Our PreSchool Blog

We continued our phonics study today in small groups.  We hear about the phonics but what is it?  Simply put, phonics is the connection between letter symbols and sounds. As adults, this relationship seems apparent and common sense. However, in reality there is no natural connection between words and their meanings.

At the very core of phonics lies the alphabet. In order to master phonics a person must master the alphabet. Letters then need to be connected to their corresponding sounds. As we know as English speakers, this is easier said than done. Many letters can represent a number of different sounds. This means that learning phonics is an ongoing process for a developing reader.  Because letters and sounds were introduced in our Preschool Program we will have a “crash course” in letters and their sounds over the next nine weeks.  We will be focusing on three letters per week.  We will complete letters Aa, Bb, and Cc this week and the next three will be introduced on Monday.

We continued our phonics study today in small groups.  We hear about the phonics but what is it?  Simply put, phonics is the connection between letter symbols and sounds. As adults, this relationship seems apparent and common sense. However, in reality there is no natural connection between words and their meanings.

At the very core of phonics lies the alphabet. In order to master phonics a person must master the alphabet. Letters then need to be connected to their corresponding sounds. As we know as English speakers, this is easier said than done. Many letters can represent a number of different sounds. This means that learning phonics is an ongoing process for a developing reader.  Because letters and sounds were introduced in our Preschool Program we will have a “crash course” in letters and their sounds over the next nine weeks.  We will be focusing on three letters per week.  We will complete letters Aa, Bb, and Cc this week and the next three will be introduced on Monday.

We continue to review letter sounds as we prepare for our sight word study and our reading groups!

We discovered the Blue Ringed Octopus today during our Country Study.  We created our own as we spied letters as a letter sound was called out.  Both upper case and lower case were included.  This is our final week of letter Aa, Bb, and Cc Review.  Next week we will review letters Dd, Ee, Ff and their sounds.  Keep practicing at home!  They are doing a GREAT JOB!

We continued our letter sound practice today with a twist!  When given a sound, the children found both the upper and lowercase letter that makes the sound and prints it into the play dough!  Making learning fun is the quickest way to get our little ones engaged and ready to learn!

We are all readers and all writers at any age.  In pre-K we will begin introducing proper letter formation for upper and lowercase letters throughout the school year.  It’s important to start with the basics of lines…curves, zig zag, straight, and slanted.  As we become familiar with the language of letter formation we will begin putting these lines together to properly form letters.  Written word is a powerful tool that we use every day and we are well on our way to becoming a classroom of writers!  For pre-writing printables you can do with your child at home click on the first picture below.  

We’ve made an addition to our classroom library this year….big books!  We learned how to take care of our big books and how to turn those BIG pages from the bottom corner without ripping them so they last us a very long time!  You can check out big books from the local library.  Great tip for those little ones who are reluctant to read read read!

We got out our quilting materials today in honor of the letter Q! We chose pieces of scrap paper to glue over our first initials to make a beautiful handmade quilt. It was fun to find pieces of paper that we thought would look great together.

We created a home for our new word family today.  Our focus this week is the -all family.  This one is a bit tricky because we cannot sound out the word all, it is a true sight word that we must be able to recognize by sight only.  We added -all family members to our homes and took them home to read to our own families.

We focused last week on number words while reading the book, Lost Feathers by Bruce Larkin.  Our week was full of number word activities including coloring by number word and graphing a number word.  We are becoming better readers every day in preparation for Kindergarten!  Kindergarten Here We Come!