Literacy Stations

We worked in Literacy Stations today and I was so impressed with how far the kids have come since September.  The new station today involved beginning sounds.  The kids looked at pictures to figure out the beginning sound of the word and then matched the appropriate letter to that sound.  

We also continued to search for rhyming pairs...

And we sequenced 4 cards to show what happened first, next, next and last.

We practiced printing our names with a capital letter to start and the rest of the letters lowercase.  Some kids have taken to this quickly.  Others need lots of encouragement to use lowercase letters.  This is something that can be worked on at home when you get the chance.

We practiced printing the letter Kk.

Something else that we did for the first time was our question of the day.  This is part of calendar and is very rich in math learning.  The question today was "what is your favorite playground activity?" and the 4 choices were: slide, swings, climbing and teeter-totter.  We also learned what initials are and tried to figure out our own initials for our card.  Each person chooses his/her favorite activity and adds his/her card to the graph.  Once we've all had a turn, we analyze the data using words like most, least, great, less, equal, how many more, how many fewer (etc.)  We also learned some ways to take shortcuts.  Ask your child how you can figure out the number in the column without counting.

Thanks so much for sending in the gym sense $10 so quickly.  I am only missing money from 5 kids.  Gymsense starts tomorrow for us.  We will be going on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays for the next three weeks.  On these days, please dress your child in clothing that is easy to move in.  Tighter clothing is better because it is less likely to get caught when climbing/moving around the equipment.  I will be asking kids to remove sweatshirts with hoods, so a t-shirt underneath would be great!  Skirts are not really appropriate for gymnastics.  Kids will remove their socks and shoes to participate.  

Tomorrow is Ll sharing day and also Kindergarten hearing and vision screening.