A common misconception in Early Childhood Education is that it’s important for children to know the NAMES of letters before they begin kindergarten (or reading). A much more important skill is the ability for your child to be able to discriminate sounds (auditory discrimination). These children are fishing for pictures that begin with the ‘ssssss’, ‘mmmmmm’, or ‘ffffffff’ sound. It is not necessary for the child to know any letter names in this activity. When she catches a ‘sssssssock’ fish, she puts it in the pail with the letter that says ‘sssss’. There is a component of visual discrimination (remembering which letter makes which sound) to this activity, but for the children who do not remember, I will tell them what sound each letter makes. This keeps the integrity of the activity (sorting sounds). We take our time with these letter sounds (it is preschool, after all) and let the children really MASTER each sound before moving on. Once they learn a few letter sounds and understand the concept, they begin to learn them VERY quickly, and it’s quite fascinating.
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One of our preschool parents donated all of these Pringle cans.... We decided to turn them into an art project! We added beans to the inside and turned them into a music project as well!
This is a game we play to strengthen auditory memory (processing, storing and recalling information presented orally), This is an important skill for our children to develop in order to become fluent readers. In this game, the leader calls out a sequence of three shapes. After the shapes are called out a second time, the leader says “begin”. Each child has his own set of shapes from which he must choose the correct shapes and then put them in order. Note: It is important that children BEGIN with ONE and END with THREE. (We read from left to right, and it would be a tragedy if our children have reading troubles later on because we are not “fussy” enough to make them do it the correct way.) This is a habit that these students have to form, and a simple reminder will suffice. “Remember, the first shape goes in the number one box!” I have seen vast improvements in these students from earlier this year. In the beginning, many of them would only remember the first shape in the sequence, and a few would consistently order them from right to left. Now they are much more accurate (consistently), and they just LOVE to have their turn as the leader!
Patterning helps shape higher level thinking skills. In order for a child to add on to an already created pattern, they must analyze the existing pattern and then figure out what comes next. Without understanding patterns, we would never be able to count to 1,000 (or recognize numerals to 1,000). Think about how labor intensive it would be to memorize every single numeral to 1,000! Ah, but it’s so easy for us because we recognize the pattern. Patterns help develop a strong mathematical foundation by building thinking and problem solving skills. They are important to become a fluent reader, as well!
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AuthorWendy Joy Yohman Archives
December 2017
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