The Forest Park Preschool classes are just finishing their “Beginning of the Year” units. Some objectives in this unit included: building classroom community, familiarizing the students with school routines & procedures, introducing classroom rules & making good choices, discussing beginning of the school year feelings, recognizing colors and identifying friends at school.
Mrs. Connelly’s classes made a class book called, “The ABC’s of Mrs. Connelly’s class.” This book has a page for each letter of the alphabet with a picture and word associated on it. Each student and teacher put their picture with the letter of the alphabet that their name begins with. The students took turns taking the completed book home. Families were asked to read the book together and then comment on the family comment pages. Family comments were read to the class each morning when the book was returned to school. Mrs. Connelly’s class does class books throughout the school year for every unit of study and theme. After the book has made its way home with all of the students in the class, it is kept in the classroom in a special bookshelf for students to read as a choice at Center time. Class books are deconstructed at the end of the school year and included in each student’s preschool portfolio.
Mrs. Catezone’s Class made a class book titled “No Preschoolers” modeled after the book “No, David” by David Shannon. This class book was used to reinforce their classroom rules: Stick together, No Hurts and Have Fun. The book highlighted the choices the students can make at school, positive ones which are green choices and negative ones which are red choices. Mrs. Catezone loved how the preschool parents reinforced their green choices and learned about the class behavior system in the process. Mrs Catezone’s class books are raffled off at the preschool End of the Year Celebration.
In Mrs. Novak’s class and many preschool classes, Pete the Cat is a favorite series. They read, “Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes” and used that story to make a class book of their own titled “Our Shoes are Cool.” The students painted a big pair of shoes and pictures were taken to show each student standing in their cool shoes. The students were able to sing along to the class story by identifying the color of shoes the person was wearing. Every student got to take the class book home and read it to their families. Like Mrs. Connelly’s class books, Mrs. Novak’s class books include a family comments section in the back of the book. Jack’s family wrote, “We read the story as a family. Jack loved telling us about all his friends in school. Very cute book, we read it alot.” Baron’s family wrote- “What a fun book! We loved seeing the colors and the kids!” Luna’s family commented- “We loved all the kids shoes, We loved Luna’s blue shoes, We loved the teacher’s shoes, We loved the cool shoes book!”
In Ms. Pelletier’s class they finished their beginning of the year unit about Dinosaurs and started their Creative Curriculum Tree Unit. They made a take home book with the vocabulary from the unit for parents to see what words they are working on and the topics they are covering in their new unit. Parents were asked to fill out a sheet with four questions on it regarding the book sharing experience with their child.
