All About Me/Feelings Themes

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 a day where they are interviewed by myself and their classmates. I write their answers on large chart paper and then once everyone has been interviewed, I combine them into a class book with each child's picture. Each page says something like this:
"My name is _________.
I have ____ letters in my name.
My favorite color is ______.
My favorite animal is ______.
My favorite food is ______."

Some good Preschool books about Feelings and All About Me are:
*"The Feelings Book"
*"When Sophie Gets Angry, Really Really Angry"
*"Llama Llama Misses Mama"
*"Wemberly Worried"
*"The Way I Feel"
*"Llama Llama Mad at Mama"
*"The Pout Pout Fish"
*"Only One You"
*"Stand Tall Molly Lou Melon"
*"Chrysanthemum"

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Pumpkin Theme

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

Cookies Theme

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

Friends

Social-Emotional Skills are such a large part of the Preschool curriculum. Most of our activities are group based and we spend a lot of time and instruction learning about how to be a good friend and how to treat the people around us. In February, I send home a handful of cutout hearts with each child. I ask parents to document each time they catch their child doing something kind and send it back to school. We then read them aloud to the class and hang them on our wall. The goal is to cover the entire wall with hearts. We also focus on one character trait each week. We discuss the trait and give examples of that trait and then watch for students exhibiting that character trait throughout the week. Some books that I use to reinforce our lessons are: *"Stick and Stone" *"A Sick Day for Amos McGee" *"How Do Dinosaurs Play with Their Friends?" *"Llama Llama and the Bully Goat" *"Rainbow Fish" *"Should I Share my Ice Cream?"

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