Monthly/Weekly Learning

March

This month we will continue our Spring Unit, learning about how the weather changes and what that means for plants, insects, and birds.  We will also learn the life cycle of a butterfly.  We will talk about what plants need to grow and grow some grass in class so they can practice planting and watering, and see it all in action!  We will talk about St. Patrick's Day and why we celebrate it with of course some fun activities revolved around rainbows, 4 leaf clovers, and gold!  We will spend the last couple days before Spring Break doing some Easter crafts, and we will continue with a letter a week, name writing, and phonemic awareness!

Week of 3/3-3/6

This week we will start letter R and continue reviewing numbers 0-10.  We will read The Very Hungry Caterpillar and make caterpillars and butterflies!  We will also make some rainbows to go along with our letter of the week!

Week of 3/9-3/13

This week we will start letter S and continue reviewing numbers 0-10.  We will also start talking about greater than, less than, and equal to.  We have done some informal work with this, but we will go more in depth with showing them the actual symbols and learning how to point them so the alligator eats the bigger number! We will also make our life cycle of the butterfly craft and a rhyming craft as well as continuing with our other spring activities! 

Week of 3/16-3/20

This week we will start letter T and continue reviewing numbers 0-10.  We will continue talking about greater than, less than, and equal to.  We have done some informal work with this, but we will go more in depth with showing them the actual symbols and learning how to point them so the alligator eats the bigger number! We will also celebrate St. Patrick's Day with some science related activities and food related activities!  Since Easter will happen over Spring Break, we will end the week with a few Easter crafts.

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!