This week we began our new theme: Los cinco sentidos. The five senses. During this month we will learn all about this very fun, interactive theme with lots of smells, sounds, tastes, textures, and sights.
This first week was spent introducing the theme in general. Fall is a fabulous time to talk about the senses. Ask your child what sense they are using during different activities that your family takes part in. Going for a walk through the brightly colored fall leaves you can talk about the different colors you see, how the smell has changed to damp earth and leaves, how the leaves make a whispering, crunchy sound, and how some leaves are rough while others are smooth. (Don’t taste the leaves!)
We completed a few fun projects but mainly we focused on different hands-on activities. Be sure to ask your child to tell you about the activities they did while at school but also use their projects as a starting point for great family talks. “Tell me about this …cinnamon. Do you hear the cinnamon? Do we smell it? How does it smell?” Etc.
Letras y Números
This week students were introduced to the letter I. This letter makes the long /e/ sound. This is a fun letter to form, top down, side-to-side. Preschool letter activities offer the opportunity to learn and remember letters from the alphabet in a fun and attractive manner. Learning our letters in a fun, meaningful way is important in the preparation for learning to read and write.
Ii
Has your little preschooler been counting a lot at home? We do a LOT of counting at school. We feel it is important to count objects, rather than singing a counting song, so your child can learn to associate the visual with the spoken. While making dinner or folding laundry ask your child to separate out a certain number of objects. “Could you find 3 socks for me?” Saying the number as they are touching each ‘sock’ is important.
We continued with our family theme and read the great book: El canguro tiene mamá by Eric Carle. This story provided repetition, allowing for great student participation. This was also a great introduction to many animals and their babies.
We had a great time matching pictures of mother animals with their babies. Do you have any books at home to reinforce this concept?
Our many kangaroo / canguro projects also provided great practice in our fine motor skills with: cutting, tearing, painting, gluing, and coloring. We also worked on following step-by-step instructions. Our younger students are working on staying on task for longer periods of time, to complete their projects. While our older students are working on multi-step instructions and refining their fine motor skills to complete projects in a more timely and presentable manner.
Our kangaroo face /cara del canguo was a great activity to practice our gluing skills. (This is not as simple or easy as it sounds!!) We talked about how many eyes, ears, and noses each face should have and where each part should be placed.
Letras y Números
This week students were introduced to the letter E. This letter makes the same sound as the E in elephant an E in egg. Pre-K students are asked to use their fine motor skills to form the letters. This letter is formed from right to left, down, then to the right. The pencil is then lifted and a line written from left to right in the middle.
Ee
We also worked with the number 2. All students worked on identifying the number two, putting together groups of two, specifically groups of two animals. Older students worked on writing the number, starting with the curve, a diagonal line, with a sharp turn to the right. Do you find your kiddo counting a bunch? Counting can be fun! Here’s a cute video for counting in Spanish.
We sequenced the story, did a walk- on-rhyme where we act out parts of the story in order. We also worked on our cutting skills with Goldilock’s hair. To reinforce size concepts at home point out, or have your kiddo point out, things that come in different sizes and then tell you what they are. Can they do it in Spanish and English? During meals talk about temperature.
A fun new song from this week:
Sol Solecito
Sol solecito, caliente me un poquito, (Sun, little sun, warm me up a little bit)
Hoy y mañana y toda la semana. (Today and tomorrow and all of the week.)
Our calendar pattern this week was:
abuela, abuelo, abuela, abuelo
And our circle pattern was:
Rojo,azul, amarillo
We worked on sequencing events from stories.
We used pattern cards to continue patterns.
We used tijeras/scissors and pegamento/glue to complete art projects.
Letras y Números
Each week we will be learning about a new letter of the alphabet. Depending on the skill level of your child they may simply be exposed to how the letter looks, the sound it makes and objects that begin with that sound. The more advanced their level the both upper and lower case. They may be asked to find objects or pictures of words that begin with that sound. It all depends on the skills of each child and how they are developing (sometimes age dependent). Please note: All letters and numbers Yes, your kiddos will count much higher. Right now we are working on number recognition, one-to-one correspondence, numerical order, writing numbers, etc.
This week: number 1, and Letter A a (the dentist’s favorite letter, say “Ahhh”)
Next week: number 1, and Letter E e (as in egg or elephant)
Week 2 of preschool was fun!! Everyone is getting to know each other, friendships are forming. Students are becoming more familiar with the routines of the day. Yay!
We are always pointing out how things are the same or how they are different. Each week we have several activities where we compare groups of objects trying to determine if they are the same or different. In Spanish we say: igual—same and diferente—different
This is an important concept for preschoolers. It asks them to focus their attention, to look for small details, to compare and contrast, to categorize, etc. To reinforce this concept you can:
Read different versions of the same story and discuss how they were similar and how they were different.
Look at pictures of the family and discuss differences (who is missing in one picture, who was wearing what, whose hair changed, etc.)
We worked on our fine motor skills by drawing horizontal lines between two dots. (More practice can easily be done at home and is fun.)
Our story focus this week as ¿Eres tu mi mama? This is another book with several different animals. Sequencing this story is always fun. Our older children dictate their own captions for the story. They were great!
Letras y Numeros
This week we continued with our name identification and formation practice. Improvement can already be seen! Letters are fun, especially when we can claim them as part of our own name. We can incorporate numbers by counting how many letters each student has in their name.
At home: write down the names of everyone who lives in your house. Have your child look for letters that are the same. Do you share letters? Count how many letters each person has in their name. Who has more? Who has less?
Please make sure to turn in your Certificate of Immunization Status form (forms are in the office) if you haven’t done so already. A printout of your child’s immunizations from your doctor’s office does not take the place of the actual form. The CIS form and your signature is required for the state. This year Jennie Westfall will be taking care of reporting our school’s immunizations, so you may get an email from her if she has any questions about your child’s form. Thank you!
Welcome! We are so excited to start the new preschool year. It was so nice to see so many returning faces as well as several new ones. Each class, T/TH AM and M/W/F AM and PM has new and returning students. This is nice for everyone as there are students to model our routine songs, appropriate behaviors and expectations.
We started our first week exploring the classroom and school. Students were introduced to several of our routine songs:
A limpiar (the clean up song),
Buenos Días or Buenas Tardes (our Good Morning or Good Afternoon songs),
Si estás contento y lo sabes (If you’re happy and you know it song),
Los días de la semana (the days of the week song), and more!
We use our daily calendar for many things (so please arrive betweem 8:45-9:00 in the AM and 12:30-12:45 in the PM). We are learning about circulos/circles, familia/family, la mamá/mom, and el papá/dad.
The kiddos, even on the first day, did a great job repeating and then continuing the pattern on the calendar. Ask your kiddos to find patterns in everyday things at home or while you are out and about.
Our first theme of the school year is: Mi familia y yo / My Family and Me. Our main book this week was: ¿Tu mamá es una llama? Story time is a great time to practice sitting in a group, listening, acting out certain parts of the story, repeating after the teacher, re-telling and sequencing. These are all things we will work on throughout the year.
Letras y Números
This week we really focused on identifying our own names. We did many activities and crafts to help us with this. Younger students are working on recognition while older students are working on correct pencil/marker grip and correct formation.
While out and about, or while reading a book at home, ask your child if they see any letters from their name. Have your child do their name puzzle while they are waiting for …dinner, or breakfast, or a snack.
Procedures
There are several things that we can all do to make this a fabulous year for your children, their teacher, and you!
Please remember to sign in and out each day.
Please remember: Morning preschool arrival is 8:45-9:00 and ends at 11:30. Please do not arrive prior to 8:45. (Every minute of teacher prep time is valuable!) Afternoon preschool arrival is 12:30-12:45 and ends at 3:15.
We will release your children one at a time to avoid confusion. We will have your child check their drawer (cajón) each day to take papers and notes home. Please make sure there is space in their backpacks to hold new items.
Please let us know if someone different will be picking your child up. (They must be listed on your registration form and must provide photo ID.)
We will be messy! Please don’t send your child in ‘nice’ clothes.
If your child is an all-day student please be sure to send a water bottle. We have a “no juice/no milk” school policy.
Our 3rd & 4th graders started a school garden this past school year. We have big plans to have the other classes add on to it, add an adorable art project fence in the fall, and extend the area to create an outdoor learning space for all the classes.
We would love your help in WATERING the garden this summer. Here’s the plan:
Check the sign-up to see if it needs to be watered.
Be sure to fill your name in (even if you just dropped in on the spur of the moment) so people know when it has been watered.
The hose and water spout ‘key’ are in a bin under the bench.
We were very busy this week! Besides working within our monthly Sports theme we also joined the other classes from the school and practiced singing on stage. Preschool is a great time to introduce children to speaking and performing in front of others. By practicing with the other classes they were able to learn by example.
The preschoolers will start our program Monday evening by singing just a few of their routine songs. These are songs they have been singing all year so they are very comfortable with them.
Los movimentos
We also had a great time weaving our bodies in and out of a long series of cones. This is a great exercise for our eyes!
We also practiced gently kicking a ball in and out of a series of cones. This was a great way to work on our control. We talked about not using our hands and being gentle with the ball in order to have more control.
We read a very fun book about the movements of animals, ¿Quién salta? We then practiced making all the movements with our own bodies:
salta – hops
se desliza – slithers
vuela – flies
nada – swims
se arrastra – crawls
We worked together and played a very fun game of leap frog. The children did a great job of being in control of their bodies, carefully leaping over one another, remaining aware of their weight, hands, and feet.
Letras y Números
We read a great ABC book about sports. While we were reading the book the students practiced their letter writing skills on white boards. They did an excellent job writing the upper and lower case letters!
On June 10th we focused on the number 10. We used our math station to show a few ways the number 10 can be formed.
This is a great activity for preschoolers to do up to the number 6. (We chose to do it up to 10 due to the date but we have done this previously with lower numbers.) Colored blocks are great for this activity.
This week we began our new theme: Los cinco sentidos. The five senses. During this month we will learn all about this very fun, interactive theme with lots of smells, sounds, tastes, textures, and sights.
We completed a few fun projects but mainly we focused on different hands-on activities. Be sure to ask your child to tell you about the activities they did while at school but also use their projects as a starting point for great family talks. “Tell me about this …cinnamon. Do you hear the cinnamon? Do we smell it? How does it smell?” Etc.
cara del canguo was a great activity to practice our gluing skills. (This is not as simple or easy as it sounds!!) We talked about how many eyes, ears, and noses each face should have and where each part should be placed.
