Pre-K Morning Work

Last week I shared some ideas for arrival activities for younger preschoolers.  This week I am going to highlight what we do with our Pre-K students as they get ready to begin their day.  All of the students in our Pre-K class will enter kindergarten in the fall of 2014.  Half of them have already turned 5, and the rest are 4-4.5 years old.  Most of our day is definitely play-based, as that is the most appropriate way for preschoolers to learn, but we have found that using these skill based activities for a few minutes each day has had positive effects on our students' kindergarten readiness.

We call these "Folder Games" and the students really look forward to doing them.  I have about 100-150 games in a big crate.  At the beginning of each month, I pull out the ones we are going to work on and put them in this basket located near our circle time carpet.

Before the students arrive, we select a folder for each of them and set them on their carpet square.  Some of the folders are too hard for certain students, and other folders are too easy.  We always try to match the children to a folder that will offer a little bit of a challenge, but won't be so difficult that they feel frustrated.

On the back of each folder, there is a plastic bag with all of the game pieces as well as a checklist where we can keep track of the students' progress.  We use a + - system for tracking progress.  When the students complete the game easily and correctly, we give them a +.  If they had difficulty or we feel that they would benefit from another try, we give them a -.  Then when they do it again, we can easily turn it into a +.

After the students remove the game pieces, they open up the folder and play the game.  Most of the games are in the same format, so they are familiar with what to do.

Here are a few examples of our phonological awareness folder games.  The left vertical picture is the cover of the game, and the two pictures on the right show the work mats.  The top one is blank, and the bottom one shows what the completed game looks like.

In this "A a" Font sort, the students have to sort the pieces as capital A's or lower case a's.  I made this one specifically for my students this year, because they seem to be having trouble with the lower case a when it is written in different fonts.

Another phonological awareness skill is identifying all of the upper case and lower case letters.  "Blast Off!" is a game where the students match the lower case stars to the upper case stars on the work mat.

This is a more difficult skill.  The students have to say the word on the game piece and find a word on the work mat that begins with the same beginning sound.

Rhyming is another important phonological awareness skill.  In this "Yarn Baskets" game the students choose a ball of yarn and say the word.  They find the basket that has a rhyming word and match them up.

Lots of our phonological awareness games are similar to the one below.  The students have a pile of 16 pictures.  They say the words and sort them into 2 groups based on their initial consonant sound.  This one is G (like Glue) and S (like Scissors).

Another variation on beginning sounds is when we give students game pieces with the picture, and they have to locate the corresponding first letter.  When they get it right, it's a "Slam Dunk."

One of the other important phonological awareness skills is the ability to count syllables.  This folder game asks the students to say each food word, clap the syllables and then sort the pictures by the number of syllables.

Most of these folder games are available individually in my TpT store, and I just added a Mega-Bundle with 24 phonological awareness folder games.  If you just want to give it a try, download a freebie here.  All of the folder games are ready to print, mat on a file folder, and use with students.

We also have math, social studies, and science folder games.  I will share those soon.  Have fun playing and learning with your children today!