The first topic at the beginning of our scholastic year is Myself.

  The aim of this topic is to help children learn more about themselves and the people around them; become more aware of their feelings and the feelings of others.  They learn to interact with their peers and with adults in a socially acceptable way, which allows them to eventually form healthy relationships and fit comfortably into social situations. 

   On the First day of school children's emotions vary.  Some children are happy to be at school while others have some difficulty making the home to school transition, so our starting point to this topic was The Kissing Hand story.  This story is about a raccoon who is ready to start school.  He talks about his fears to his mother who comes up with a wonderful idea to help him remember that she loves him and is thinking about him, even when she is not with him.  After the story, each child made a hand-print using paint and put a heart in the centre of the hand-print.  The children were so eager to give this little gift to their mummies!

     During another activity we made a set of class rules.  The starting point was the story 'David goes to school'. We used shared reading. I pointed out the concepts of the book: front cover, author, illustrator, top and bottom of page.  Then I began with a 'picture walk' guiding the children through a preview of the story and asking questions.  Next I read the story showing the picture and the text. The aim of this activity was for the children to identify good and bad behaviour.  After the story, we discussed David's behaviour and talked about which behaviour is acceptable in class and which is not.  Together we made a set of class rules.  I wrote the numbered rules clearly on a big sheet of paper and all the children 'signed' their agreement by making their fingerprints at the bottom. 

     We learned new vocabulary, the names of various body parts and talked about the five senses. Every day we have activities aimed to help us develop our pre-literacy skills. 

    We made a 'Match the detail' puzzle of Chester the raccoon.  This is a good visual discrimination exercise which will later help them in recognizing letters and reading. 

         We talked about ourselves, about our likes and dislikes using a puppet to help us be more confident. We painted faces and enjoyed doing hand and finger printing.

                                          

 

     We learned what is safe or not safe to put in our mouths.

      These are some of the Maths activities during our first week of school.