Pre-Kindergarten

Pre-K Newsletter

Units of Study:

Current Unit: Unit 4 - Clothing

Next Unit: Unit 5 - Reuse, Reduce, Recycle

Summary of Unit: 

Clothing

The best way to learn and expand your thinking is to examine something you have prior knowledge about. The Clothing Unit is a perfect unit for our students to make real life connections by wondering and investigating. This unit focuses on recognizing and making observations about different types of clothing we wear throughout our four seasons, clothing our community helpers wear, as well as clothing in different cultures. Throughout this unit the students will investigate different types of clothes, how we care for the clothes, where people get their clothes and how to design and create their own clothing. The students will investigate their understanding through language and literacy, arts, math, science, social studies, and physical development. 

At home you can:

• Work on independence!!! Allow children to dress themselves, including putting on and taking off their shoes, jackets, sweaters, hats, and gloves. Let them help you while cleaning the house, doing laundry, and setting the table. Use lots of language while doing these everyday tasks. Ex: Help me match the socks today. How many pairs of socks do we have? What is different and the same about the pairs of socks?
• Explore different types of clothing at places of worship, the food store, and even in your own closet. Talk about the textures, colors, sizes.  
• Donate clothes to a needy organization:Talk to your child about how we reuse and reduce clothing in order to help our environment. 
• Do the optional homework everyday

Summary of Unit: 

Reuse, Reduce, Recycle

Reduce, reuse and recycling are important aspects of taking care of our planet. Our students have a good understanding of ways and why we need to take care of the Earth. We will explore trash right here in our own backyard and discuss how we can reduce trash. 

The students will learn through hands-on experiences in all academic areas of development. Through their learning they will collect data, solve problems, expand their vocabulary, engineer projects using recycled items, and build on their math skills. 

At home you can:

• Talk about the trash your family creates
• Pose questions: How can we reduce trash? What can we recycle? What can we reuse in another way?
• Go for a walk: notice trash/garbage trucks/garbage cans: have them be problem solvers
• Make something out of recycle items

• Reading

  Clothing: Our daily read alouds in this unit will focus on clothing. Students will continue to make connections to texts that we read. For example, “The children in this story are wearing boots.  Do you ever wear boots to school?  Additionally, students will continue to make predictions about books using picture clues and their prior knowledge to support their predictions. Students will answer open-ended questions about texts read, allowing them to go deeper into their thinking and explain their reasoning.

  The students also love to act out the stories we read. This skill helps the students to recall information, speak loud and clear, understand sequencing, and build confidence to perform in front of a group. 

  
  

  At home you can:

  • Read a book at home with your child and identify different types of clothing the characters are wearing. You can ask:, “Why do you think that character is wearing a hat at the beach? Why is that character wearing boots in the snow? What would happen if he didn’t wear boots? What other types of shoes can you wear in the snow? Remember to have them answer in complete sentences. 
  • Provide your child with time to become familiar with the parts of books. For example, Is this book a fiction book or nonfiction book? How do pictures help us understand the story?
  • Make predictions before reading a book. Look at the cover and the pictures inside. Ask your child, “What do you think will happen in this story? Why do you think that?”
  • Look at letters in a book and see if students can identify a letter and the sound it makes. 
  
  

  Suggested books to enhance our Clothing Unit:

  • This Jacket I Wear in the Snow By: Shirley Neitzel
  • The Hat  By:Jan Brett
  • Lily’s Purple Plastic Purse   By:Kevin Henkes
  • Make Clothes Fun  By: KimSolga
  
  

  Reuse, Reduce, Recycle:

  Students continue to engage with our daily Read Alouds. Before reading, pre-k students are introduced to new vocabulary words they will see in the book. Next, we take a story walk to preview the text. This helps students make predictions and connections to the story. During reading, we take pauses to ask high-order thinking questions which require students to use their background knowledge and critical thinking skills. After reading, students frequently engage in Turn and Talks to share something they’ve learned with a peer. The goal is to build dialogue and conversation between students while highlighting what they learned from the text. In this unit we will be reading books all about ways to reduce, reuse and recycle trash. .  

  At home you can:

  • Reread familiar books with your child and encourage them to use the picture clues and their past knowledge of the book to “read” the story to you.
  • Preview new or familiar books before reading. Look at the pictures (cover of the book) and make predictions about what will happen in the story. 
  • Encourage your child to make connections between books and their own life. How are they like the characters in the story? How are they different?
  • Some books to read:
  • 10 Ways I Can Reduce, Reuse and Recycle By:Elizabeth Weitzman
  • The Keeping Quilt By: Patricia Polacco
  • Trashy Town By: Andrea Zimmerman and David Clemesha
  • Gabby and Grandma Go Green By: Monica Wellington

Writing:

Pre-k students are writing their first and last name every day during morning sign-in.  The students practice writing letters using dot paint markers, playdough and writing letters in the sand.  They also practice drawing and labeling pictures on sentence strips and dry erase boards. We encourage writing in all areas of the room as well as writing their names on their artwork. 

At home you can:

• Have your child practice drawing with a variety of writing instruments using the correct grip. For example, draw with crayons, pencils, markers, chalk, paintbrushes, etc.
• Have your child practice writing their first and last name on their own.
• Practice drawing anything! Such as shapes, people, animals etc.
• Strengthen your child’s fine motor hand muscles by playing with clay, play-doh or small legos.
• Practice writing the letter of the week and their names in their notebooks.
• Use cheerios to make the letters in their name.
• Encourage your child to label their drawings with known letter sounds. For example, “You drew a rainbow. What letter do you hear at the beginning of ‘rainbow’? Try to write the letter ‘r’ next to your rainbow drawing.”

Math:

In math, students are reviewing comparing quantities using the vocabulary words more and less. Students will practice identifying numbers 0-20. Once students are able to identify these numbers, they will practice matching numbers to counted quantities. For example, students will count a group of 6 blocks and then find the numeral 6 to represent the total.

Pre-k students will continue to identify patterns, extend, and create patterns on their own. We will also continue using positional words during our everyday activities by using themselves and/or objects.

(up, down, above, below, next to , besides, over, under, in between, top, bottom) 

At home you can:

• Write the numbers 1-20 on post-its or small pieces of paper. Have your children line up the numbers in order.
• Go on a number hunt and identify numbers 1-20. For example, when reading a book look at the page number at the bottom. Look for numbers on food boxes in your pantry, on a deck of cards, or in a recipe. 
• When doing laundry, have the students sort and count the number of shirts, pants, socks, underwear, etc. 
• Make patterns using household items, such as: fork, spoon, fork, spoon, fork, spoon. 
• Use a stuffed animal and have them place it next to them, under the table, on top of the table, above their head, below their chin.

Gym/Gross Motor Movement

The students participate in exercises; running, jumping, and playing active games such as on obstacle courses where they practice balancing, skipping, and crawling. Students play freeze dance games where they learn about their arms, legs, feet, and all other body parts and how to move to the music and stop when the music stops. We talk about how to keep our bodies warm and healthy as well as how to be strong by practicing our exercises.Students will also discuss the different types of clothing for the seasons and how to stay warm during the winter months. We will talk about where each type of clothing goes on our bodies and practice how to put them on. In addition, students love doing yoga poses and now, the “winter movement poses”. They can prance like a reindeer, waddle like a penguin, melt like a snowman, and freeze like an icicle.

Next Family Engagement Event:
What better way to end our Clothing unit than to have a Letter Fashion Show!       Please join us on Friday, February 6th at 9:00am in the QE Library

Student & Parent Voice:

Jiana - I like to learn the letters and my sounds.

Zarah - Building trees with blocks is fun!

Stephanie - I love to sing the good morning song and the goodbye song too.

Tauren’s Mom: Kerri

Good morning Ms. Tracy, I just wanted to say thank you for working with Tauren on his phonics. I’ve noticed that he now attempts to sound out each word as we read. 🫶🏾

Scarlett: I learn how to draw and write.

Arha: I like to play with Selena in the kitchen.

Jaylin: I like to draw and read books.