Little Busy Bodies Preschool
Newsletter
March 26th, 28th
Dear Preschool Parents,
Welcome back to reality!! I hope you all had a great spring break with your families, and are enjoying this awesome Spring weather.
We are beginning a unit on rhyming and lyrical stories. “Young children seem to be naturally "wired" for sound and rhythm.” (songsforteaching.com) I know we’ve all witnessed our babies boppin’ to music from the time they can sit up. These rhyming and lyrical stories are not only entertaining, but they can play an important role in language and literacy development. So grab some rhyming books and read, read, read to your child!! Yes, even if they pick out the same book over and over again!
On Monday we read “The Hungry Thing,” by Jan Slepian. In this story, the Hungry Thing shows up in a town, asking for food. The people can’t figure out what he wants. When he requests “shmancakes” they each have a different idea about what “shmancakes” actually are. One boy makes sense of it all, reminding them that “shmancakes” sound like “pancakes”. So they give the Hungry Thing some and he eats them all up! This continues on to include “feetloaf” and “gollipops”, “boop with a smacker” and “tickles”. The kids absolutely love guessing each mystery food that is presented in the story. After reading the book, I introduced the class to our very own Hungry Thing. The children each chose several pieces of plastic food. Then the Hungry Thing asked for specific foods from the children by using rhyming words (i.e. “I want some fleas!”). The children had to look at the foods they had in hand and think which food rhymed with the word “fleas.” Then they would feed the Hungry Thing that food…peas. They had a blast, and I got a sore throat from talking “Monster.”
Today we read, “Is Your Mama a Llama?” by Steven Kellogg. In this story, Lloyd, a baby llama, asks each of his friends, "Is your mama a llama?" and each baby animal answers with a rhyming description of their mother that is answered on the following page. Again, the children loved using their knowledge of rhyme and animals to guess the mystery mama animal. “Rhythmic verses with fill-in-the-blank style pauses at the end of each stanza help early readers learn to read, young children squeal with glee, and everybody within ear shot get the urge to get up and dance!” (abookbug…amazon.com) To go along with this story we played a Mama/Baby Animal Memory game. We even completed an activity where I asked each child, “Who’s Your Mama?” and then they described their mom to me as I wrote down their thoughts. You gotta love the things kids say!
*KING/ QUEEN OF THE WEEK APR: 2nd & 4th: Rome
MARK YOUR CALENDAR
*LAST DAY OF SCHOOL: May 23rd
Have a great week!
Sincerely,
Amber
