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