Our PreSchool Blog

We are working hard with our letters!  We are learning to recognize them, name them, give their sounds, and build them.

Before we start learning to write letters it is important for children to really know what a letter looks like, and what kinds of lines it contains.  So for example, uppercase A is made of only straight lines but lowercase a is made of a curved line and a straight line.

We work hard to learn to build them the correct way, to make the transition to writing them much easier.  Starting at the top and going down is always important!

The first step to reading readiness is being able to understanding that there is a relationship between letters and sounds through written language. Children who cannot hear and work with the phonemes of spoken words will have a difficult time learning how to relate these phonemes to letters when they see them in written words. Before reading groups begin, our K Prep students are working hard (and playing hard) to connect each letter with the sound it makes as well as identifying the first sound in a spoken word. How do we learn this important skill in K Prep?  Playful learning!

Phonics involves the relationship between sounds and their spellings. The goal of phonics instruction is to teach students the most common sound-spelling relationships so that they can decode, or sound out, words. This decoding ability is a crucial element in reading success.  The first step in phonics study is to be able to identify the sound(s) each letter can make.   As we begin to “read” our letter Jj books, we are also taking part in correctly orienting books for reading and turning pages one at a time.  Children also begin to demonstrate an understanding that print carries meaning.  All of these are the first steps in the process of early reading.

After an “extended” winter vacation, we were all ready to be back in school this week!  We hit the ground running with a new emergent reader focusing on the new sight words, go and on.  We also began sounding out simple two letter words.

We’ve been focusing on the sight word you, this week, during our guided reading groups.  We built the sight word on each page to complete the sentences, read the text to identify any unknown words using the basic reading strategies we’ve been learning this year, and reread the text to practice fluency.

Strengthening fine motor muscles in the hands is essential for successful writing.  Coloring small pictures with a focus on moving your hands/fingers slowly to stay inside the lines helps improve hand strength and dexterity of children.  An easy way to encourage fine motor development at home or just about anywhere!

What would you do if you traveled to space?  What would you see?  We read the story, On the Moon, by Anna Milbourne to discover who can travel to the moon, how they get there, and what the moon is like.    We responded to the reading during writer’s workshop.  Our focus today was adding details to our illustrations and adding labels to help our “audience” understand what we are trying to say.  What an amazing job they did!  I think I even saw our new sight word on one or two.  They are on their way to becoming wonderful writers!