Engaged Early Learning

 The first week of school each year, I spend a lot of time practicing routines with my students. I make it a goal of mine to make every child in my class feel loved and safe so those first few weeks are so important in setting the atmosphere. I introduce one or two centers a day until all of the centers are open and running smoothly. I take pictures of areas around our classroom and make routine books that we read and reread throughout the first couple of weeks. I create Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math boxes that I place at our Science Center,  along with magnifying lenses and a scale. The STEAM boxes match whatever theme we are covering.  I separate our blocks by color and store them in matching colored boxes so that children are easily able to replace the blocks when they are done playing. These are stored in our Block Center.  I label our toy cubbies with pictures so that children know where each toy is stored and they are easily able to find them and put them a

The first week of school, we spend practicing our routine and getting comfortable with coming to school.  The next couple of weeks, we spend getting to know ourselves and each other. We do an All About Me Theme followed by a Feelings Theme.  We create cutouts of ourselves and display them to show our differences and connectedness. I love how each cutout looks different.  We talk a lot about how we are each special and unique. We compare eye colors and hair colors. We talk about our families and who is in each family. We draw pictures of ourselves and our families including any pets we have. We do name activities where we count how many letters are in our names and then we use letter tiles to make our names.  We compare each child's name to the other names in the class and look at beginning letters and syllables.  We also graph some of our favorites, such as colors, animals, foods, or sports. We draw pictures of our friends and copy our friends' names. Each child gets

 Another theme we cover in the fall is Apples. In our Math Center, we make Apple Stew using apple erasers, bowls, ladles, and recipe cards.  We also use apple manipulatives to count and sort.  In the Science Center,  I place apple slices, apple seeds, whole apples and magnifying lenses. The students are able to investigate the apples.  We practice gluing by placing just a dot of glue inside each dot on an apple. This strengthens their hands and we use glitter glue in red, yellow and green to make it more interesting.  At the Writing Center  I have the students draw apples and add details. Words related to apples can be posted in the Writing Center for children who are ready and interested in copying words onto their paper. Apple shaped papers can also be placed at the Writing Center to make it more engaging. In the Fine Motor/Sensory Center,  children try stacking apples and counting to see how high they can go. Some books about apples that we read include: *"

 Every October we learn about pumpkins. Mini pumpkins are brought into the Science Center for every child and we investigate them with magnifying lenses and our senses. We also cut the top off of a large pumpkin and scoop the seeds out to investigate as well.  I allow every child who is interested, a turn scooping seeds out. I never require the students to help if they are not interested.  In the Literacy Center, we use mini pumpkin erasers to trace around letters. Pumpkin stickers can also be used.  We take a field trip to a local pumpkin patch where every child is allowed to pick a pumpkin to take home.  In the Fine Motor/Sensory Center, we make pumpkin pie with orange playdough and rolling pins.  We also count and make patterns in the Math Center with pumpkin erasers or manipulatives. In the Pumpkin STEAM box, I include mini pumpkins, leaves, acorns, magnifying lenses and orange slices of pool noodles that the children can play and experiment with. The Dramatic

The indoor snowballs are so fun and not cold. We divided into two teams and had an indoor snowball fight! This is good gross motor fun.  A couple of fine motor ideas for a Weather or Seasons Theme include leaf rubbings that are then painted with watercolor paint, painting with water colors and ice cubes, and  playing in shaving cream. We practice writing our names and many different letters and numerals in the shaving cream.  Mittens can be matched and rocks can be painted to look like snowmen parts and then put together in many different ways.  Rain clouds can be painted with sponges and then raindrops can be cut out and glued to the cloud. Drops of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple paint can be placed inside a sandwich bag and then sealed. Then students can mix the colors and trace letters on the rainbow in a bag.  Tissue paper rainbows are also a cute craft but time consuming for little hands.  In our Winter STEAM box that I place at our Science

Who doesn't love cookies? We have an entire theme based on cookies and it is one of my favorites! We incorporate a lot of counting into our cookie theme. We count chips onto cookies in our Math Center.  We count cookies and clip the correct numeral in our Fine Motor/Sensory Center.  We serve cookies at the bakery in the Dramatic Play Center.  We also practice numeral recognition and matching and fine motor skills using cookies and pom poms.  We have taken a field trip to a local bakery some years and other years made cookies together as a class but in both situations, we have decorated them and enjoyed eating them.  There are several cookie stories we read including: *"The Gingerbread Boy" *"The Gingerbread Girl" *"Whose Stole the Cookies from the Cookie Jar?" *"The Doorbell Rang" *"May I Please Have a Cookie?" *"The Duckling Gets a Cookie" *"If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" At our A