Our PreSchool Blog

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!

We have been busy learning about the Letter K is preschool this week.
There are so many ways to build this letter with it’s 3 straight lines!

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.

Elephant!

We started our adventure in reading today!  We discovered that all of the letter sounds that the children worked so hard to master during preschool, when put together, make words!  After reading the book, The Alphabet Tree by Leo Lionni, we began to build simple words in the -at family…C-A-T, H-A-T, B-A-T, R-A-T, then we sounded each of them out.  The children then worked independently on building their own -at family word and an illustration (good writers always illustrate their work with a picture that matches!)  For a fun way to practice sounding out words…visit Starfall and use their “Word Machine.”  This is a website that you will need to purchase a membership for a minimal fee.  This site is worth every penny.  You will be able to use it through first and second grade.  A fun, interactive way to practice essential skills.  LET’S HAVE FUN LEARNING!

Letters by themselves are just letters

But when they are grouped together...Presto! It's a word!

Practicing making the letters “A” and “B” with playdough…

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.

We worked on the concept in and out using our oatmeal discovery tub.

Fun with the color yellow!

This week we are working with the letter B!