It was a great week!  We  started our new Mat Man from A to Z literacy curriculum and practiced our routines for this dedicated literacy time.  Morning work time gave them clues about the letters we were going to study for the day.  This week, they played with marble run, memory game, magna tiles, transportation toys, trains, train puzzles, and more.  Our Mat Man mystery bag was filled with items to help students learn the sounds of the letters we studied this week; M and T. During group time we had fun passing the objects around the rug, saying the name of the object  and identifying the beginning sounds. We worked together to fill our letter chart with nouns. Kiddos wee eager to raise their hands to contribute to our list.  When they were called on they had to indicate if their word was a person, place or thing.   In small groups, kiddos had the opportunity to meet with a teacher to read a letter focused mentor text, engage in discussions about the text, and engage in practice activities. They went on a scavenger hunt for the focus letters, learned how to build and write the letter, and engaged in directed drawing lessons for each letter.   We will continue these fun learning stations and routines until we finish studying each letter of the alphabet. 

This week everyone had the opportunity to share their jumbo "get to know me" charms.  Their artifacts were gathered together to make a personalized charm to show off to their friends.  Everyone bravely shared their collection during our morning meeting time.  They talked about each of the items on their charm; their self portraits, family drawings, and several of their favorite things; color, shape, fruit, animal, etc.. Students were asked;  WHY is important to get to know one another?.  One kiddo confidently responded, "to make new friends!". WOW... what a perfect response delivered with such poise and confidence from one of our youngest kiddos.

In Math, kiddos worked on activities to help them count with one-to-one correspondence. They counted groups of objects then put a clothespin on the correct number, they rolled a die to fill their tens frame with dots to represent the corresponding number, they traced numbers and created groups of objects to represent a number, and much more.  We enjoyed comparing facts about our community; how many letters are in your name?, how old are you?, what is your favorite color?, how many people are in your family?, etc.. It was amazing to see how much our community has in common. 

Kiddos had a great time meeting and engaging with our specialist teachers. They especially enjoyed Coach Trevor from Captain Kicks.  They moved their bodies the whole time and had the most enjoyable experience. 

We ended the week with a wonderful Shabbat experience and celebrated our first Shabbat Star, Bowie.  

Shabbat shalom!

Mrs. Wisner

                                               IMPORTANT DATES CAN BE FOUND ON THE HOME PAGE OF THE ECE PARENT PORTAL

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