Our PreSchool Blog

What sound does the letter s make?  What sound does the letter h make?  Did you know it makes a whole new sound when they buddy up together in a word?  We learned about our first digraph in K Prep today…sh.  We read the book, Shark in the Park, and identified all the words that started with sh.  We created the list of words from the book and came up with many more on our own.  We also practiced writing the digraph independently and together in our class book.  After group was complete, we worked independently to identify which pictures began with sh and which did not.  The students picked up so quickly on this there will be more digraph work in our future for sure!  Way to go K Prep!

We fed Mr. Teni his favorite numbers during small groups!  This activity helped us build stronger hands while reviewing numbers 1-20.  This is a fun and easy activity to make and use at home…Mr. Teni loves to eat just about anything and is sure to help develop strong hands for strong and enthusiastic writers!

In small groups with Ms. Caroline, the boys and girls are working on letter recognition! For some of the children, they match letter magnets with letters on a sheet. Others are working on matching the letters in their name. No matter what the children are working on, this is a great way to introduce letters, sounds and their names. The boys and girls have so much fun playing and learning with these games!

We celebrated St. Patrick’s Day by learning about the holiday and doing some fun activities!

In small groups we decorated our own shamrocks with green crayons and then glued on green tissue paper. We also worked on our fine motor skills and used tongs and scoops in St. Patrick’s Day themed discovery tubs. In our third small group we made necklaces out of fruit loops and a shamrock with our name on it!

During the month of March we are learning about the colors of the rainbow! In small groups we painted rainbows with rainbow pom poms, placed fruit loops onto the colors of the rainbow, and drew the rainbow with crayons.

Today in the Toddler room we are having a foam party! Ms. Laurel mixed together liquid soap, water and food coloring to make rainbow foam! The boys and girls enjoyed watching Ms. Laurel mix it all together. Then they had some sensory fun mixing all the colors together!

We continued our letter Ss study while building our hand strength in small groups!  Continuing to develop large and small muscle strength in the hands and forearms is extremely important during the preschool years.  When the large and small muscles of the forearm and hand are slow to develop, weakness and incoordination may result.  The large muscles of the forearm may overcompensate for weak inner hand muscles.  As a result, the child will find ways to hold, pinch and grip small objects in awkward ways.  By now your little ones should have transitioned from their fist grip on their writing utensils into a more developed grip.  Find the age appropriate pencil grip development chart here.  If you notice that your child shows signs of awkward grips, never hesitate to contact their teacher.  Click on the picture below for easy activities to build fine motor strength and hand strength at home.

We worked our fine motor muscles during our phonics study last week.  Our focus letter was the letter Ss!  After singing out letter s song during group time, we came up with words that started with the letter s as we used clips to pinch the poms and build our letter s.  There are many ways to build small motor muscles.  They are critical to becoming a great writer.  Keep working those fingers!