Our PreSchool Blog

We’ve been focusing on the sight word you, this week, during our guided reading groups.  We built the sight word on each page to complete the sentences, read the text to identify any unknown words using the basic reading strategies we’ve been learning this year, and reread the text to practice fluency.

Strengthening fine motor muscles in the hands is essential for successful writing.  Coloring small pictures with a focus on moving your hands/fingers slowly to stay inside the lines helps improve hand strength and dexterity of children.  An easy way to encourage fine motor development at home or just about anywhere!

We finished up our reading groups today as we read, I Can Move, for the final time and then had the opportunity to work our small motor muscles as we colored the pages of our emergent readers.  The students have worked very hard this week mastering their new sight word: can.  They have done such an amazing job!  As we learned the new sight word, we reviewed its letters and sounds Cc~Aa~Nn.

In Early 3’s this week, we began the exciting process of learning to write our names. This is something we will be working on the rest of the year to prepare the children for preschool…and eventually K-Prep. Learning how to write their name by the end of year will give them a head start in preschool or K-Prep and will allow the preschool and K-Prep teachers to focus on writing other words since they will already know how to write their name. Practicing at home will help them expedite this process! Have them practice writing their name in sand or shaving cream…or write it out for them in chalk and have them “paint” over it with water. Every bit of practice will help! We are also teaching them how to grip the pencil correctly. You can help them practice correct grip by breaking crayons into small pieces so that your child HAS to grip the crayon correctly because they are forced to pinch down at the bottom (just like they should on a pencil).

Mr. Tenny loves to eat numbers!  We reviewed our numbers 1-12 this week as we strengthened our hand muscles in preparation for writer’s workshop that begins next week.  Keep working on those name during homework!

Basic math and number concepts utilized in a preschool or kindergarten prep classroom set the foundation for learning more advanced math concepts. Early exposure to math and number activities will promote your child’s comfort with these skills. Also, additional opportunities to practice these skills will increase your child’s confidence when working with math and number concepts and will lead him to believe he is “good at math.”  Click HERE for some fun activities to do with your child at home in all areas of math.

Our small groups on Monday:

{group #1}

We started our “Handwriting Without Tears” curriculum this week! Our first activity was introduced in whole group time and practiced in small groups. The children had to practice forming the letters “A” and “B” with magnetic wood pieces. We talked about “big lines” “curved lines” “small lines” etc. This helps the children break down writing out a letter into simple steps. For an “A” we say: “Big Line, Big Line, Little Line!”

{group #2}

This group was centered around our shape of the month: RECTANGLE! Check out the various ways we made rectangles!

{group #3}

This group focused on our numbers for this month {1 and 2} as well as one-to-one correspondence and fine motor development. The children had to roll the die {which only had one or two dots on each side}, count the dots, and put the corresponding amount of beads into their bowl.

Motor skills are movements and actions of the muscles. They are categorized in two groups: gross motor skills and fine motor skills. Gross motor skills generally refer to movements involving larger muscles, like those in the arms, legs, feet or the entire body (used for walking, jumping and so on). Fine motor skills generally refer to movements involving smaller muscles, like those in hands, wrists and fingers (such as those used for holding a crayon or toy). *

Play dough Improves Fine Motor Skills

Squishing, squeezing, stretching and molding play dough helps to build muscle strength in the fingers and hands. This in turn makes it easier to complete fine motor activities like holding a pencil and cutting with scissors later on.

Dancing improves Gross Motor Skills

Jumping, stretching, dancing and ribbon twirling helps build muscle strength throughout the entire body.  We also tapped wooden sticks to the tempo of Miss Joanie’s guitar, working on rhythm as we danced to “We are the Dinosaurs,” a classroom favorite!

* information taken from www.leapfrog.com