Preschool Letter O

I taught letter O this week.

I have been a little stressed with preschool as of late, and I decided to not stress about it. I decided to not wait for everyone to show up before I start. I will start on time. If they are there on time, great! If not, I guess they might miss out on something but that isn't my fault.

I also planned this preschool a few weeks ahead of time. That way, I really didn't need to worry about it, until the day for it arrived. Other than doing some minor prep work.

Also in the past I have been trying to keep the activities towards the first hour, and playtime in the last hour. This time I decided to throw that schedule out the window. Figuratively of course.

I started by reading the story I had selected for this lesson. "My O sound box" by Jane Belk Moncure. By the time I was done with the story, all of my students had arrived.

We then traced our letter O. One of the girls had brought her breakfast with her, because she had been running late that morning. So I decided it was time to do snack time, so that she could have her breakfast and the other girls could eat as well.

For our snacks, I sliced up oranges. I cut them in wagon wheels, and then in half so they were half circles. One of the girls told me she didn't know how to eat her orange with a peel on it, and told me I needed to take the peel off. Instead of getting frustrated, I told her that was how I was serving it, and if she wanted me to I could show her how to eat it, but that was how she got it. OK so maybe not the nicest approach, but sometimes I bend over backward trying to be nice to my students, and all it does is stress me out, and get them to walk all over me. Yes I know they are 3 and four-year-olds, but hey, kids don't have to be very old to figure out they can walk all over an adult who will let them. Anyway, I'm getting off subject.

When the girls were done eating they wanted to go play. So I let them go play. The only rule, was if they were still eating, they had to stay at the table. We weren't taking food throughout the house. While the girls were playing I set up our next activity. The activity was doing an ocean dive. I had previously printed, and cut out various ocean critters. I then placed them on the floor and put a blue blanket on top of them. When it was all set up, I called the girls back, and they did their dive. They would take turns, going under the blanket, and pulling out a critter. They would then identify their critter to the group, and it would be the next child's turn. They seemed to really enjoy this game.

When they were done, I let them go play again. I then cleaned up the ocean, and got the next activity ready. Our craft. We made paper owls. It was a simple activity that I printed up online. The owl was made up of various shapes. I had cut out the smaller shapes, but let the kids cut out the 3 largest shapes. 2 ovals, and a triangle. At first the girls were complaining that they couldn't cut it perfectly. But I told them they didn't need to. They just needed to do their best. This way the owls they took home were really their owls, not the owls I made for them, because they felt like they couldn't do it perfectly. Once they were done cutting, they went and played again. I cleaned up all the paper scraps, and got the pieces ready for them to assemble. I then called them back again, and had them assemble their owls. When they were all done, they once again got to go play, and played pretty much until their mom's came for them. Other than the clean up time at the end.

Anyway, I'm not sure how much they learned, but overall I think they enjoyed their lessons, and had a good day. And I had a much less stressful preschool than some of the others I have taught.