Ready, Set, READ!

Welcome back! We got right back in the swing of things this week, and even kicked it up a notch as we started sounding out words to READ! At circle time we talked about the sounds of Aa and Tt, and started saying them one after another. It wasn't long before a few students noticed we were saying the word "at". After that, it was a hop, skip and jump to our new big "AT" family flip book! We added the sounds for c,b,f,s,p,r, m and h to make CAT, BAT, FAT, SAT, PAT, RAT, MAT and HAT.  Don't think we took the easy way out and used just pictures to tell us the word- Ms. Heather did not show us the picture until after we read the word.  In addition to rhyming word families, we will be starting on our color words this week. First up are red and green, in honor of the season.  Of course, it will take lots and lots of practice and repetition of sounds and blending before we notice and read all the words around us, but watch out Kindergarten- we are on our way!

For centers today, we got to work on our calendars for December. This month, our calendar will help us count to Christmas as we add cotton balls one by one to make Santa's beard. We used templates to trace and cut out a face and hat, and attached our calendar as the beard. Some button eyes and soft cotton trim and mustache, and we had our Santa! Watching the children do all this by themselves showed Ms. Heather and Mrs. Horton how far we have all come from the first days of school when it was hard to cut on a big wide line, much less a skinny pencil line we traced ourselves. We are so proud of all the kids' efforts and hard work!

 

Our language center had the Leap Frog phonics toys. Some students practiced single letters and sounds, and others used the 3 letter ones to try making those "at" words on their own.

In order to make Santa's beard on our calendar, 

we each had to count out 24 cotton balls at our math center to take home for gluing.

Our rug center was the kitchen set and dishes. We had chefs, shoppers and tea parties going on today. In a few days Ms. Heather will be taking this center out to make room for our Christmas tree, so we wanted to make sure we got over there to play one more time!