What's Been Going On in Pre-K?

Y'all, my preschoolers keep it real. Never do they hesitate to tell me that I'm having a crazy hair day, or that I look silly because I accidentally smeared marker all over my face, or that they love an activity I created.  Normally I love to just hear the last one, but hey, you win some, you lose some.

As I start to finish up head teaching, I reflect on how I want to improve.  I really reflect on not letting myself get too caught up in "this is what we have to do" and "this is how I have to teach it" and just LET THE LEARNING HAPPEN.


I wanted to share some of the activities and the "goings on" that have happened the past few weeks with my kiddos.  The child development lab where I'm student teaching currently focuses a lot on child-led learning and less teacher-led.  They also focus a lot on exploring and discovering and gross motor activities.

For literacy, I've read Hot Rod Hamster by Cynthia Lord
This was a great book for getting the children engaged in what they were reading.  The story goes through building a race car for a hamster and the hamster chooses what parts he wants to add to his car.  The kids loved picking out how they would have their car and making the noises their car would make (which, let me tell you, they can make a mean engine revving sound!) After we read the story, we went out into the hallway and had races with scooters.  Some kids raced, some said GO!, and some ran the stopwatch.  This activity was a huge hit!

source

My kids have been loving to learn with boxes.  We've done everything from exploring boxes, making them into cars, boats, bobsleds (thank you winter olympics), and painting boxes.  We've watched the book on Youtube "Not A Box".  It shows how many different things you can make from a box.  We've had scooter races, planted flowers in boxes, made patterns with boxes, went around campus with the kids and collected boxes, and have even done a sink/float activity in the pool with boxes.  I'm telling you, there's nothing better than a box to play with.  This has definitely brought back the childhood mems.

The kiddos have LOVED (and that is even an understatement) the movie Frozen and they, of course, all know the Let It Go song AND the actions that Elsa does while singing.  I've also had to braid hair a countless number of times. Goodness.  I'm in love with the movie as much as the next, but I don't know how much longer I can stand to hear that song.  Between that and the Everything is Awesome song from the Lego movie, I'm losing it.

I can't believe I only have a month left with the little ones!

Any ideas you've done in your classroom that were a big hit??

{Katie}