Our PreSchool Blog

The letter H is one of the easier letters to write.  Writing it in crayon, pencil and marker is excellent practice.  Writing it in paint makes it a memorable experience.  Today, Ms. Lori showed the children how to create a capital H and a lowercase h using art dot painters.  The children caught on quickly and enjoyed using these special art utensils!

This month, as we focus on the letters M and N, the children are working hard to remember the distinct difference between the two.  Word associations are a great way to practice.  Today, using a word sort, each child identified the picture or letter, decided if it began with a M or N, and then put it in the corresponding bowl.  The children learned first hand how tricky some sounds can be!

What starts with the letter M?  Mirror, marble, markers, magnifying glass…the list goes on.  Having the children manipulate these items and make the connection that these items begin with the letter M, helps the M to become more concrete in each child’s memory.  What child doesn’t love to use markers?!

Recognizing his/her name is most likely the first word that a preschooler learns.  Once that is established, the next step is to learn the letters and the order they belong in.  Today, we reviewed the order of the letters by matching them to the name that was written above.  We then talked about what each letter was, and counted the amount of letters in his/her name.

Fall is a colorful time of year.  Today, the children were able to express their creative sides with Ms. Lori while creating their own fall tree.  The children discussed fall colors and why the leaves change colors.  Using our fingers to paint is always a memorable experience!

Apples or….apples?  Apples are a healthy snack, especially if you’re on the go.  Today we learned about how our yummy snack can differ: dried apples.  Using our taste buds and Smart Board, we made a graph that told us who liked fresh apples and who liked dried apples.  The results?  Fresh won by a landslide, but dried had a few votes!

We used “Magical” highlighting tape to identify our new sight words in our reading group book, I Can Moo!

As a preschooler, it is very common to mix up the letter N with the letter M.  How do we fix that?  Memorable experiences!  Today, Ms. Lori worked with the children on the letter N.  The children first practiced writing the letter, while discussing the sound it makes.  Using real hay, the children then built a nest, using real hay, for Nellie the hen.  As children recall these tactile experiences, they become more successful in deciphering between letters/sounds that can trip them up, such as N and M.

Learning the letter N and associating it with words and names we already know was very exciting today.  While tracing the shape of the letter with our finger, we learned the sound that the N makes, and discussed items that begin with the letter N, such as nose, no, noise, note and newspaper.  Using a glue stick, the children traced the N again, then tore newspaper to glue onto the N (excellent fine motor practice!).  Some children remembered that they have the letter N in his/her name!

When learning our letter sounds, it is important to make connections between the written letter and the sound it represents.  These letter-sound connections create the foundation for young readers.  While learning the letter R, the children were able choose different colored roller painters.  While rolling out the letter R, Ms. Lori talked about things that begin with the letter R, such as rollers and rainbow.

Most lowercase letters are a smaller version of their uppercase counterpart.  But, there are some lowercase letters that look completely different than their uppercase version.  Some lowercase letters look similar among themselves (q, p, b, d) which makes decoding difficult.  We worked on fine tuning our ability to recognize uppercase and lowercase matches as well as their sounds.  They did a great job!