March 25th - Weather & Easter

To begin our week, we started a KWL chart about weather:

What we Know, what we Want to know, and what we've Learned

From the chart, you can see 'rainbow' listed in both 

the Know and the Want to know column.  

We knew that rainbows came after rain, but we wanted to

 know a little more about rainbows.

So . . . we watched a movie about rainbows and 

talked about why we see them.  

We also talked about some funny traditions we have with rainbows 

- like following a rainbow to a pot of gold.

We drew our own rainbows and wrote what WE would like at the end of it!

 I said a pot of chocolate, but everybody else stuck with a pot of gold : )

 We also wanted to learn a little more about seasons and plants.

We made a season book, called "The Story of the Tree".
 It helped illustrate the visible changes in plants during each season.

It involved hand stamps!  

 More pictures of this finished product in the next few weeks.

Our morning work this week involved CVC words.  

We looked at pictures and filled in the beginning, middle, and ending sounds.

The highlight of our week was our Easter party.

What's an Easter party without an Easter egg hunt?

We played "pin" the egg in the Easter Basket.

And Egg-O (instead of Bing-O)

I called out a letter sound, and the students had to find the picture whose beginning sound matched my letter sound and mark it with a mini marshmallow.

We made lots of Easter Crafts and got lots of Easter treats from our friends!

And of course, ended the party with a dance, with bonus gymnastic tricks off the Love Sac by the girls, and break dancing moves by Montego!

Happy Easter!!

March 18th - Just Our Luck!

This week we had lots of fun!

We sure are lucky to have such great friends!

 Speaking of Luck . . . this week we had our Lucky St. Patty's Day Party!

We started off playing our own version of hangman.

The student who was 'it' picked a CVC word out of a gold bucket.  After reading the word to me, the rest of the students guessed letters they thought might be in the word.  The 'it' student had to write the letters in the correct place, either in the secret word, or under the word if it wasn't in the CVC word they had chosen.  Each time the students chose a letter that wasn't correct, the 'it' student added another detail to the leprechaun man.  If the leprechaun man was completed before the students correctly guessed the word, the leprechaun man ran off with the bucket of gold and the 'it' student had to tell everyone what the word was.  This game gave us lots of opportunities to practice letter name and sound recognition skills, blending and decoding skills, and reading strategies like predicting and inferring.

Next up: Who has the Gold Coin?

Played just like "Button, Button, Who's got the Button?", this fun game helped us with our social skills - taking turns, following rules, and being considerate of our friends.

For our Art Project, we used 3D glue and made beautiful rainbows leading to a pot of gold. 

As you can see from Bailee's expression, some of the tubes were pretty hard to squeeze : )

And of course, we cannot have a party without a dance session! 

Here we are jamming to the song, "Gold" by Owl City.

 The rest of our week was filled with . . .

 Counting Syllables

Number Formations

 Number Combinations (helping us build a strong understanding of addition concepts)

Sequencing

And learning how to multi-task  - talking on the phone while doing our work : )

March 12th - Explore the Rainbow

This week we played with colors and worked on color word recognition.

Here's our first experiment with colors:

Each student took a turn picking up a spoon with "magic dust" 

and choosing a cup to stir the liquid with.

Once stirred, the liquid magically turned into a color!

It was pretty exciting : )

After the color appeared, the students had to choose the correct color word and tape it up on the board next to the color.  A fun way to test our skills in color word recognition!

This week we also performed a color mixing experiment.

We started with our primary colors and each took turns mixing and pouring at different stages of the experiment.

After each stage we recorded our results onto a circle chart.  

We also continued working on letter name and sound recognition.

To improve reading comprehension, we've started our "A's & B's" questions - ask your child about this program - they'll know exactly what you're talking about : )

I read the students a short story and ask them 5-6 questions about the story.  For each question there are two choices for the correct answer - an 'A' answer and a 'B' answer.  The questions may be about the main idea, the genre of the text, an inference based on details of the story, etc.  After reading the question and providing the answer choices, the students hold up which letter they believe is correct.  This helps me make a quick comprehension assessment for each child.  

Montego LOVED being the "Good Deeds" student this week!

While observing the class, the "Good Deeds" student gives stamps to those students exemplifying positive behavior.  They are also in charge of checking the students work for neatness and awarding them with a stamp if they think they have tried their best.  Each student gets a turn to have this job.  I'm sure you can see how it really benefits all the students!  

Here we are hard at work!

 Here the girls, who have finished their seat work, try to form CVC words using magnetic letter tiles.

March 5th - Pete The Cat

We're Marching into March!

Here's our song of the month:

 At the beginning of the week we read the
book "Pete the Cat" and even got to watch the movie!

Pete the Cat is a rhythmic, catchy book you'll love reading with your kids! It provides some great teaching opportunities.

After reading the book and watching the movie, we sequenced and illustrated our own "Pete the Cat" books.

 After reading our books all week, on Thursday we watched the movie again, and followed along in our own books.  We loved connecting the text with fun visuals and catchy music.

 We reviewed the letter name and sound of "Ii".

With each vowel added, it opens the door to so many more words we can phonetically read.

This week we made our own letter books.

Using sight words we already know, we chose pictures with words beginning with the "i" sound and composed our "Ii Book"

What we can write we can read, and what we can read, we can write.

Since we wrote our own books this week, reading to each other was extra fun!

We've been working on "CVC" words.  (consonant, vowel, consonant)

It's important to hear the individual sounds that make each word.  What may seem simple to us - hearing individual sounds - is a more difficult concept for young readers.  This is why we start with a big picture, something they can easily grasp, and work our way to smaller details.  We began with identifying the number of words in a sentence, then moved to the number of syllables in a word, and now have worked our way to individual sounds in a word.  This step by step process helps the students form a sound understanding of the composition of texts, words, and sounds.   

We also play a game called "Troll Talk".  Trolls occasionally visit our preschool and leave items in a bag. I tell them what's in the bag using "Troll Talk" - dividing the words first by syllables, then once that was mastered, dividing the words into individual sounds.  For example, the troll may have left a "ba-na-na".  And the advanced level, the troll left a "h-a-t". Again, this seems so simple to decode, but for young readers it isn't an easy task. They must train their ears to hear these individual sounds and successfully blend them together to form words.

A favorite activity for us lately is having a "Dance Party".

We love having fun with our friends!