Our PreSchool Blog

Why do we write? We make lists, we share stories, we share ideas, we share our feelings and much more. We began our writing journey in K Prep through the introduction to K Prep Journals. We begin the year with prompts then as the year progresses we will encourage our budding writers to come up with their own ideas to share in their journals. Once we get the hang of it, the students will have the opportunity to share their journals with their friends durning our Author’s Chair time. I was impressed to see some amazing drawings with details, some letters and even some words!  These journals will come home at the end of the year. They are such a great way to see the growth of your child’s writing journey throughout the school year.

We began our Mo Willems Study for the month of April.  We started with The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog.  Mo Willems uses interesting techniques in his illustrations that many artists don’t use.  We focused on his use of speech bubbles and the text size.  Tiny words for a small whisper voice and HUGE words for a character that is YELLING!  The students drew their own Mo Willems Pigeon and added a speech bubble with their own text.  We can’t wait for our next Mo Willems book!

We read the book, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, during reading and writing workshop this week.  Our focus was learning about where the story took place, or the setting.  We discovered that this story took place in the habitat that we have been studying this month, the forest!  After reading it together, we used picture cards to retell the story, step by step.  After retelling the story, we created an illustration of the setting.  The students have been learning about what good illustrators do and how to create a more interesting picture by adding details, colors and words. They participated in their first Author’s Chair experience.  Author’s chair is a chance for students to share their work with the class.   They did an amazing job.  We have quite a few budding illustrators!

We will be focusing on retelling for the remainder of the month, during our reading workshops.  This is a great thing to do with your child after reading each day.  A simple retell (or what happened at the beginning, middle and end) of the story, helps build comprehension and teaches our children to become active readers.

Children become readers on the laps of their parents!

What would you do if you traveled to space?  What would you see?  We read the story, On the Moon, by Anna Milbourne to discover who can travel to the moon, how they get there, and what the moon is like.    We responded to the reading during writer’s workshop.  Our focus today was adding details to our illustrations and adding labels to help our “audience” understand what we are trying to say.  What an amazing job they did!  I think I even saw our new sight word on one or two.  They are on their way to becoming wonderful writers!