The younger children are practicing following straight lines in their fine motor journals.  I make a green dot for starting point and red dot for stopping.   They are matching the letters on the shapes to the name plate, before too long they will not need the prompt and will be able to put the letters of their name in order without assistance!  They are doing great.  They also glued shapes in their fine motor journals.  This gives them practice with glue and gets all the tiny muscles in their hands moving. Each day I also let them practice cutting if they are interested, if only for 2-3 minutes it still is great practice and they are always so proud of their confetti!
I included some random pictures of free time play.  I am terrible about taking pics outside the preschool room.....The toy box seems to be the best place to hang out.  Everyday, someone takes out all the toys and hops in the box! 

Today we drew a crayon, step by step!  This provides preschoolers practice with following directions and paying attention to detail.  They did such a great job today!

More opposite practice today!  We used star cookie cutters for our night art and painting blue sky and yellow sun for day.  They used stickers to trace the first letter of their name.  

Here are a few pics of the littles playing and they have no idea they are learning!  I had a helper in the kitchen this week, we made Banana Bread.  Baking is an easy way to introduce early math skills (counting, weight, measurement, time) and early literacy skills (following step-by-step directions). A recipe card makes it very easy to follow step-by-step instructions. We looked at each step and I encouraged him to tell me the next step we needed to complete.  
 
We play with play dough quite a bit to help develop their little hands.  A few of the fine motor benefits are pushing, pulling, and shaping the dough work those small muscles of the hands. The same muscles that hold pencils, tie shoes, and move board game pieces. Adding literacy encourages conversation, "look, I found K for Kiki!"  Playing also encourages them to use their imaginations, "look, I made a tortoise!"  She used scissors to make the eyes.  
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We talked about all the fun things we are going to learn about and do this year.  Each child picked a bag of "magic" play dough; I told them if it changes colors we will have the BEST year!  Each child squeezed their dough and they all changed colors!!  It will be a fun and exciting year for all and they will all be preschool super stars!  

We are excited for a new school year!  We are slowly easing into our daily pre-school routine.  Today we built the letters of their first name, starting with mini erasers and then we used dot stickers.  They colored in their fine motor journals, cut crepe paper and glued into their journals.

Happy birthday to this beautiful, sassy, full of life kiddo!  Hope you have the best year!