Our PreSchool Blog

This month we are talking about community helpers.  This week we are focusing on the denstist and mailman.  Today during group time we asked everyone who had been to the dentist before and how important it is to take  care of our teeth!  We also played a game with teeth!  Each tooth had either a shape or letter on it.  The kids had to close their eyes while Ms. Sarah hide the baby tooth behind one of the labeled teeth.  When they opened their eyes, each child had a chance to guess where the tooth was hidden by describing which tooth they thought it was behind.  This was a great activity for practicing letter recognition and our shapes and colors!

shapes and letters at the dentist

We continued name practice today with our Pumpkin Seed Letters. The preschoolers Identified the first letter of their name and placed pumpkin seeds all around that letter. Our names provide so much exposure to those important letters of the alphabet and are such a great tool for teaching. We talk about the first letter of our name and how it is ALWAYS uppercase while the rest of the letters in our name are lowercase. These types of activities are not only great for letter recognition but they start our students down the road of becoming readers! Children are excited to be able to read their own names and feel very proud when doing so! What a great confidence builder, too!

We practiced writing our names today in sand.  This is a great activity to do at home, you can simply use salt if you don’t have any sand available.  We placed about a 1/3 of a cup of sand in a shallow tray (a baking sheet will work but you need to use more sand/salt) and gently shook it to make an even layer of sand for our writing area.  We placed a name card on the table in front of us to help us with our lowercase letters (remember to always have your child use an uppercase letter for the first letter of their name and lowercase letters for the remainder of the letters in their name).  We then used our fingers and off we went!  This was huge hit, the big question was, “CAN I DO IT AGAIN?  PLEASE?”  This is a great way to help your child practice the letter of the week at home too!  Letter Hh is our letter this week and don’t forget the lowercase h!  For another letter activity that is a hit in the classroom you can do at home, just click the picture!

Practicing Letters in the Sand

Today was a great day for puzzles, but not just any puzzles…puzzles of our very own names! The students put together puzzles of their names as well as the names of their friends.
A child’s name is quite possibly the most important word in their young and growing vocabulary and therefore can be a great avenue to letter recognition. They begin to not only memorize the letters in their own names but also the letters in the names of their classmates. The children took great ownership in their name puzzles and were excited to take them home to show to their families.
We will use our names for many activities and learning games throughout the school year and these puzzles are great preparation and practice for what’s to come.

The children were excited today during group time when Elmo came to visit with his friend Dorothy the Fish.  Dorothy will be surprising the kids each week with a special letter on her fish bowl.  Elmo helped us count to three as we unveiled the mystery letter “L”.  Apart from touching and feeling, the toddlers will also “see” the various physical differences between the different letters and quickly begin to recognize the new letters each week.  We will be focusing on letter recognition and letter sounds as we sing and learn with Elmo and Dorothy!

Dorothy the fish introduces our toddlers to the new letter this week

Kinesthetic name and letter recognition with the Toddlers

Today we were working on tracing the letters in our name.  We let the children dip their finger in red paint and helped guide them as we traced each letter.  This was to help them become familiar with all of the letters in their names and to get a feeling for how to write each letter.  The color we are focusing on this month is red so we used red paint and red circle dots.

Introducing our special "letter birds" as the eager Early 3's beginning picking eggs from the letter bird's nest.

Every Monday we will be introducing a letter of the week.  Today during group time our special bird flew in to help introduce the new letter.  Each student got a chance to pick a egg from the bird’s nest and open it to find out our special letter.  This picture is showing everyone opening up their eggs and holding up the special letter “L”.