Suder EC 101: Literacy and The Children's Interests

Over the past few weeks as I observed the children during work time, I noticed several students leaning towards the object and picture matching work. They make sure they are matching these objects repeatedly everyday. I've extended the lesson to include labels, fetch games, and "find the missing one" to name a few. Additional to this work, book making has exploded in our room. I am quite impressed by this organic motion between what the students' love to do and their development in the Language Arts. It's always about making connections. They have realized that everything, every work they complete, can be turned into a book. Children are making alphabet, animal, parts of the ____ and other books. There are no limits!

Cameron and Audrey journaling their reading.

Maya and Xitlali love to match the adult-young animals. They have extended this work by making an Animal Book. They are copying the labels but can also read the words by sight independently.

Daniel and Ibrahim also journaled their readings for the day.

Roy made an Insect Book. He drew each one and used the Alphabet Chart to write the initial sounds with some assistance.

Charlie worked on the Vowel Tree. He practiced sounding out CVC words and blending to read words.

Natalie worked on her comprehension of what's happening in the illustration. She also constructed a sentence about it.

Garvit mastering CVC word building. He also made a Word Book to complete this work.

Ms. Sonnia assisted Zoe with sight words and sentence building.

Xitlali and Winter worked on some math activities (Teen Board).

Art is a popular work in our room.

This week we traveled to Europe. They love to "kiss" the Blarney Stone from Ireland given to me by my friend, Ms. Berry. The students also made a connection with the castanets and the painting of the Spanish royal family I bought from my travels because Ms. Sonnia is from Spain.

I've had several conversation with parents and they are interested in some suggested activities to do at home. I found this and this for both preschool and kindergarteners. Another request was regarding letter-sound correspondence. Please review these videos on the correct pronunciation of vowels and consonant letters.

This week, we also had a field trip to the Field Museum. What fun we had! It's been awhile since the last time I was there. I forgot how many interesting things young children can explore in this museum. The Play Lab was the children's favorite. I think my group and most of the other chaperones spent over an hour pretend playing and exploring this area alone!