Our PreSchool Blog

We read the book, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, during reading and writing workshop this week.  Our focus was learning about where the story took place, or the setting.  We discovered that this story took place in the habitat that we have been studying this month, the forest!  After reading it together, we used picture cards to retell the story, step by step.  After retelling the story, we created an illustration of the setting.  The students have been learning about what good illustrators do and how to create a more interesting picture by adding details, colors and words. They participated in their first Author’s Chair experience.  Author’s chair is a chance for students to share their work with the class.   They did an amazing job.  We have quite a few budding illustrators!

We will be focusing on retelling for the remainder of the month, during our reading workshops.  This is a great thing to do with your child after reading each day.  A simple retell (or what happened at the beginning, middle and end) of the story, helps build comprehension and teaches our children to become active readers.

Children become readers on the laps of their parents!

We became authors and illustrators today during small groups.  The students came up with a sentence and illustration that they would add to I Jump (our reading group book  for the week) if we were the authors and illustrators.  The students learned that the text must match the illustration and that the dot at the end of each sentence is called a period!

Reading groups began in K Prep today!  Our very first sight words were introduced and we practiced reading them in our very first reader…I Jump by Bruce Larkin.  We will continue reading these books for the remainder of the week and practice recognizing our first sight words of the year.  New sight words are introduced every Monday/Tuesday.  Don’t forget, if you miss a day in K Prep, you miss a lot!

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We are learning all about the pond habitat this month in K Prep!  This week we are learning about the life cycle of a frog.  We watched a video, worked together to put the stages in order, and then we even made our own frog life cycles!

Since we are learning so much about frogs, we of course had to have our very own tadpoles to watch as they go from tadpole to frog!  We learned that tadpoles have to live in the water just like fish and they breathe with gills!  We loved seeing them swim in their bowl.

Our phonics study continued today in K Prep as we chose items out of the mystery box and placed them on the letter that corresponded to the beginning sound for some groups and the ending sound for others.  Keep practicing at home!

Before your child begins to read, he/she is learning about the way letters and sounds work together to form words. Phonemic awareness and phonics are the first steps a child makes in their journey to becoming readers.  By listening to and playing around with the sounds in language, your child is building an important foundation for reading. These playful processes are a part of phonemic awareness, which research has found to be the best predictor of reading success in young children.

If your child has phonemic awareness, he or she understands that words are made up of sounds (phonemes) and that those sounds can be grouped together, moved, and changed. Throughout the day there are many opportunities to point out words that begin or end with the same sound. Just making your child aware of sounds in words is one of the first steps in reading.  Click on the first picture below for an online game called Dog’s Letter Pit that your child can play to practice building phonemic awareness.  Have fun!

Kid’s Sushi made from rice krispie treats, fruit roll ups and swedish fish…finished with chopsticks

Wacky Weaving

Wacky Under the Table Drawing