My theme this week is "Fall"! I love the fall. It is my favorite season. I love all of the fun and exciting activities we get to do in the months to come. This week is pretty much just introducing seasons to my students and adding an emphasis to fall.
We will also start our letter of the week this week. Last week I followed a different approach to letter of the week and found a random order from an article I found ( can't remember who). But this year I am just sticking with the good ol' ABC order. We pretty much do the same thing during whole group for letter of the week. We look at the letter, we listen to a song, we watch the sesame street clip about that letter ( my favorite!) and we make a list of the letter words. Sometimes we go on a letter hunt around the room too, but that's usually a play it by ear type of thing.
For the first couple weeks, or until the students get more independent with writing, I will have Mondays fine motor time split into groups while I do 1:1 letter writing with students. As the months go on I can expand the groups, and then finally make it whole group letter writing, but for the beginning I do 1:1 to assess their writing skills, which I am sure many do not have yet.
I also am adding a religion aspect to the letter of the week. I found bible verses that begin with each letter of the alphabet. Each week will be a new bible verse to go with the letter. We will color our bible verse sheet and add it to a folder to make a book when we get through all the letters! I think it will be a cute idea, but I am still brainstorming ways to organize keeping all the sheets. I will probably just get cheapy folders to keep them in for each student.
My learning centers are broke up into 4 centers. On the right of my LP I have the students split into groups, which I have changed every week. The students will work on 1 center per day and rotate between 4 days. On thursdays we do not have learning centers.
I also decided to add a number of the week, just for 10 weeks. That should actually say zero. I'll have to go fix that. I wanted to do this just to be able to focus on each individual number so the students can recognize them, and then we will get more in depth of number meaning and counting and so forth.
We also have play time everyday. I feel this is very important and they need it. We also have a large motor time everyday, but thursday. Thursdays the students have music class so they will get that large motor time there. Though it is important for students to learn their letters and numbers, they also need to work their bones and bodies and PLAY! Some may not agree with me, but this works for me and the students work hard during learning time because they know they will end their day with play :)
