We had a really fun little ceremony with the kids on the last day of school. We all got our pictures taken and everyone clapped for each other when they received their certificates. Mrs. Lackey and I hope you all have an amazing summer. We will miss you all so much!!
Savior’s mom sent me some really cute pictures of Savior’s birthday party. Enjoy!
We planted “magic” beans on Wednesday and a few are already sprouting!
I don’t know about you, but these last few months have FLOWN by! We officially have five preschool days left!! There is school this Wednesday, then schools are closed Friday and the following Monday. Our last day with the children is Wednesday, June 9. If you have any questions about Kindergarten or if you need information about Young Fives, please reach out to me very soon. During the summer, please continue to work on alphabet recognition, letter sounds, and fine motor skills with your child and (more importantly) don’t let the growth they’ve all made in social skills slide. Have a Zoom meeting with classmates, meet at the park, find some way for your child to be social in a way that is comfortable for you. Many of our students are heading to DuVall or Lindbergh for Kindergarten. Maybe try to keep in touch with other families that you will see again in the fall. Whatever works for you!
Above are some of the Alphafriends we’ve learned about last week and this week. Today was W. It’s a pretty tricky one to write! The kids are getting good at finding words that start with the letter of the day. We’ve also been looking for certain letters in our Daily 5 books. Next time you are reading a book together, see if your child can spot some of the letters in their name.
I hope you have all had the opportunity to enjoy the nice weather these past few days. We have been spending lots of time gardening! Can you believe that in just four short weeks, summer break will officially begin for preschoolers? The time has flown by! Here are the lesson plans for the final four weeks:
Next week and the week after that, we will be focusing on oral language by telling fairy tales. The kids love hearing me tell the fairy tales with props but no books and I love telling the stories! We often overlook it, but oral language helps develop good reading and writing skills as well as listening skills. If you don’t already do it, try telling your children stories during dinner, before bed, in the car or whenever. They can be real stories about your childhood or you can make up stories. You can use these opportunities to have your child share in the story telling experience with you. Maybe they will even begin to tell you stories of their own!
That’s a funny title, isn’t it? Tomorrow I am getting A LOT of hair cut off! I grow my hair out and as soon as it’s long enough, I cut it and donate it to Children With Hair Loss. I believe this will be my fourth time doing so. I usually wouldn’t even mention it but with the combination of a big hair change and wearing a mask, I didn’t want to startle any of the kids Friday.
On Monday, we learned about the letter P and how it pops out of your mouth when you make the sound. Today we learned that the letter Q has a best friend (U). I also included a picture of the color posters we’ve been working on as well as a picture where we learned about how black makes colors darker and white makes colors lighter. So far, your children have heard the words primary, secondary, neutral, and shade in the context of colors. It’s ok if they don’t remember all these words. Everyone will pick up something new at the right time for them.
Can you believe we’ve made it halfway through the alphabet already? Yesterday we learned about the letter N (Nyle Noodle). If you can practice letter sounds at home, that would be wonderful. Just showing your child what your mouth looks like as you say different letters is helpful, especially as you are able to do this without a mask on. I know a couple kids were having trouble hearing the subtle difference between M and N when I said them with my mask on. Any practice will help! I also wanted to share two other things we did today. The first is a picture of three students using teamwork to put together our alphabet train puzzle. Each child in the class came over to the puzzle in groups of two or three and completed the puzzle with me. We worked on letter recognition, sounds, and beginning letter sound. The last picture shows what we did in circle time. We talked about how green is a secondary color and you create it by mixing yellow and blue. I then drew a venn diagram (ignore my horrible circles, it’s tough drawing them in an elongated rectangle), gave each child a colored letter and had them come up to the board one at a time to decide where their letter should go. They did a great job with this and with counting how many letters were in each color area and which color had the most/least. Whew!! We learned a lot yesterday!
On Monday we talked about the letter M. We’ve also been working on sounding out short words, like “mud”. Some of the children are picking up on this but it’s ok if your child isn’t ready for this yet. It’s good for them just to hear it.
