Monthly/Weekly Learning

October

This month we will continue our Fall Unit with a focus on pumpkins!   They will learn the different parts of a pumpkin and the life cycle of a pumpkin.  We will compare them to apples to look for similarities and differences.  We will also learn about spiders and bats!  For math, the kids will learn about comparing sizes, counting forward to 10, identifying attribute blocks, and discovering animals with 2D shapes.  This month we will also start focusing on a letter a week!  We will do daily activities that incorporate the letters like "ant stamping" for A, "bubble painting" for B, etc.  We will continue with name recognition, phonemic awareness, counting, and fine motor skills daily.

Week of 10/5-10/9

This week in math is about sizes.  They will learn about the different vocabulary that goes along with sizing and measuring things, as well as putting things in order smallest to largest.  They will learn through storytelling like "Goldilocks and the 3 bears" as well as different objects. We will continue our Fall Unit with a focus on Pumpkins!  What is the life cycle of a pumpkin?  How does it compare to the life cycle of apples?  What are the different parts of a pumpkin and how do they compare to apples? Name recognition, phonemic awareness, counting, and fine motor skills is ongoing.

Week of 10/12-10/16

This week in math is about counting forward to 10.  They will practice rote counting while also connecting each quantity to it's number through games and songs.  We will continue our discussion on pumpkins while adding in our letter of the week, which is A! They will explore the letter A through songs, paint, and stickers. Name recognition, phonemic awareness, counting, and fine motor skills is ongoing.

Week of 10/19-10/23

This week in math is about identifying attribute blocks.  They will develop an understanding of attribute classification and use labels to identify and regcognize blocks by color, shape, and size. We will also start letter B this week and explore it through objects, songs, and bubble painting!  I am going to introduce bats this week as well!  We will talk about what they eat, where they live, and discover different characteristics about them.  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!