february 2024
Recently the preschoolers have been talking about the alphabet and making connections to the letters in their names. Today we wrote the alphabet on a large piece of paper and as the children arrived they began talking about and making connections about the different letters they saw. H is very excited about learning about the alphabet and was able to identify all of the letters as well as help his friends find letters in their names. “H is for ...!” When Ha came into the room he pointed to the letter H and said “This ones my name.” “Me too,” H said to Ha. “We live in the same house!” Ha said, referring to the letter H as being the ‘house’. “E is for ...,” E tells her friends. “Em has an E too,” H adds. As the children were identifying letters we added their names on the alphabet. “My letter is the one that's like a hook,” says J. “Wa and We both start with W” H says. “And B is for B...!” B adds. When A came he showed us where the letter A was in the alphabet and we added A, An and Alesha in our alphabet. “You have two A's, Alesha” A notices. “I have an A in my name too.” W adds. During the morning snack we have been singing songs about the alphabet, the days of the week and the months of the year as the children are becoming more interested in learning about these topics. One morning we were talking about letters when H said “T-E-N spells 10”. After this H and A helped make a list of the numbers from 1 to 20. Under the number 10 we wrote “ten” and then wrote the names of the rest of the numbers. Since the children are showing an interest in learning about letters and numbers we are trying to think of different ways to incorporate it into our program in a fun way. We created an alphabet book of all the preschoolers' names and as we continue making more connections to different words we will add them in our book. Throughout the month the children have been excited about practising tracing their names with dry erase markers. M said he had been practising at home and showed me how he holds his marker to write his name. Mi and Em were trying each colour of marker to write their names and they erased it so they could do it again and again. B said the letters of his name out loud as he traced them. He also was showing his peers how he can write the letter ‘D’ as the children were practising their names they noticed the letters in their names match the letters in the alphabet. M pointed to the ‘e’ in his name and the ‘e’ in the alphabet and said “these ones are the same”. H said “that one's a tricky one” because H and M both struggled making the letter ‘e’ but they kept practising. Throughout the month of February the preschoolers have become more confident in naming letters and identifying the letters in their names. The preschoolers have also become confident in tracing their names and their friends' names.
Alesha Spirka RECE, Rachelle Minthorn RECE,
Wasantha Wanodani BEd SNE Post Grad Cert in Ed ECE ECD
