Our PreSchool Blog

Today, the toddlers enjoyed painting their hands to make hand-print pictures. They also enjoyed the sensory/discovery bags with hair gel, food coloring, and soap inside. They loved sliding their fingers around the outside of the bag and watching the squiggles and prints that their hands made.

This week, we are continuing to focus on the letter “Z’ –what sound it makes, what it looks like, what words start with “Z”, and where it falls in the alphabet. The children practiced their fine motor skills as they glued small pieces of paper to a large “Z.” They also had fun making food coloring designs in shaving cream then transferring them to paper! Very beautiful results!! 🙂 We are continuing to practice our number recognition and one-to-one correspondence.

{Miss Sarah}

On Tuesday, we painted with marshmallows and played with discovery bottles!!

When counting, the concept of “one-to-one correspondence” is the understanding that each object being counted represents “one more.”

Before a child understands one-to-one correspondence, he will count by rote memorization. When asked to count a small group of objects, he will likely count quickly through the numbers he has memorized and randomly touch the objects being counted instead of touching and counting each object just once  (schoolsparkes.com).  This is a very important early math readiness skill and an EASY on to incorporate into your daily lives.  Count the stairs as you walk up, a few cheerios while your enjoying a bowl for breakfast….the sky’s the limit!  Have fun counting!

The importance of phonemic awareness and phonics instruction for beginning readers has received wide support among reading researchers.  When young children participate in specific instruction in how to identify and manipulate the sounds of language (phonemic awareness) and how to associate those sounds with letters and letter patterns (phonics), children are very likely to succeed in reading.  Skill at decoding, or sounding out unfamiliar words, is so critical for skilled reading that neither instruction instruction in sight word reading nor strategies in the use of context can compensate for poor decoding skills.  Decoding skills are considered an essential for fluent reading in later grades.  We begin this journey in our pre-k program to create a solid foundation in early phonics for your child to build on as they continue their path to becoming fluent readers.

In the toddler room today, we painted with marshmallows!!! The children had a lot of fun with this art activity. Today we learned the letter Z! We had fun coming up with “Z” words and making the sound for “Z.” We also learned our shape for the month: circle!!

{Miss Sarah}

Today in Early 3’s we learned the letter “Z” and its sound. We practiced our number recognition from 1 to 3. Our book for this week is “I Like Me.” Small Groups: Group #1 painted Z’s with black paint and marbles to make “Z is for Zebra.” Group #2 practiced writing out Z’s with magnetic dots. Group #3 practiced their one-to-one correspondence and fine motor skills with a peg board.

{Miss Sarah}