Our PreSchool Blog

While introducing the letter T, the boys and girls practiced their counting and letter recognition.  We brainstormed words that begin with T: tooth, toe, ten and tire, just to name a few, then the children came up and found a specific number and assigned it to a letter T.  Practicing our double digit letter recognition proved to an excellent exercise!

As we usher in a new month, the children have the opportunity to discover new things in our centers.  All of our centers have new items, but today we focused on the math, literacy and art centers.  Learning how to do new activities is just one more way to practice/learn a skill in a different way.

As January comes to a close, it is clear that we have pre-writers emerging into eager little writers!  The boys and girls did an excellent job practicing V, W and X, along with other letters we have introduced.  The magnet boards that we used offered a fun and unique way to practice our writing!

Matching the upper and lowercase letters can be tricky, especially for the letters Ee, Dd and Rr (to name a few).  Today, the children challenged their letter recognition skills while playing a letter matching memory game.  This is a great way to quickly assess which letters your child knows, and which need more practice!

How many different ways can you write the letters X, W and V?  Today, the children got hands on with their pre-writing skills!  Using mini chalkboards, playdoh, wooden lines, magnet boards, stickers and crayons, the boys and girls practiced making their letters in creative and memorable ways.

On our Arctic travels today, we discovered lots of new things!  In Ms, Lori’s group, the boys and girls learned about how polar bears stay warm.  With a little Crisco, plastic Ziploc bags and ice cold water, the children got to feel how important blubber is for Arctic animals.  In Ms. Courtney’s group, the children got in touch with their snowman building skills while rolling out some Playdoh to make the letters V, W and X.  The similarities in the “big lines” used to create all three letters helped the children remember how these particular letters are formed.  In Ms. Leslie’s group, the boys and girls created number twelve letter constellations.  Poking tiny holes into the paper made our “stars”.  The children were excited to turn the lights off and see their very own constellations.  We discussed what a constellation is, and the children got to see a very neat video on the Northern Lights!

Who can build their snowman first?  Draw a sight word card, read it to your friends.  If you get it right, you get one piece to build your snowman.  Whoever gets their snowman built first is the winner!  Ready, set, go!

We had a ball on Thursday during small groups.  Ms. Lori let us create an arctic scene from Greenland with homemade puffy paint and homemade textured sand paint.  The kids enjoyed adding the puffy fur onto the Polar Bear to help keep it warm.  During reading groups, after reading our readers, we played a Cookie Crunch Sight Word game on the Smartboard to polish our sight word recognition.  Then, we used our white crayons on black paper to practice our letter formation and orientation of our current sight words.  Watch out Kindergarten….here we come!

Practicing our letter formation is fun, but practicing them in Cool Whip is even better!  Today, in Ms. Lori’s small group, the boys and girls practiced writing the letters V, X and W in a small tray of Cool Whip.  Working from left to right, top to bottom, the children enjoyed this memorable experience!

Some like their vegetables steamed, some like them raw.  How about covered in paint?!  Today, the children practiced the letter V by tracing it with vegetable stamps.  While practicing the /v/ sound, we also came up with words that begin with the letter V: vegetable, violin, vet, very, and everyone’s favorite…vvvrooooooommm!