The path to learning leads to new perspectives

We have been reviewing shapes in class. As we do, the children are asked to really explain what qualities makes each shape its shape. I am encouraging them to count sides, talk about straight or curved lines and compare lengths of sides. Hopefully they can better undestand why an oval is not a circle even though they both have only curved lines or why a rectangle is not a square since the rectangle's sides are not all the same length. This last class we examined triangles and diamonds.

The students were challenged by trying to use a length of yarn to manipulate into various shapes.

For our P.E. time, each student was given a long length of yarn and the serious job of making a path with it outside. Then in pure fun fashion each child got a turn to be the leader as the rest of the class ran, skipped or whatever the leader did along the length of each path.

Students are continuing to practice their writing: their names and also labeling their work.

Many students are reading consonant-vowel-consonant words are are on the verge of reading the SAM books I have for pre-kinders which combine phonic words and site words.

WOW! So much has been happening in preschool. For Three Kings Day, January 6th, we made crowns, enjoyed traditional 3 Kings bread with chocolate milk at snack time, listened to my story telling of Princess and the Pea and played "Prince/Princess May I?"

For the story telling, I used my puppets and pillows and the children were absorbed as I told about the princess sleeping on 20 mattresses. As I stacked pillows and hid the pea (a green marble), the students smiled as the puppet put on her princesses crown at the end of the story to live "happily ever after" with her prince. Then I set up 3 pillows and put the marble under 1 of them. Students were excited to try sitting on each one, to guess where the marble was hidden.

To practice their newly declared prince and princess sensitivities, they put on their crowns they made and played "prince/princess may I?" The prince/princess clearly enjoyed their new power of saying "No, you MAY NOT," as other classmates asked, "Princess, may we please take 2 steps forward?" It was a very cute game and the children loved it.

We focusing on building words and word families. One of the pictures shows a student adding a letter to the -at ending to build a word. Each student received a box and inside was a letter to add to our pocket chart to build an -at word.

We are working on size words and order words, such as smallest, biggest or first, second, third, etc.

We are also exploring shapes and geometry for January.

SO much fun!

Happy 2012!

Listed on the top right of the following link, you will see "Spalding Phonograms 1-26 a-z"
a very clear video of the lowercase alphabet letters with all the phonograms:
https://sites.google.com/site/phonokids/

If your child is going to Benjamin Franklin or ALA (American Leadership Academy) this is the reading program they use and knowing these phonograms exactly in this format will be helpful.

If not going to the above schools, these letter/sound skills still build a strong foundation for creating confident readers.

If your child is entering kindergarten next year, I strongly recommend practicing phonics and/or letter rings and/or reading for 15 minutes every day. A short time practiced frequently produces amazing results and really builds little minds and long term memory.

Happy 2012!!! Since some families have new years resolutions, I wanted to encourage you to think about the role of tv in your house.

I also wanted to share my own opinion on tv and videos. I think there are some very worthy ones for the preschool age group. Rather than watching the same favorite "Disney" movie for an hour or longer, consider instead PBS "reading" shows such as Super Why or Word World. Sid the Science Kid is a really great show for scientific concepts and most can easily be tried out at home to reinforce the learning. My children have also seemed to enjoy the LeapFrog videos about letters, words and even basic math concepts.

If you use tv and videos with your children, I encourage you to really evaluate the amount of time they are spending in front of the tv and what they are gaining from the that time.

Ages 3-5 are the perfect ages to add game time to your play time. It practices taking turns, following rules, usually other concepts like reading and counting and yes, the very important skill of sometimes losing. Even if your child wins, you can be a great model at how to lose.

When was the last time you played Candy Land together? Other great games include Hi-Ho Cherry-Oh, Chutes and Ladders, Memory Match, Guess Who and more. There are kid versions that are great of Monopoly, Sorry, Scrabble, Pinochle and more. What are your favorites?

Yay, a few pictures of our fun-fondue activity!

Jamie is crushing some peppermint for our chocolate dipped marshmallow pops.




Making pretzel wreaths by dipping them in chocolate and marshmallow pops too. Yummy!

Fun Friday January 6th

I hope to see your little learner this Friday, January 6th for a fun Friday!

Preschool session resumes Tuesday, January 10th.