't so excited about teaching today......but was I ever wrong! We had a fabulous day- inside and out!
This week our focus is Snowmen! We began by reading The First Day of Winter by Denise Flemming. This adorable story is a take-off of Twelve Days of Christmas. Each day, the snowman's best friend brings him a number of decorations. It begins, "On the first day of winter my best friend brought to me a red cap with a gold snap." Each page adds more details to the original verse. By the end, the snowman is beautifully decorated! The children helped me read 'red cap with a gold snap' on each page and by counting the new decorations.
We reviewed our sounds today, without adding any new families. The children are able to say the sounds when shown the lower case letters and identify which of the 'brother's' is noisy and quiet. With a cue, most children are able to tell the family name (or sound type), but this requires too much concentration to move on to other sounds. We will add more by the end of the week, but review these families for a few more days.
During our review of last week's poem, Warm Mittens, everyone was able to recite it with minimal cueing. I am amazed at how easily they have memorized the poem. We have a new one for tomorrow about snowmen.
We've worked hard during calendar time and each child gets a turn to point to the months of the year while we sing. It's wonderful to see so much progress! You can help by reinforcing the date in the format: day, month, date, year: Monday, January 9, 2012.
Outside was a little misty, but not bad at all! On our way outside, I mentioned that we may be the only friends on the playground, as I expected that the DUMC kids would play inside. Oh, no! Two classes joined us and we all had fun chasing each other and building a 'fire' and making smores inside our 'cave' to get warm!
Back inside we began work on categories. Using a Tree Map with two sections, Clothes and Weather, we classified the theme vocabulary. Please see the attached picture of our tree map. At first, this took quite a bit of assistance and direct instruction. By the end of the day, it was much easier! This is the gateway to defining words, which we also touched upon. Using the sentence, "______ is a type of _______. You use it to _______," is our starter sentence for defining words. This will take lots of practice.
Following circle, Ms. Cortney (Ms. Carol was unable to join us today) helped us play a board game in groups of two. The children worked on turn taking, waiting, counting, and following rules. I worked in small groups continuing to focus on categories and defining.
We had a wonderful Monday and can't wait for tomorrow!
