A Peek at our Week!

Well, it is definitely raining! It has been absolutely pouring all morning, just about the heaviest rain that I have ever seen, and just when I think it's clearing it sets in again.  Time for me share a few photos of some of the activities we had fun with during group work this week!

Let's start with fine motor morning groups.

Using pieces of pipe cleaner as worms and clothes pegs as bird beaks is a very easy way to work on developing those little hand muscles and fine motor control.  Just cut up the pipe cleaners and provide some sort of container to work as a nest.  Kidlets use their bird beak to grab a worm and transfer it to their nest.  It would be very easy to make this activity much cuter, but my kidlets have always bought into the bird idea so I just leave it as it. :)

We love feeding Mike! You can find out how to make him in this post.

Kidlets squeeze open his mouth and feed him beans - or anything you have. This activity is quite tricky for some little ones during the beginning of the year, but as we work on muscle strength and stamina it becomes much easier.  Strong muscles mean no more "I can't write anymore, my hand is sore!" after only a few words on the page and much better pencil control. :)

Felt chains - the perfect quiet activity. :) Find out how I made them in this post.

We had lots of fun during literacy groups this week, but being with my Guided Reading group makes it very tricky to take photos!

I did manage to get a few snaps of this group playing Tower of Power!

This version is the letter recognition one - just write letters on plastic cups.  Kidlets take turns choosing one from the top of the stack, saying the letter and adding their cup to the tower.  We also play this with sight words later in the term.  The perfect storage solution for this game is an empty Pringles container!

These gorgeous girls aren't in my class this year but they came to visit one afternoon and played a game of 'Up, Up and Away'. This was the letter recognition game we played at the end of Guided Reading this week.

My kidlets love this game because of the superhero theme - and the sound effects they can make along the way! :) It's in my store in both Queensland font and standard font.

This week was our first practice with 'Write the Room'!  I love these activities because they make even the most simple concepts so much more exciting!

All you need are some clipboards.  This week I made up some picture cards and kidlets had to write down the number shown on each.  They loved sneaking around as 'spies' to find the cards.  You can find heaps and heaps of Count the Room/Write the Room packs on TpT.

A little more counting practice with some numeral and number recognition thrown in.  Kidlets loved counting buttons onto their snowman to match his knitted hat.  This part of a freebie in my store. :)

Lucky last... 

This activity is super simple to make.  Just use some masking tape to label pipe cleaners with numbers.  Kidlets lace the correct amount of beads onto each one.  

Turns out I took more photos this week than I thought. I'm trying really hard to make sure they are good ones, but you know how it is in the classroom!  I don't want to stop kidlets as they are working, and Preppies sure are wriggly.  Hopefully you found an idea or two you might be able to use. :)