Did Pete Cry, Goodness No

We have been hard at work in Preschool getting used to our daily routine. We are taking time each day to 'teach' how to use our craft supplies. Eighteen children with scissors and glue all at the same time is the stuff of teacher nightmares, BUT we are handling it like champions. And as it turns out our class LOVES to paint. We encourage the children to wear a smock when they craft, but the choice is left up to them. Some of you may have noticed spots of paint on your darling's clothing.

The children have the option to paint nearly every day in our class. When we have special events we will try to provide clean crafts, but for the most part we are messy. Also, accidents happen. If you have not already done so, please send in a full change of clothing for your child.

We have enjoyed reading books by Eric Litwin. Everybody loves Pete the Cat. You can find fun videos, downloads, and songs on the Harper Collins website.
http://www.harpercollins.com/childrens/feature/petethecat

The children love to read our Pete stories aloud to each other. This is a fabulous way to practice pre reading skills: retelling a story with cadence and rhyme, understanding that text has meaning, and reinforcing the parts of a story.

We are also slowly introducing phonemes. It is our goal to not only teach children to recognize letters of the alphabet, but to also know the sounds letters make. With each phoneme we say the name of the letter, produce the sound of the letter, and incorporate a motion to go along with the sound. We are currently practicing  C /c/ (cupping our hand to our ear), S /s/ (making a snake motion with our hand) F /f/ (fanning ourselves with our hand) and J /j/  (the motion is to jiggle). We would not normally introduce J so early in the year, but we have nearly 1/3 of our classmates with the letter J at the beginning of their name. It was the perfect motivation to learn a sound. We will continue sounds this week with T /t/ O /o/ and A /a/. Whenever possible the children help create the motion to go along with our sounds. As we practice these daily, the children become more comfortable with the sounds and will soon try using them to create their own written text. It is a long process, but this is where it starts.