preschool langage
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Preschool St. Patrick’s Day Centers
St. Patrick’s Day is such a fun holiday for little ones because it’s all about magic and mischief. This is the perfect day to get right into the fun with the children! Let’s take a look at some of the materials that I use for our St. Patrick’s day centers. Shamrock Observations – This set is designed to help children focus on small details, which is perfect when it comes to shamrocks and finding that elusive 4-leaf clover. There are images of a variety of different shamrocks, and then zoomed in images of the same shamrocks so that children can see if they can match these. There are also two paint-chip…
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Teaching CVC Words in Preschool
Earlier this week I shared my thoughts on reading instruction and it’s place in the preschool classroom. One of the strategies that I’m a huge fan of is introducing CVC words. So let’s go back to basics for a minute and explore what CVC words actually are. These are words that follow a consonant-vowel-consonant pattern (hence the CVC abbreviation). These words fall into “word families” with words in the same family ending with the same vowel and consonant. For example, the -at family includes the words bat, cat, hat, and rat. CVC word families are generally introduced by consonant sound, with short a words first. Before children are ready for…
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Should Learning to Read Happen in Preschool?
Most early childhood educators would agree that learning about language is a lifelong process – we begin hearing and decoding words at birth, and continuous growth happens from that moment! But when you specifically ask if preschoolers should be taught to read, you’ll get a wide variety of different answers. The truth is that preschoolers are already learning to read – whether we intentionally introduce activities that support this or not – they notice letters, the ways that these are oriented on the page, how combining them creates words, and that letters can be strung together and used to share information. These are foundational pieces for sure! My answer to…
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Using Question of the Day in the Classroom
One of my favorite parts of every single day in my preschool classroom is when it was time to ask the question of the day. This was my chance to see where my students’ heads were at that day, and to get to know them a little better. I promise that it was a process to get our question of the day to a point where it was successful and the children would respond with thoughtful answers. We had to model how to answer questions, and encourage them to think of their own unique answers instead of repeating the same answer as the person who answered before them. Once the…
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Activities to practice syllable recognition
It’s Wednesday, and here at Preschool Ponderings, that means time to focus on the standards. Every Wednesday I choose an Early Learning Standard and share a number of activities that can be aligned with that particular standard. Remember, the Standards that I use every day, and am most comfortable with are Ohio’s Early Learning Development Standards – you can review them here, however I’ve found that even if your State’s standards differ, many of these activities can still be aligned similarly. I’ve rounded up some great ideas today! Domain: Language and LiteracyStrand: ReadingTopic: Phonological AwarenessPhonological awareness is all about recognizing the different sounds that make up words, and all of the…
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Activities for practicing social communication
It’s Wednesday, and here at Preschool Ponderings, that means time to focus on the standards. Every Wednesday I choose an Early Learning Standard and share a number of activities that can be aligned with that particular standard. Remember, the Standards that I use every day, and am most comfortable with are Ohio’s Early Learning Development Standards – you can review them here, however I’ve found that even if your State’s standards differ, many of these activities can still be aligned similarly. I’ve rounded up some great ideas today! Domain: Language and LiteracyStrand: Listening and SpeakingTopic: Social CommunicationSocial Communication plays a huge role in the life of a preschooler. They love to…
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Friday Freebie
It’s Friday, which means it’s time for a freebie! This one is a great idea from Courtney Keimer. It’s a sensory alphabet book, each page has an upper and lowercase letter outline, along with a sensory material that begins with that particular letter. Students use glue and the suggested material to fill in each letter outline. I love this because it gives children a concrete example for each letter sound. Instead of drawing a picture, writing a word, or gluing in a magazine clipping, children actually get to handle the object that is associated with the letter sound, giving them a tangible example. I think that this is an awesome…
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Easy Alphabet Match Activity
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Name Recognition and Large Motor…Together!
This was a new activity for our class and it was such a huge success that we did it every day this week, so I absolutely had to share it with you! Each child got a balloon with their name written on one side, and their first initial on the other side. The children were told that they could do anything that they wanted with their balloon – they just had one rule to follow: They could not use someone else’s balloon. This meant that they had to recognize their name so that they were not accidentally taking someone else’s balloon as they played. The children threw their balloons, hit…
