Hey y'all! I've successfully completed the first two weeks of school. It's been crazy busy but so much fun. I absolutely love my group of kiddos this year! We've had a few hiccups and mishaps since day 1 but I'm very confident that we will get them worked out.
Even though I haven't posted since day 1 I've been snapping pictures to share with everyone. In case you don't know the first few weeks (sometimes months) of Pre-K is exploring and just focusing on the basic social skills they need. This year has started smoother than previous ones so the kids have had more things to explore and play with. Here are some things we've done over the last two weeks....
The first week of school I let them explore and play with Play-Doh. It was also a great time for me to explain how to properly play with it. I gave each student a plate (yes they are birthday plates) and told them their play-doh had to stay on the plate. I must have said it at least 100 times, but they listened! We had very minimal play-doh on the floor and no color mixing! Plus it made clean up so easy that the kids were able to take over the whole situation and I could focus on helping other centers get cleaned up.
After a week of Play-Doh I pulled out the dry erase boards. During this time I got to explain how to use the markers correctly, discuss that these special markers can only be used on the boards, and how we keep our boards clean. Last year almost all of the markers had flat tips after about a week and I had kids covered in Expo marker. Not the case this year. We are still using the same markers and everyone went home clean! :)
I happened to be wearing my hair up and with a headband on this day. So according to a 4-year old this is my self portrait. Ha!
Fruit Loop sorting! I used this activity as a pre-assessment for the kids. I was able to see who knew their colors and who didn't. It might seem crazy that I have to start with something so basic but I want to make sure I know where all my kids are coming from.
If you follow me on IG you probably saw this already. Don't follow me? Follow me HERE.
We did the activity Bingo Dot names. Oh my...they loved it!! The first month or two we really focus on the letters in each child's name. This is a great activity to emphasis it.
I also posted this on IG last week. Our math lesson that day was about a circle being continuous. I used an example of putting people inside of the circle. When there are no breaks in it no one can get out, but when we put a break in the circle the people could get out. When I sent them off to centers I walked to the back table and saw this happening. They were repeating the lesson we just had and were even trying to use the same vocabulary. Proud teacher moment! Plus I will say that their "people" look a lot better than mine do.
I've mentioned before that I have a few goals this school year. One BIG goal that I have is to not eat any frozen dinners or "junk" for my lunch at school. With that in mind I have been doing a lot of meal prep for the week. I love it and I think that with this I will be able to meet my goal this year. I am going to start posting about my weekly meals and hopefully they will help other people with their meals. I'm also doing a lot of meal planning and prepping for dinner, but for now I'm just going to be focusing on what I do for lunch.
I didn't take any picures the first week, so I'm just starting with week 2.
This week was a simple week and I repeated my meals.
Monday-Wednesday I had this for lunch. Ham rollups, cubed cheese, hard boiled egg, and some strawberries. I really enjoyed all of this and each day I found that I couldn't eat all of it. I was satisified the whole day, though, and wasn't hungry again until after school. I call that a success!
For dinner one night I cooked cornflake crusted chicken, which is amazing! So Thursday and Friday I took this for lunch. Leftover chicken, spinach, hard boiled egg, strawberries, and vanilla yogurt. Again, it was really good and I actually looked forward to lunch each day. I felt good after eating it and was satisified the whole day.
What are some of your favorite things to take for lunch? Any suggestions of what to mix it up with?
Have a great week!
Live, love, learn
Rachel :)
