All of us here at 

Hooksett Early Learning Program

wish you and your family a very 

Merry Christmas 

and a 

Happy and Healthy New Year!

The Month of December!

Oh my! Where did this month go?  We have been so busy in the classroom learning some new "games" and creating holiday decorations!

Here is our Gingerbread House!

We played a gingerbread man fishing game.   Some of us matched our letters, while others practiced writing our letters!

We added the correct amount of decorations to Christmas Trees!

(Practicing numeral recognition and 1:1 correspondence.) 

Here we are measuring a gingerbread man!  We then measured ourselves to see which was bigger!  The gingerbread man or us!

But our favorite was going on a gingerbread man hunt!  Everyone had their own clipboard with a picture of a gingerbread man with either letters or pictures on it.  We then looked all over the school for gingerbread men.  When we found one we would say the letter and find it on our paper.  If we had pictures we would say the sound the letter made and find the picture that began with the same sound!  The children did a great job!

And lastly, thank you so much for the yummy gingerbread cookies Mrs. Godbout!  We loved decorating them, and of course, eating them!

We have been working on:

• Identifying rhyming words
• Reviewing letter shapes Aa through Mm
• Associating  the names of letters with their shapes
• Introduction to the new sight word: in

Understanding and producing rhyme is an important phonological awareness skill.  Research indicates that there is a correlation between phonological awareness skills and reading.  Throughout this school year we will be working on developing this very important skill!  Here are some ideas for you to try at home:

• Read rhyming books to your child
• Teach your child nursery rhymes
• Read books over again!  Repetition is great and an important part in the learning process!
• Once you have read a rhyming book several times, begin to pause before you say the rhyming word to see if they can fill in the word that rhymes
• Play rhyming games 

It is important to remember that rhyming is a developmental skill that will emerge over time.   Be patient with your child, if he/she has difficulty with this skill he/she just may not be ready.  Continue to read and expose them to rhyme and before you know it they will be rhyming!

Always remember that learning is fun!  

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

We have been working on:

•  Identifying words that have been removed from a group
• Demonstrating knowledge of the concept of a letter
• Associating the names of letters with their shapes
• Learning the chants for the letter sounds
• Reading the pre-decodable Friends with our new sight word: and

What you can do at home:

You can play a game in the car like we do here at school!  Tell your child you are going to say three words and that they need to listen carefully so they can remember what you said.  Say, cup, spoon and pot.  Have your child repeat the words.  Have them listen again but only say two of the words, cup, spoon.  Ask them to tell you the word that is missing.  You can do this for a few different sets of words!   Have fun!

Practice the pre-decodables!  This one seems pretty challenging, so be sure to read it to your child. Have them point to the words as you read.  Maybe ask them to point to certain words to be sure they know what it looks like.  And don't forget to ask them questions about the pictures!

Keep up the good work and always remember to make it fun!

Lisa

We had so much fun last week!  We loved hearing the story of The Three Little Pigs!  And we loved acting it out!  

                                      

Another favorite story was 

Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons

To go along with this story I found a great subtraction game!  The children needed to count out 10 buttons for their shirt, they took turns rolling the dice and removing the correct amount of buttons.  The person with no more buttons wins!  We had a lot of fun with this one!

What have we been up to?

The children have been:

• Naming and describing the function of common classroom objects.
• Analyzing sentence pairs to determine which has more words and which has fewer words.
• Identifying the capital letter that begins their name and matching it to the Alphabet Sound Wall Cards.
• Identifying small letters and capital letters.
• Reading Pre-Decodable 3 The Picnic.

What can you do at home?

Help your child understand and learn concepts of print.  The most obvious way to help children build knowledge about print is to read together.  Here are some suggestions for when you are reading with your child:

• Find a quiet, comfortable place to read together
• Spend about ten to fifteen minutes a day reading together
• Read stories expressively
• Encourage your child to ask questions and comment on what interests them
• Ask questions that encourage children to think about the story.  For example, ask  "what do you think will happen next?"
• Talk about the pictures.  Ask "What do you see?  What are the characters doing? What do you think will happen next?"
• After reading the story share your favorite parts
• Reread stories as often as children request them
• Read different types of books

Young children are full of questions about how things work or why things happen.  Read books that spark their curiosity and encourage more questions.  Don't feel limited to reading only books. Functional reading is a wonderful way to support reading at home - following directions for a recipe or putting together a toy, reading the newspaper, reading ads, finding coupons to use when shopping and pointing out signs are all great ways to read with your child!

Happy Reading!!

I can't believe we are in the month of November!  Here are some pictures from the last week of October!  

Spider Day!

               

Slime!

          

Go Away Big Green Monster!

          

Here is a peek in the room!

                           The 3 year old class had a great time finger painting!  

They mixed yellow and red together to make a different color!  

Can you guess what color they made?

 Our 4 year olds just love the finger play 

Five Little Pumpkins!  

So we decided to make our own pumpkin puppets!  

This week the children learned:

• To identify individual words in sentences
• To identify the initial letter in our names
• We learned a song to help us remember the letters of the alphabet
• We read a pre-decodable with the high frequency word:  a

What you can do at home:

Read to your child everyday!  The benefits are immeasurable!  By reading to your child you are helping them increase their vocabulary and communication skills.  Reading to your child helps to promote academic success, as well as logical thinking skills!  But most importantly, reading to your child is a wonderful time to snuggle up and spend time together!  Take the time to read!

Practice the pre-decodables!  It is important to remember that mastery of the high frequency words is not expected.  Preschool is a time to introduce many skills that will be mastered in the future.  Here are some tips on how to practice these skills at home:

• Have your child point to the title of the story
• Have your child point to where we would start to read on the page.
• Ask them if they want to read it or if they would like you to read.
• Have your child point to each word that is read.
• Have your child tell you what is happening in the picture.

Skills that are important for your child to learn are that we read from left to right and that all stories have a title and an author.  Remember, it is NOT expected that your child knows how to read in preschool, this is just an introduction!

If you have questions please let me know!

Lisa

We will be having parent/teacher conferences on November 3rd.  I will have a sign-up sheet available for you to pick a time that works best for you.  Conferences will be kept  at 15 minutes.  If we feel that more time is needed we can always schedule another meeting.

Hello Everyone!  As you know, our reading/language arts program in the school is called Imagine It! through this blog, I am going to try to keep you up to date on the skills we are learning in hopes that you will continue working on them at home!  This week we have been working on:

•  the concept of order and the order of words first, middle and last
• an introduction to the alphabet through names
• expanding our vocabulary by adding the first high-frequency word: a  (4 year olds only)

How can you expand this knowledge at home?

• When the opportunity arises, talk about first, middle and last.  This works great during play!  "Look, my car is first!  Which car is in the middle?"  Any opportunity to have your child understand this concept is great.  This is needed for children to understand where they hear the sounds in words.  For example, what sound did you hear first in the word "cat"?  last? in the middle?  This is the beginning skill for reading and writing!  So practice order!
• Be sure to relate the spelling of your child's name back to the alphabet.  We talk about how the alphabet is used to write names and words.
• Lastly, we will be introducing many high-frequency words.  When you are reading to your child, take a moment and point out the new high-frequency word they are learning.  This will help them to understand that these words are everywhere.  They will become excited when they find a word they know!

I hope this was helpful!  Please let me know if you have any questions!

Here is a

 into our room!

Thank You Hooksett Fire Department for coming in and talking to us about fire safety!  We especially loved going into the fire truck!  Unfortunately, the MWF class presentation was cancelled due to the rain.  The Fire Department will be coming for a visit in the near future for those students!

Don't forget that next week is picture week!  Pictures will be taken on Thursday October 15th and Friday October 16th.  Be sure to bring your smiles!

There have been some questions about Halloween.  We are going to have a Fall Celebration on Thursday October 29th and Friday October 30th.  Most of the day's activities will center around spiders and pumpkins.  Unfortunately, we can not dress-up in costume, nor can we bring in snacks to share.   Our daily schedule will stay pretty much the same.  We try to keep this as calm as possible, but it is a very exciting time!  Please let me know if you have any questions!

Have a wonderful Columbus Day weekend!

We are so excited!  

The Fire Department will be here on Thursday October 8th and Friday October 9th!  They will talk to us about fire safety and they will dress up in their fire gear so we can see what they look like!  But the most exciting part is the fire truck!!!

Ice Cream Social & Book Fair

September 29th 6:00 - 7:30

Class Pictures

Our school pictures will be taken October 15th and 16th.  More information will be out shortly!

“Every student can learn, just not on the same day, or the same way.”

- George Evans

Hi everyone!

We are off to a great start!  Week two and the children are settling in with the schedule and rules of the classroom!  We have been busy talking about apples and making lots of apple projects!  I love our Friendship Apple Tree on the bulletin board!

I want to remind everyone that the Ice Cream Social is on September 29th from 6-7:30.  This is a time for you to come in and visit the classroom, enjoy some ice cream and check out the Book Fair!  Our PTA is amazing and I hope that you will become a member!

I would like to hold a couple of parent information nights this fall.  One night would be for parents of our three year olds.  We will talk about what you can expect from our program this school year.  The next information night will be for parents of our older students.  On this night we will discuss our curriculum, how you can support your child’s learning and what you can expect from our program for your four year old child.  As soon as a date is set I will let you know!

Lastly, with the cooler weather comes our stuffy nose season!  This seems to last for ever!  I am asking everyone to please let me know anytime your child is sick.  One of our students in our afternoon class is medically fragile and we would like to give the family the option of keeping their child home if there is a lot of illness in the room.  You can email me in the morning (before 8am) or just call and leave a message on my phone.  I thank you so much for your cooperation!

“We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”

- George Bernard Shaw

                                                  

Our First Week of School

Our first week is completed!  And what a great week it was!  We are all learning the preschool process!  Each day we sang a song to learn the names of all of our friends and teachers!  We got to explore the toys, paint, play with play doe, read stories and of course, dance!  I am hoping that the extremely warm weather is behind us, and we can begin to enjoy the cooler days of fall!  Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns!  Thanks for a terrific week!

Golf Ball Painting

Sorting 

Alphabet Puzzle

More Painting