First week exploration

Tomorrow is the end of the first week of school! Other than being TOTALLY exhausted, it's been a great week. I have a smart, sweet group who are quickly learning the ropes of kindergarten. Even though I'm very excited to work with this new batch of kiddos, I always forget how totally nonexistent their attention span is at the beginning of the year!!

To battle this, we do a lot of "room exploration" the first week of school. My students think it's play time, but really:
     1. They are learning how to use all of the materials in the classroom
     2. I am assessing what they can and can't do
     3. I'm getting a look at how they interact with others

Isn't that sneaky of me to add such productive things to playtime??

Anyway, I start exploring time by putting a different tub of math manipulatives on each table. Students had about 7 minutes to play with explore each tub. Then I rotate the tubs to the next table (The first week of kindergarten, I definitely believe in rotating the stuff, not the students). We continued until everyone has a turn.

I also did rotations with color word activities. We read books like Brown Bear, Brown Bear and Pete the Cat: I Love my White Shoes and talked about the color words. Then we had 3 stations:



Group 1

Group 1 had a choice: Write their color words on the white board or use cards to spell color words. I was amazed at how well the majority of my students could form their letters!



 

Group 2

Group 2 used playdoh letters to spell color words. The cards are from KinderKids'fantastic Brown Bear, Brown Bear Unit on TPT.



 

Group 3

Group 3 used magnet letters to spell their color words. This really gave me insight into who could recognize letters and realize that letters are used to make words. I also meant to get the wikki sticks out for them to use, but I forgot. Oops! That will be an adventure for another day.

All and all, the room exploring was a big hit! Now it's time to walk my poor dog who must be wondering why she's all alone during the day now. Poor baby!