Preschool Boy!

This morning we had one excited boy on our hands!  It was day one of Nathan's preschool experience.  I am honored to get to be this little guy's teacher.  We told him that school would start at 8am, so he had to be up around 7am to have time to eat breakfast, get dressed, make his bed and brush his teeth before school.  Well......he was up at 6:30am, and was dressed and finished with breakfast by 7am!  His teacher (me) was still in her jammies pouring a bowl of cereal for herself when this eager beaver started asking "Is it time to start preschool yet?"  Needless to say, he was ready to get down to business!

We started the day talking about the calendar (days, months, date) and the weather.  He liked going to the front porch to check the weather, and he loved checking our forecast on Weather.com.  We also sang a couple of songs and practiced keeping a beat using drumsticks.  Then we settled in for some stories.

Keeping a beat and marching to Yellow Submarine by the Beatles.

We spent our first center time working on math/numbers.  We practiced rote counting from 1-100 with his number cards, then practiced identifying those number out of order.  After that, he put his number cards in order in sets of ten from 1-30.  He is pretty speedy at that!

Putting the numbers in order.

We concluded math time with a counting activity.  Nathan was given a number card, and he had to count out that many "blueberries" (marbles) to put in his bowl "to make blueberry muffins" (he chose the blueberry muffin motif).  Once he got one right, we got to dump out his bowl and start over with a new number.  He LOVED this!

Counting his "blueberries" into his pan.

Next was time for recess!  We had fun playing catch with the baseball and baseball gloves.  Then, Nathan zipped around on his Big Wheel.

Recess time!

For center #2, we worked on some social/emotional skills by making a people collage.  Nathan loves to cut things out with his scissors and glue them to paper.  Once he finished his collage, we talked about the people's expressions and appearances and how the different people looked compared to one another.

Proud of his people collage!  He even wrote his name on it.

After center time, we finished the morning with some work time.  He completed three different workbook pages in his math workbook, then tested out his fine motor skills by doing a color by number.  He has never been a big fan of coloring, so holding the crayon and coloring like this is truly a lot of work for him.  He stuck with it, though, and I think the more he builds up those muscles, the more he will enjoy it.

So, all in all, day one was a success.  He and I are both already looking forward to day two tomorrow morning!

Gina