Our First Whole Group Time With Sheryl!

tcarmichael2

Sep 29

2 min read

Whole Group Times

As it is only the second day of our school week, we begin meeting by reminding the children of their job assignments. We then got to work on our meeting jobs, Alexander started us off by counting up the children and seeing who was in attendance today. Nicho helped us to fill in today's date and announced the date to his classmates. Alice told us our forecast for the day, Jack added a cube to our ones jar for day 15 of JK, and Georgia filled us in on the schedule for the day. Today's sign in task was another shape review. We continue to work with the children on seeing the difference between a square with its four equal sides and the rectangle with its two short sides and two long sides. So today the children had to put their sign in tag next to the rectangle.

Today we learned two new Lively Letters /f/ and /v/.

Quiet Lip Biting Sound /f/

The quiet, fire breathing dragon bites his bottom lip and blows on it to put out the fire. He sticks his head out because he thinks he looks cool.

Noisy Lip Biting Sound /v/

The noisy vampire bites his lip and blows. He turns on his voice so he'll scare everyone.

We enjoyed our first whole group time with Sheryl today! This week the kids began their time with Sheryl by participating in big body movements that strengthened the muscles in their core and upper body. We want to make sure that their muscles are strong enough to hold the body in an upright position for an extended period of time (i.e., during morning meeting or while sitting at a table) and their hands are strong enough to hold fine motor tools effectively. After the kids had a chance to move and warm up, each child had the chance to practice using their helping hand to hold their paper steady while their strong hand cut out different types of lines. Cutting activities are a great way to strengthen the small muscles in the hand, which also help get them ready for more challenging fine motor tasks. If you are using scissors at home with your children, it can be helpful to say "Keep your thumb on top and use your eyes to look at the lines." Here is a little video of a fun rhyme you can use to remind your child how to use scissors.