Hello parents! Thank you so much for all of your help during our Valentine’s Day celebrations! We always appreciate the crafts, stories, and other goodies that you generously share and donate to our classroom. You helped make our Valentine week extra special!

We always have so much going on in the classroom! Since the beginning of the school year, we have used a classroom alphabet book. This is a great resource for your child to use. It is first introduced to help the children identify the pictures and names of their peers (ex. Johnny starts with the letter “J” and his picture is on the “J” page). By doing this, they are recognizing who is in the classroom, and are continuing to practice letter sounds. As the year continues, we use the book to help us identify letters and sounds. Mid-year, we start adding pictures related to the theme that week and identify the beginning sound. (ex. Bear Theme, picture of a bear, “B”). At this point in the year, we still use pictures related to themes, but the child actually has the opportunity to label the picture by sounding out and writing the sounds that they hear to create the label. The alphabet has also been great help during our journaling time to help us with letters, sounds, and beginning writing.

As we have continued beginning writing and reading skills, letter writing has been introduced and practiced. Teaching your child to write letters is a great activity that teaches them social skills, such as the proper way of addressing people. As we practice writing letters, we talk about the parts of a letter; such as starting with “Dear _________”, then moving on to what you want to tell them, and closing the letter with their name “Your friend, __________.” By focusing on this concept, the children are also gaining pre-reading skills, such as left to right, top to bottom reading, which are so important when learning how to read. The children loved taking turns reading out loud the letters that we wrote together in class.

We have also been reading different versions of the well known story, The 3 Little Pigs. The children have really loved hearing the different stories; some stories were from the pigs point of view, and some were from the wolves point of view. It has been important for the children to realize that stories can be very similar, but can also be told from the perspective of different characters in the story. We have also been talking about Real vs. Pretend ideas in stories (talking pigs and wolves, pigs and wolves wearing clothes, etc.). To do this, we worked together to make a class list of real ideas from the story (pigs, wolves, houses, etc.) vs. pretend ideas (talking pigs and wolves, pigs and wolves wearing clothes, etc.). This activity was important because the children took turns sharing their ideas and deciding if it was real or pretend, which allowed everyone to participate and practice speaking in front of their peers. This activity was also important because we worked together to sound out the words and sentences to make our list. The children are doing great at sharing their ideas, and with writing and reading. We are so proud of them all!

In the next couple of weeks, we are heading off to the Olympics! We encourage you to talk with your child about the Olympics, and get ready for the upcoming theme in the classroom! We are going to have a wonderful time!