I had a student tell me this week that the lemonade tasted fantastic! Whoa! What a great word for a 4 year old. I think we can, at times, underestimate the limitless possibility of a child's vocabulary. So last week, we introduced the "memory drawer" during large group. It is an imaginary drawer in our brains where we "store" information for later use.
We had a student use the word "and" during our shared writing time in literacy. So I had the children open up their memory drawers (pull the imaginary drawer from the back of their heads) and repeat the word conjunction to file the "big kid word" away in their memory. A conjunction is a word that holds two parts of our sentence together. They all smiled and laughed about opening up their brains and many of them seemed so proud to learn what that big kids know :) We will continue to expand our vocabulary in Pre-K and add words to our memory drawer. Who knows, over the course of the year, some of the words may even become a part of your child's working vocabulary. Wouldn't that be FANTASTIC!
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In Math we are talking about shapes and the students made shapes in our small math group this week. We started with 3 sides (stirring straws) and 3 marshmallows (corners) to make a triangle. Then we asked the students how do you make it into a square? "We need one more side and one corner!" GREAT JOB! We are getting our brains ready for the upper grades with early addition sentences 3+1=4 (shhh...don't tell your child, they still think we only played with straws and marshmallows).
We introduced the cube today, found cubes in our room, and counted the 6 squares on the cube. If they were paying really close attention in Large Group Math today, they learned a 5th grade word. In 5th grade they call the 6 squares that make up the cube "faces". Where did you hang your bird feeder?
This week during small groups we made bird feeders with yarn and O's. We talked about how the birds can use the yarn to help build their nest when all the food is gone. The original thought was to hang them on the trees outside our window, however, many of students in our first group wanted to hang them at home! I hope your backyard birds appreciate the treat :) What did you use to mix colors with Ms. Butler?
Did your drawing "break the rules?" Our theme this week is color. Since the Pre-Kers already know most of the basic colors, we focused on mixing the colors and breaking the "rules". One of our small groups are working with color mixing. Find out what your child used as a paintbrush if they have been with Ms. Butler this week! We also "broke the rules" in a Benny Andrews inspired "draw what you see" center. For FOUR YEARS students have been told that a tree has a brown trunk and green leaves. This week our trees have blue trunks and purple leaves or yellow trunks and pink leaves (although some of the students found this to be silly and stuck with the traditional colors :) ). |
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July 2019
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