IED PRE-K NEWSLETTER FOR THE WEEK OF:

SEPTEMBER 21-25, 2009  

This Week:              

  This week we celebrated Family and Friends as well as the Letter Aa. Children made “family portraits” on paper plate frames; showed where families live by creating a house from geometric shapes ( with a little added pizzazz from the story, The Big Orange Splot); participated in making a graph that shows all their family members by adding dots to their name line in each column representing different family members; and painted pictures using various types of paint.              

The kids did a fantastic job of finding creative and unusual letter Aa items and sharing them. Our list included: astronauts, airplanes, animals, alligators, a real apple, a model of an ant, , Addie from our class,  and various and sundry automobiles. Way to go, Pre-K!

We tried to emphasize songs with the Letter Aa sounds as well, beginning with the letter of the week song: Letter A says a, aa, aah, a, aa, ah, a, aa, ah, Letter A says a, aa, ah, a, aa, ah, a, aa, ah, and that’s how letter A sounds—hey! We’ll be singing this song for each letter of the alphabet to help familiarize children with each letter’s sounds. The letter f was incidentally highlighted as we noted that both family and friends, which we explored this week, begin with f.  

Next Week:              

 We will begin our Unit, “My Five Senses” starting Monday. We will cover one sense each day in the following order: Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting and Touching. Each day will offer a variety of hands-on experiences to help the children form the concept of each sense. As this unit will emphasize which body part is used for each sense, it will provide a natural bridge into our study of “My Body” the week after.  

Thanks and Reminders:

*  The Pre-K is a no peanut zone due to the serious allergic reactions peanuts can induce. For many, it a life-threatening allergy. Please refrain from sending peanut butter, peanuts or any kind of bars or crackers containing peanut products. We know this is a difficult food to give up, but please understand for some it is a serious health matter. Thank you.

*  The Letter Bb is our Letter of the Week for September 28-October 2. Please send your child with their items for their Sharing Day. Children are always also welcome to bring in natural objects such as shells, pine cones, etc. to share, particularly as they pertain to the seasons we’re in. Also, they can tell stories about vacations they’ve taken, a celebration they’ve attended, something funny that happened, whatever. We definitely encourage this, too.  Thanks!  

               TODAY IN PRE-K/Monday, September 21, 2009  

For our new unit this week we will be focusing on family and friends. The next couple days we will be discussing families. Today the children were asked the question “What makes a family?” They all had wonderful ideas some of the main topics were as followed: sharing, mom and dad, brothers and sisters, love, playing, pets baby being born first, friends and a house.

We read the book All Kinds of Families!

We also started the letter of the week today. We learned how to sign the letter A in sign language. The children did a wonderful job! They also learned how the letter A is pronounced in three different ways. We sang a song pronouncing the letter A.

The letter A sharing started as well. As most of you know each child has a day of the week for sharing so please try and make sure on that day your child brings something in to share. This is a choice if your child chooses not share that is totally fine. Thanks for the cooperation.  
 

TODAY IN PRE-K/Tuesday, September 22, 2009

* We started the day by singing and signing the Letter Aa song .  Then children gave a thumbs up or thumbs down to objects withdrawn from a brown bag to indicate whether or not they started with the letter Aa. The kids got all of them correct!

* We did the Weather and Calendar, then continued the theme of Families with a discussion of the question, “Where do families live?” 

This was followed by a reading of the book, All Kinds of Families.,

* Other choices today included pasting Alphabet letters onto a paper letter A form, blocks, cars, the pretend area,  and the Alphabet floor puzzle.

 TODAY IN PRE-K/ Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Today we started off the day by doing the Weather, Calendar and what season we are in. We read the book: Leaves, Leaves!

During our main circle time we reviewed what we have been discussing this week which is families.

For our special project today the children were asked one at a time to place dots on a chart for all the number of people that either live in their house or are in their family. This included pets as well. They all did a great job! The children were still able to decorate the letter A using different materials.

               TODAY IN PRE-K/Friday, September 25,2009

We tallied up our family chart that we made on Wednesday to see how many different family members we had in our class. The children did a great job at counting together.

We did the weather and calendar both am and pm.

We made a list ways that we can "Be a Friend" to others 

We sang the letter Aa song and practiced signing the letter Aa as well.