Week of January 19th in the 3's

Good afternoon 3’s families,

During the past couple of weeks, we have started to work on letter writing and name recognition. By the end of school, our goal is for the children to be able to independently write the first letter (or more) of their first name. We also want them to be able to visually recognize their printed name. We wanted to share some ways you can reinforce these skills at home. We do NOT want learning letters to be a daunting task. Children learn at different paces. Incorporating these skills into their regular play can help them get some extra practice. This week each child will come home with a laminated NAME CARD, which will be helpful with the ideas below.

Name/Letter Recognition Ideas:

· Write each letter of your child’s name on small pieces of tape or circle stickers. Place the tape/stickers onto action figures, legos, blocks, dolls, trains, cars, etc. Have your child put the toys in order to spell their name. Use their name card to help!

· Put the tape/sticker letters on coins/bottle caps. Hide the coins/bottle caps in playdough, shaving cream, bucket of dried pasta or beans. Have your child dig out the letters and put them in order using their name card.

· Write the letters on paper plates or pieces of paper. Spread the plates/paper on the floor of the room. Have your child walk/move like an animal to each letter. For example: Crawl like a spider, hop like a bunny, slither like a snake, fly like a bird, etc.

· Sticky Note Hunt! Write the letters of your child’s name onto several sticky notes (3 or 4 sets of each letter). Stick the notes all around the room or house. Have your child hunt for the letters and build their name.

· Consider labeling your child’s favorite cup with their name. Looking at their printed name often will help them start to recognize it.

Letter Writing Ideas:

· If your child doesn’t mind getting messy, spray some shaving cream on a large plate or pan. Have them write the letters of their name in the shaving cream. You can make this more fun by adding toys to the shaving cream. Your child can use the toy as a “paintbrush” and use it to form the letters.

· Practice making letters on the driveway or sidewalk using chalk or water with a paintbrush.

Please let us know if you have any questions or if you have ideas that you want to share with other parents!

This week at CIRCLE TIME,

· We read There was a cold lady who swallowed some snow! by Lucille Colandro

· We danced with scarves to songs from Frozen, the Lion King and PJ Masks.

What’s new in CENTERS this week?

Art: Students used their “pinchy” fingers to peel off blue and silver circle stickers and stick them onto a snowflake. They also worked one-on-one with a teacher on CUTTING! We have regular child-size scissors and loop scissors to practice with. To start, we will focus on holding the scissors with thumbs UP and snipping strips of paper. They did a FABULOUS job! Keep up the good work boys and girls!! They used the paper that they snipped to make a mitten collage.

Discovery Bins: Fine-motor practice this week with pom-pom drop snowman bottles. The children used tongs to pick up pom-poms and put them into snowman bottles. This is tricky to coordinate, but they did a great job!

Yellow Bins: The children played with a color matching magnet maze. They had to use the magnet pen to drag the colored balls on to the matching crayon.

Blocks Bins: Wooden blocks and little wooden people have been added to this center. We have lots of creative builders in our class.

Red Bins: The dollhouse is back!

Chalkboard/Writing Center: This week, the children practiced tracing and drawing the first letter of their names. They had to: 1) Find it, 2) Circle it, and 3) Write it. The children are really working hard on writing their first-name letters. You may have even seen their letters on some of their artwork!

Have a wonderful weekend. We look forward to seeing you next Thursday.

Your teachers,

Brenda Daday & Christina Renoni