Letter H and Community Helpers

We had a fun week learning about all the kinds of things the kids might want to be when they grow up as we learned about all the people in our community. This was a great week to teach them about Veterans Day, too. We have future police officers, dentists, mommies, firemen, and truck drivers in our class!

Our Bible verse this week was "Honor your father and mother," Exodus 20:12. Ask your children to sing you the verse. They all learned it well last week. Our Bible story was on the Holy Spirit. 

We started learning about compound words last week. At first they were getting the idea of compound words confused with syllables, but most of them got the concept by the end of the week. They came up with some really good compound words. Ask them to name a few!

We had our first writing activity last week and the kids did really well on it. Writing in preschool looks like this: children draw a picture, then they "write" what they think the main word (or more if they like) sounds like. In the beginning, if the children hear and can write the beginning sound, they're doing great. Some are able to write all the consonants in words. Others spell words like they sound with vowels, but that is advanced for this age. It's not about perfection, but about practice. It's not the object to spell words correctly, but just to try to get an attempt to see that sounds make words. Then I will go behind them and ask them what they wrote, or what the picture is about and dictate it for them. You'll see this continued through kindergarten as they learn that all their thoughts can be written out. For some reason, some children are afraid to be wrong, so they would rather not respond than fail. This is a big thing we try to overcome with writing- there is no right or wrong, as long as we're trying!

Speaking of the "correct" way to do something, however, moves us on to handwriting. This is an activity where we do correct. In our handwriting without tears curriculum, we teach the children to start all letters from the top, and from left to right. Some of the kids have developed some bad habits writing their letters, and we still struggle to correctly form letters. They will do it for me the way I've shown them in our practice, but I see them reverting back to the way they did it before our class when they write their names. This will come with continued reinforcement, but I would ask for the support at home, too. When you're working with your children, please have them form the letters the way we teach at school. I sent home a parent sheet on letters last week that explains this in more detail. If you have any questions about how we form specific letters at school, PLEASE ASK! I want us to work together to get the kids off to a good handwriting start this year.

We played lots of fun math, sorting, and alphabet games, many of which were related to community helpers. 

When we carved our pumpkin, the kids made some hypotheses about what would happen to our pumpkin parts. 

Our pumpkin got so smelly this week, we had to throw it out, but here is what it looked like: gross, but the kids thought it was cool!