Here you will find what we are learning about for the week, as well as some ideas for you to practice at home!
September
This month we are still learning the way the classroom and school works. They have come a long way, but it will still take some time to get it down. We will continue to focus on rules and expectations while also learning how to play with others and share space. We are continuing a different color each week to keep reinforcing the little art activities that involve cutting and painting. These small color activities will help prepare them for when we start having harder art activities coming up towards the end of this month! We are also focusing on shapes this month. We will cover circles, ovals, squares, rectangles, triangles, hearts, and stars. Those are on their report card which they have to master by the end of the year.
Week of 9/2-9/5
This week the color is green! Wear as much green this week as you can. Eat green foods at home, and talk about different shades of green. Play games like "I spy" and pick out different things around the house that are green. Have them go on a "green hunt" where they find things around the house that are green. To help with counting, you can either ask them to find 5 things, or after they have found a certain amount of items, count them together! We have also started our Phonemic Awareness lessons which focus on rhyming, individual sounds, blending and segmenting. This is so important in early childhood education to help them become good readers down the road. We are also having a focus on identifying their names. They don't need to spell them right now, but recognizing them is important!
Week of 9/8-9/12
This week the color is blue! Wear as much blue this week as you can. Eat blue foods at home, and talk about different shades of blue. Play games like "I spy" and pick out different things around the house that are blue. Have them go on a "blue hunt" where they find things around the house that are blue. To help with counting, you can either ask them to find 5 things, or after they have found a certain amount of items, count them together! We have also started learning about shapes! I forgot to mention last week we focused on the difference between circles and ovals. This week will will look at the differences between squares and rectangles.
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!
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!