Monday January 10th- All kinds of homes

We started our Monday off with a little scissor practice and we went upstairs to play with food, baby dolls and puzzles. I wanted the kids to play “house” because we would be talking about homes today. I did “O” practice with each child which was a piece of cake- they have circles down :)
Nya was my star and helped me with new star duties- I have started the kids practicing with flash cards of all the letters that we have learned so far this year and their sounds. As we are getting into reading, I want to make sure that these letters are always fresh and new to the kids. Hopefully they will remember them better. Plus they know their colors and shapes so there is no need to continue practicing those daily- maybe just once a week.
At calendar time, we cover many areas- we practice the date, counting up to twenty, counting in Spanish up to 10 and then blast off counting. Then we do the days of the week- spoken then we sing our song. We speak the months of the year to practice then we sing our Macarena Months song. All the students help me with weather time, but the star gets the best part- telling us the weather and dressing our weather friend. On to letter time which I introduced the letter of the week O and our letter friend Ollie Otter who works in an office. We talked about how many of our parents work in an office and at least one parent of each child’s works in an office. I talked about vowels and how O is one of them so he has two sounds for us. I read many words that all start with the letter O and we even found one in our names- Zach’s middle name just because he knew it. We practiced our sounds and the sign and also practiced our Poem of the month. I created a new area on our bulletin board for the sight word of the week- this week we studied see and Sam. As you can see, I had your child trace the sight word “see” in their folder. This is another area that you can help them- review these words in their folders so they can remember them as we add more to it throughout the rest of the school year.
After wiggle time, we had our snacks and book time.
For the lesson, I read a poem about many kinds of homes. We talked about our homes and they stand alone- not connected to others. We learned about apartments, duplexes, mobile homes, cabins, and stand alone homes. We discussed our bedrooms and who has to share and who has their own. We also discussed what kinds of things and what belongs in a bedroom-a bed, dresser with clothes, toys, a light and a closet.
For a counting activity, I had pictures of doors and window manipulates that we counted and organized. I plan to work with these again because it is a good chance to practice following verbal directions and counting, creating patterns or organizing.
For letter time, we read about Olive the Octopus who loves to juggle and all the “O” things that she tried to juggle- she wasn’t successful  We practiced our sounds and the sign of O and then got our stamp and we were done for the day. This was also the first day that I sent the reading books home