I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for more information:

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Group Time Ideas

We usually start our preschool day out by doing a group time. It usually consists of doing some of the following, plus any other other activities that I think work well then:
Do the calendar, read books and do the activities about the letter & number, read the book about spring and do the journal page (language/literacy), play large muscle game & sing music song.
I thought it might be helpful to show you some of the things that really help us in group time:

This is the calendar we use. We sing little songs about the days of the week and months of the year and I let the kids tell me all about our day (with help, if needed) and move all of the days tags into place. They really catch on quickly to the routine. We got our calendar at a Lakeshore Learning store in town.
This is just a fun poster that we use to identify the letter of the day. I will give clues about the letter such as: our letter is by the orange square with an elephant and an eagle on it ("Ee"), then the child will find it and tell me what letter it is (if they can).
After we identify the letter, we read letter books. These are the ones I use right now. I get them from our local library. As I read I have the child find all of the letter of day they can on each page and we practice saying its sound(s) as the child points to the letter.
After we have read and identified and practiced the letter sound, we practice writing the letter. I use worksheets from learning page. I write the letter to demonstrate it, then help the child (usually a 4 year old) write the letter, then I let them practice on their own. They certainly won't (at least most kids) be able to write letters very well, but I feel like it is a good introductions to writing, the letter shapes and how to form them.
When we get to the number we are doing, we count up using an abacus to find our number. For example, I reminded them that last week we talked about 22, so today we counted up until we found the number after, which was 23. Then I like to demonstrate how to write the numeral as well as the number word, and then I let them practice writing it, if they want to. If I can find a book about that number we read and count the number in the book. Then whenever we want we count to our number (rocks and other small items, on our fingers, etc.)
The BIGGEST part of our preschool is reading. I like to get at least 10-20 library books about our subject, letter and number. We read and read throughout the week. A variety of good picture books help teach about things in a fun and interesting way. Plus, reading to your child is SO important to do each day. We love the library!!!