Monthly/Weekly Learning

September

This month we will start to talk about Fall and how the weather changes.  They will learn about leaves changing colors and falling from the trees.  They will learn about what foods grow in the fall, having a specific focus on apples.  They will learn the different parts of an apple and the life cycle of an apple.  For math, the kids will learn about position and path, spheres and cylinders, finding the number 4, and games with number 5.  We will continue with name recognition, phonemic awareness, counting, and fine motor skills daily.

Week of 8/31-9/4

Last week's math went so well!  The kids really enjoyed exploring all the materials and creating things, playing games, etc.  This week we will move onto the next lesson which is Positions and Paths.  The kids will learn spatial awareness through play and creativity. I will also introduce Fall and start to talk about how the weather will change in the next few weeks.  We will learn about apples and the different parts of an apple as well as the life cycle of an apple. We will continue with name recognition activiites, phonemic awareness, counting, and fine motor skills.  

Week of 9/8-9/11

This week in math we will learn about spheres and cylinders.  The kids will gain an understanding about 3D shapes while exploring different everyday objects and building and creating with 3D shapes. To continue with our Apple Unit we will do some apple stamping, explore the inside of an apple, and do an apple tasting! Name recognition, phonemic awareness, counting, and fine motor skills is ongoing.

At Home:

• Play rhyming games.  Nonsense words are okay!  Ex: hat, bat, sat, mat, lat, cat, dat, rat

• Play counting games and sing counting songs/rhymes

• Say names of objects, food, people, places and see if they can guess the first sound.  It isn't about the correct identification of the letter.  It is the sound only.  For example: Giraffe is spelled with a "G", but it makes the "J" sound.  We want them to identify making the "J" sound, not trying to guess what letter makes that sound.  Same thing with "cat" and "kite."  They make the same beginning sound.  It doesn't matter if they know if it is a "c" or "k" right now.  Just focus on the sound!

• Work on name activities.  You can write their name in highlighter and they can trace it.  You can write their name in crayon or marker and they can rainbow write around it with different color markers by either tracing the exact letters over and over with markers, or tracing around each letter with different color markers.  Getting them to recognize their name first is more important that getting them to write it at the moment.  You can even write down a few different words that start with the same letter as their name and see if they can guess which one is their name!

• Young kids are very sensory based.  Make sure they are getting a lot of opportunities to touch things and explore.  You can have rice buckets, playdough, kinetic sand, water play with toys and buckets, and anything they can get their hands in.  Sometimes it's messy but they need it!  Do it outside or put a towel down.  They learn through exploration and touching and they need to feel it first hand!  Also, anything that involves using their hands helps strengthen them to help them become better writers.  Work on those fine motor skills!

• The best way to teach kids about anything is through books and reading!  Read to your child every night and talk about what you see on the page. Count pictures or words on a page.  Get number books and alphabet books and have fun!  Learning is meant to be fun!