Mrs. Rachel's Three's Class: If You Give a Preschooler a Cookie...

What a great week we had doing an author study of Laura Numeroff! If you have any of her books at home, they might be a fun selection to read with your child in the next few weeks. The books that we read were If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, If You Give a Cat a Cupcake, If You Give a Pig a Pancake, and If You Give a Moose a Muffin. To go along with these books, some of our fun activities included making our own mouse paper bag puppets, painting cupcakes with puffy paint, matching pancake letters in our sensory bin, sorting colors in muffin tins, counting cookies and chocolate chips, and playing with our new felt boards in our room. We even did a class graph to see everyone's favorite treats... See if your child can remember the favorite (cookies, cupcakes, or muffins)! One of our favorite activities of the week was singing our "Who Stole the Cookie?" song together! This is in your child's poetry folder if you want to do it as a family!

With the new semester underway, we have increased our focus on some of the important skills to develop before next year. Our letter of the week was B, but we spent more time on tracing letters and working on our pencil grip. With a little help, everyone in the class did a fantastic job on this! If you are looking for some tricks to use at home to help your child with their grip, let me know! In addition to working on number 6, we spent a lot of time working on one-to-one correspondence. This is something that will be tested at the end of January, so it is also something you can continue to practice at home! We also took the opportunity to start focusing more on cutting this week. We will be practicing this every day during the craft time. This week they cut their own triangles for their mouse puppet!

With it being so cold this week, we did some extra exercise activities in our classroom. We love our yoga time with Mrs. Nicole! We also are doing a great job in the green room working on our balance and gross motor skills!

We can't wait to see everyone next week!

Here are a few things you can ask your to do this week....

1. Sort two initial sounds. **Try laying out two different letters and see if your child can sort 5-6 pictures of words that begin with this letter. (You might need to emphasize and repeat the first sound several times to help them hear it.)

2. Show you how to hold their scissors and cut a straight line.

3. Match the correct number of objects to the numbers 1-5.

4. Tell you about the story of Jesus walking on the water!

5. Help you retell a story. (We are working on sequencing a story.)