Wow! Has it been over a year already???

My apologies for not keeping up with this blog last year. I will do better this year.

To date we have completed 3 units and are on our fourth. We completed our All About Me, Self-Awareness, and Home and Families units. The kids did great with each one. We are now learning about Insects (or BUGS, :P yuk! as they are really called). Our vocabulary for this week included Action words, from the story "The Very Lazy Ladybug":

sneeze, snooze, sleep, scratch, swish, swim, fly, hop, roar,swing, and walk.

The kids learned what each word meant and acted each word out as we read the story. The concept of ACTION words is a difficult one to master. Keep pointing out actions at home and what they are called to help your child master this concept.

At the green circle table the children made finger puppets and joined in finger puppet rhymes, put spots, antennae and legs on a ladybug and counted how many each had, and they used patterned circles to create a caterpillar.

This week we are continuing our insect unit and focusing on descriptor words:

big, small, fast,slow, soft, hard, long, short, striped spotted

At the green circle tables the children will:

Play a memory matching game with bug pictures that match the descriptor words;
Make a bug using two or more of the descriptors;
Build sentences about the bugs they made (My bug is _____ and _____);
Answer riddles where a bug is described and they have to show the teacher which bug it is.

In the Large Language Groups we will sing a bug song; use a venn diagram to list the descriptors for different bugs to see what they have in common and what they have different; and use a magnifying glass to look at plastic bugs or bug pictures and describe what we are seeing.

The children have learned the short sounds for the letters a, o, and the sounds for the letters c and d. This week they are learning g. In Large Language Group we will be combining those sounds to make real and silly words.

At home you can help by pointing out descriptors about things in the home, or in the yard, or around town (color, size, shape, texture, design patterns).