We've enjoyed brightening our space, both inside and outside, during rainbow week!

Each day children spend time working on reading independently.   Everyone has a reading bag with several emergent reading books.  Children begin by reading books with one or two sentences per page and a predictable pattern.  They gradually move on to books that do not have a predictable pattern.  During this time I meet with small groups of children to focus on specific skills and strategies. Some of the strategies we are working on include pointing to the words, thinking about the first sound in each word, using picture cues to help with unknown words, and continuing to learn sight words.

The acquisition of reading is a developmental skill and children develop as readers at different paces. I often compare learning to read to learning to walk- certain components need to be in place for children to acquire these skills, but as long as those components are in place children will learn to walk and learn to read.  However, this will happen at varied and individual paces.  Many children learn to walk by 9 months, while some don't take first steps until they are over a year old.  Some children rely on the support of furniture, large toys, etc. for months before they walk independently, while others stand up and take their first independent steps with little support.  Similarly, some children will spend a lot of time practicing reading before actually reading many words, while others will seem to start reading overnight.  Regardless of the age a child learns to walk or the process he/she follows, children go on to be adept walkers.  The same most often holds true for reading.  To support your child as a reader, offer encouragement at your child's stage whatever it is, read to your child often and make sure he/she has access to an abundance of books, and be a reader yourself!

Last week we began a new Project Lead the Way science unit focused on forces and motion called Pushes and Pulls.  In this unit we will explore and identify different pushes and pulls as well as the effect of different strengths and different directions of pushes and pulls on the motion of objects. Children had fun exploring pushes and pulls in three different stations.  One station focused on pushes and used blocks and different surfaces.  The second station focused on pulls as children explored Goldie Blox and the Spinning Machine.  In the third station both pushes and pulls were explored with balls and strings.  Part of each science lesson we do includes documentation, mostly with pictures, but also with words.  We will continue to explore motion in the coming weeks.