Can you believe this is the end of the year for our class?! It has been an absolute joy watching the children grow in all areas of development this year. Most of our children will be headed to kindergarten in the fall. Thank you for all of those that attended the Kindergarten Readiness presentation by Jen and Hillary. We hope that you gained some valuable information and some ideas for things to work on this summer. If you did not receive this information and would like it, please let us know and we can email it to you.
Gardening Study
We will be spending the last few weeks wrapping up our Garden Study. The children may have talked about our classroom caterpillars at home. The caterpillars came to us the size of a grain of rice. The children have observed the caterpillars grown and develop into chrysalises. We have moved the chrysalises into the net. We look forward to watching them emerge into Painted Lady Butterflies. Stay tuned as we will post pictures of the entire life cycle near our classroom.
We have planted grass seeds in our classroom. The children each placed seeds and soil into cups and are responsible for watering their cups. We hope to see some sprouts come up soon. We just turned our dramatic play area into a flower shop. The children will have the opportunity to explore a variety of faux flowers as we have images and labels of various flowers available in this area. Our sensory table is full of dirt, bugs, and gardening tools. We have read a variety of both fiction and non-fiction books about all things “gardening” and the life cycle of butterflies. Last week we wanted the children to experience “mud painting.” We gave them each a cup of dirt and a cup of water and watched them turn the dirt into mud paint. We also have some activities using real flowers planned for next week.
Environmental Print
The children have expressed interest in letters and print. We have nurtured their interest by providing opportunities to explore print in context. Exploring print in a way that is relevant to their lives is known as environmental print. I have included an expert on environmental print from www.readingrockets.org
Environmental print is the print of everyday life. It’s the name given to the print that appears in signs, labels, and logos. Street signs, candy wrappers, labels on peanut butter and the K in Kmart are other examples of environmental print. For many emergent readers, environmental print helps bridge the connection between letters and first efforts to read.
Adults can take advantage of all this print by using it in ways to talk about letters, words, and print. Like playing the license plate game during a long car ride, (everyone find an A, now a B) playing with environmental print can be quick and easy. Here are a few ideas:
- Cereal boxes are colorful and interesting to look at. Ask your child to find the first letter of his name somewhere on the box. See if he can find other letters from his name too.
- Choose a simple sign to focus on during one car trip (example: stop sign, pedestrian crossing, one way). Have your child count the number of signs seen along the way. Have your child read the sign, noticing that the same sign says the same message each time. Talk about the sounds of the letters you can hear (“The S makes the /ssssssss/ sound.”)
- Use a digital camera to take pictures of different signs: speed limit, stop, do not enter, exit. Use these pictures to make a small book for your child to “read.”
- Cut out familiar words from cereal boxes, labels from soup cans and from yogurt containers. Use these individual words (“Cheerios,” “tomato,” “Dannon”) to talk about capital and lower-case letters. Talk about the sounds of letters (“The letter T says ‘tuh'”). Encourage your child to read the words you’ve cut out.
Your child can have fun learning to read even when books are not available. Environmental print provides lots of opportunities for kids to interact with letters, sounds, and words.
This last link has an abundance of information regarding emergent writing. This article has some ideas on how you can foster your child’s emergent writing skills at home this summer. Be sure to check it out!
https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/yc/nov2017/emergent-writing
If there is anything else we can help with in the last few weeks, please reach out to Jen or myself. We hope that you keep in touch with us in the future!
Nadine and the Pre-1 team.
