language art

The most powerful and effective way for children to begin learning the complex process of learning about letters is by writing their own names.” ~Carol Lyons Retrieved from Literacy Beginnings on July 25, 2011 Today I am sharing the highlights from Chapter 20 Names: A Powerful resource for Literacy Learning by Pinnell and Fountas. This [...]

Fun with color words in preschool

April 10, 2011

Through out the school year the children have been exploring all of their colors and color words. Last week, the children reviewed many of their colors through different kinds of paint and sensory materials… Some of the children finger painted their color words… Others sprinkled some colored salt on their color words… The salt was [...]

Writing the letter of the week

February 11, 2011

Each week, when a new letter is introduced, the teacher invites each child to come up and try to print the letter on the dry erase board. The teacher begins by printing a capital and lower case letter on the board first – she identifies each letter as she is writing them for the children [...]

N is for newspaper in preschool

January 27, 2011

This week, we used the newspaper in a variety of ways to help us explore the letter N… The newspaper is a great way to explore letters and numbers and other language and literacy concepts. We laminated one large page from the newspaper to search for letters and numbers… We searched for titles and talked [...]

Rainbow tracing in preschool

October 25, 2010

Rainbow tracing is a simple technique for helping children work on their fine motor skills, eye-hand coordination, and beginning writing skills. The technique is fairly simple. You give each child at least three different colors of crayons and a shape, number or letter to trace. The children begin by tracing the shape with their finger. [...]

Tactile letters (a to e) in preschool

October 8, 2010

To integrate the letter of the week with a sensory experience the children glue or paint something on each letter. Presenting the Letter A! A tactile experience is integrated to reinforce the sound of the letter as well as the shape of the letter… Presenting the Letter B! We try to make [...]

The Alphabet Tree and activity for preschool

September 28, 2010

Today the children explored letters with alphabet stamps and a book titled “The Alphabet Tree” by Leo Lionni This really was a very simple activity that included paper leaves, alphabet stamps, and ink pads. The teacher read the book to the children first and used this activity as a way to extend the concepts from [...]

Getting started on creating a print rich environment in your preschool classroom

August 26, 2010

After you have been around the field of early childhood education for a time you will start to hear the words print rich environment. A print rich environment can be simply defined as a classroom where by young children are given many different opportunities to interact with many different forms of print. One way, among [...]