Hi! It’s getting close to the end of the year and my last day at BDLC. Small groups will continue to meet through the end of April. I’ve enjoyed working with your children and will miss them!
April 5th – 9th April 8, 2010
This week we read “Lina and Leopold”, a cute story about a little girl, a cat and his siblings, and a mouse. After the story, I introduced some nice lined paper that shows a top-line and base-line in a unique way. The top-line is blue with a sunshine (the sky) and the base-line is green with a flower (ground). The children responded to this type of writing paper well. It really improved their attention to writing their letters, so that they could sound out words better!
March 22nd – 26th March 23, 2010
This week we read “Gorgonzola the Stinkysorous” a tale about a triceratops who was an orphan and didn’t ever learn how to groom himself. He’s “adopted” by a little birdy who assists him in being “civilized”.
After the story we sort small exotic animals we use for math. I have written several equations for the children to do. They do three addition and three subtraction equations.
The End of February March 5, 2010
We read “ABC I Like Me!” this week. It is an illustrated alphabet book. Afterward, the children worked on their “alphabet books” for two weeks. the were given complete artistic control over their book, deciding the layout they would choose. I only required it be an “ABC” book and have a title and author written on the cover page.
Look for them in their cubbies. 
February 8th – 12th February 8, 2010
This week we will read “There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed An Ocean”. I have a puppet and props to enhance the story. The children will be posed the question, “Is it possible to eat all of those things”? Also, “How would the story be different if the woman had stopped eating after she swallowed the—”?
I will have several magnetic boards with tiles out. On the boards, I’ll have the words, “sea, ocean, fich, etc…” spelled out. The children will be given a variety of letters to copy these words. We will work on sounding these words out as they do so.
Writing! January 29, 2010
This week I read “Frida” a children’s book about Frida Kalo. The children noticed that she aged as the book went on and thought this was very interesting as she wasn’t a baby anymore.
We also did an activity with cats. Eac child chose their own photo of a cat, cut and glued it onto paper and then wrote some words about their cat. At this point most of the children are writing short words with some assistance!
January 18th-22nd January 18, 2010
This week we read “A Second is a Hiccup”. This book uses concrete examples a child can grasp to explore the concepts of a second, minute, hour, week, and month.
We then take our magnetic boards and name the 4 pictures. Next to them are four words, matching the pictures. As a group we find the word that matches the picture. We do this by sounding out the words! Reading!
Last, the children practice sorting. They sort insects by color, by size, and then by habitat.
January 2010! December 18, 2009
This week we will read, “Zen Ties” bu Jon J Muth.
Groups just got a brand-new felt number chart (thanks to MARSH script cards). It has numbers 1 – 10 and 10 types of animals, of different quantities. The children will take turns putting the correct number of animals next to the correct number. We will finish this and take a look at it to count and make sure it is correct (and take an opportunity to count high).
Next, I will pose different questions to the children? I’ll ask questions like, “We have 10 butterflies. 4 Fly away. How many butterflies are left”? We will practice this quite a bit.
December 14th – 18th December 11, 2009
We will focus on shapes this week.
Groups will read/listen to “Kitten’s First Full Moon” by Kevin Henkes. We will talk about what shape the full moon is and notice when we see the circle throughout the story.
The children will trace and fill in metal insets today. We will not only work on sharpening fine motor skills with metal insets, but will also begin learning the names of the more complicated shapes like curvilinear triangle, quatrefoil, and pentagon.
December 7 – 11 December 8, 2009
This week, small groups will read a book by Eric Carle. We will then “hang the clean laundry” in order from 1 – 20. I put up a “clothes-line” and the children will sort through the clean “shirts” to find all the numbers, 1 – 20, and hang them up with clothes-pins. This work reinforces number identificat0n, number sequencing and working as a team (and fine-motor skills).
Finally, groups will look through a box of toys/objects and name each one. When we name one we will also say the sound it begins with and what letter that is. (ie. cat, kuh, kuh, kuh, that starts with “c” or “k”). You can never do too much of this with your children. Learning the phonemic sounds of our alphabet is the foundation for success in reading.
rosewitteveen
