Jack and Jill

The month of March will be spent learning Nursery Rhymes!

Today we learned about Jack and Jill

We focused on sequencing. What happened 1st, 2nd, and 3rd? 

This is a fantastic comprehension question to ask your child as you read together. This helps builds a foundation of skills that are necessary for reading! Next time you are reading with your child, ask them what happened in the story. Ask them about the characters, what they did and maybe what your child would do if they were in the book. They could even make predictions as to what would happen if the ending was different!!

We used Jack and Jill to help us during Shared Reading Time today. This was a fun way to find high frequency words, simple blends, and even rhyming words! By letting the kids use the pointer while the class choral read, it helped with one to one correspondence, line sweeping, left to right, as well as other basic early reading skills.

Little Elf....Helping us with our 5 Senses

Little Elf, Little Elf, What do you SEE??

Yes, SEE was our first of the FIVE SENSES to explore... we thought we'd also learn about the high frequency word SEE at the same time!! Convenient!

We read to the puppets of the classroom as they helped us look for the word SEE in our classroom library!

Then we went to work on illustrating our LITTLE ELF BOOKS!!

Oh, they turned out SO great!

THE.... and other important sight words!

High Frequency words are so important for young readers to learn. If they can effortlessly read these words, then they can spend more time decoding the more tricky words that will come up in their reading. Knowing these high frequency words is also critical in developing fluency in reading. If also gives the kids confidence in themselves as they look at a book and instantly discover words they know! Since we started learning these words, I have heard numerous times, "Teacher! I found 'THE' in this book!!" with so much confidence and excitement, it just brings me so much joy to hear them!

Here they are on a WORD HUNT... I never knew how much fun these word hunts would be to them, but the kids love them! They say, "Teacher! They almost tricked me! I almost circled "eht" but I know it's really spelled "the"!!" I love it!! Such little smarties!!

 We have been using the reading program called "Reading with Giggles and Games" which was designed by a kindergarten teacher here in our school district that has been SO great and SO fun for these kiddos in their early literacy stages!

 We used Shared Writing time as a perfect opportunity to write our newly discovered word!

 We also became "Word Detectives" and went on a hunt to find the word, "the" hidden in the books in our reading library!

  It's amazing how much more fun reading can be when we:

1) see some of our 'Word Wall Words' in the books, and;

2) have a MAGNIFYING GLASS in hand!

The Gingerbread Man

Positions.......

We used a Gingerbread Man and his house to help us understand POSITION WORDS today!

Mathematical learning in young children is strongly linked to sense perception and concrete experience. Children move toward an understanding of symbols, and eventually abstract concepts, only after they have first experienced ideas on a concrete level. The more avenues there are to receive data through the senses, the more connections the brain can make. The more connections that are made, the better a learner can understand a new idea. ~Sutton, J. & Krueger, A. (Eds.). (2002)

"On, Under, Above, Up, Over, Down, Behind, Below, Top, Bottom, In front of, Next to, Beside, Far, and Near" are some of the words we used while positioning our Gingerbread Man with his house!

 Afterwards, we were able to find some yummy gingerbread men to eat! They were hiding ON TOP of the shelf, BESIDE the window, ABOVE teacher's chair, and NEXT TO the white boards!

 We all took ONE bite! Then we used our paper gingerbread men to GRAPH our bites!

 See our results?! Which one had the most? Which one had the least?

  Run! Run! As fast as you can! You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man!

What a FUN story to tell and RE-tell!! We used props and puppets to help us tell this story!

We are getting pretty good at figuring out what happens at the beginning, middle, and end of our stories! What great COMPREHENSION these kiddos have!

Write Around the Room

One of our favorite activities in our preschool is to write on the white boards! 

The kiddos have LOVED "Writing Around the Room" time. Having a "print-rich environment" is a key factor to early literacy and it is also the key factor to having a successful "write around the room" experience! 

 This activity gets them up and moving; helps them notice numbers, letters, and words around them; gets them used to checking the word wall for high frequency words; increases letter formation and other writing skills; and it's FUN!