Sssssskipping into Week 4!
Seeds, sand, string, and slinkys, oh my! This week our class began our alphabet study with the letter S! We talked about how letters are like a secret code for the sounds we use when talking, that every letter makes a sound (or sometimes 2 or more sounds!) and when we put those letters together, we make words that we can read and write!
Our class practiced making the S sound /s/ and figuring out what our mouth feels like and looks like when we make that sound. Now we whenever we see the letter S, we know how to make that sound out ourselves! We came up with a long list of words that begin with letter S, and some students even brought in lists from home. We found letter S everywhere! Some friends in our class have names that start with S, words around our school and in our classroom have the letter S in them, even one of our favorite parts of the day - Snack - starts with S!
The students also investigated the difference betweeen words that start with sh instead of just S by itself. When S has its buddy H after it, we feel our lips get fatter and more air comes out, changing the way it sounds. We call the /s/ sound Skinny Air, and the /sh/ sound Fat Air.
Paying attention to the way our mouth feels and looks when when form different letter sounds makes a different part of our brain work while learning the connection between the letter and its sound than we would normaly use when we just try to memorize the sound by looking at it and listening to it. This extra step can really help some of our kinder friends learn the letters and their corresponding sounds, and it's fun!
We have been doing lots of fun activities that help us practice writing the shape of letter S and some that help us distinguish words that start with the /s/ sound.
We discovered that in English, only 2 of the 'days of the week' words start with S. Then we learned that in Spanish, almost all of the words end in S!
We practiced saying words slowly by stretching them out to hear all the letter sounds within them. We then figure out in which position we hear the /s/ sound in the word: is it in the beginning of the word (like Saturday), in the middle (like Wednesday), or at the end of the word (like Lunes).
This is an excellent thing to practice at home as well (called segmenting). Have your student stretch out the sounds in any word, like cat, /c/ /a/ /t/ and figure out in which position they hear a certain sound (the /c/ sound is at the beginning!).
We even planted Seeds to watch them grow from a seedling into a sprout! We are working hard on letter S!
Our Seeds!
Other Letter Ss Activities:
In math, our class has been learning with Ms. Haley all about attributes, or ways to describe something. We have been using our various math manipulatives to compare, sort, and group object based on similar attributes, such as size, shape, color, or even number of holes (on buttons). We are learning a lot of math vocabulary when comparing and discussing these attributes, such as big/large/grande, small/little/pequeño, medium/mediano, round, corners, square, diamond, octogon, red, blue, etc.
We played Button Match-Up, Bear Match-Up and Attribute Block Match-Up with partners. In all 3 games you have to find 2 objects that have at least one attribute in common, and then you partner has to guess why you paired them up (are they the same shape, color, size? etc.) It was fun AND challenging!
We've also gotten some new materials to explore and share during Exploration Activity time! Some of our new favorites are Tools, Marble Run, Play-dough, Kinetic Sand, and trying out S.T. Math on the computers!
And finally, I will leave you with a wonderful video of all 3 kindergarten classes singing the "Friday Song" with our 7th grade buddies! Mr. Mac is singing and playing guitar, and Mr. Kyle is the puppeteer singing along. Enjoy!
