First week of School

The first week went really well! All of the adventurers get along great. The theme this week was Ready-Set-Read. 

On Tuesday we made reader ribbons. There is a song that corresponds where you shake your reader ribbon left to right, the same way you read, left-to-right. 

 We read, "Chicka-chicka-boom-boom" during circle time and also introduced our letter for the week, R the Rhino. 

At the sensory table the adventurers had a great time playing with red cherry play dough trying to form the dough into the letter Rr.

The adventurers went exploring outside to find treasures....

little berry balls from the Chinese lantern plant

Stones

A little nature art

On Thursday we talked about books. I had everyone sit in a circle with a pile of easy reader books. On the count of 1-2-3 everyone opened to a page in their book and had to describe what was happening. Then I had everyone point to the Rr in the book they were sharing with us. 

For our art project we made "My first I can read book".    (This was not intending to promote commercialism or consumerism, in any way!!) Children can read signs of familiar stores they visit, without realizing that they are READING. So this project was for each child to have a personalized book of words they can read.

This activity also worked on the fine motor skill of cutting.

The "Reading Rainbow Road" is a game I made up for my little adventurers to find the letter Rr on the letter road. I put down white crepe paper (streamer) for the road and the children loved putting the letters on top!

Once the road was in place I explained that when the music is playing we will move like animals (we did dinosaurs, birds, snakes, kangaroos, horses, and dogs) around the "Reading Road".  When the music stops each animal, I mean adventurer, will need to find a letter Rr to put onto the Rainbow.

This was a great activity for letter recognition because only Rr were allowed to be on the rainbow! If a child tried to put a different letter on the rainbow I simply said, "No the letter M makes the mmm sound, we are looking for the Letter R that makes the rrrr sound."

I think everyone enjoyed their first week of School Time Adventures!