phoneme: /d/
Transition Song: Wake Up! Daily Routines by Dream English
Materials: Laminated letter D, yoga music
Vocabulary and Basic Concepts: "Did you..." questions, up/down, high/low, label body parts, muscles, Pronoun+auxiliary phrases, following single and multistep directions.
Pre-literacy: Again we are drawing the letter D using the laminated templates. We're determining which way the letter D should face (upside down vs right side up), talking about the sound it makes and whose name has that sound as well as what words have that sound.
This week Miss Carrie was asking the questions: Did you wake up this morning? Did you wash your face this morning? Did you brush your teeth? Did you comb your hair or did mom or dad or grandma or grandpa help you? Did you eat breakfast this morning? Did you come to school this morning?
This brought out a lot of conversation, not only between the teachers and the children, but also children talking to their peers. Everyone was excited to talk about what they ate for breakfast, or who helped them comb their hair. For our children who are not yet verbal or who are just emerging verbal skills, we used signs and single word phrases.
Then Miss Carrie asked a different question:
Did you do yoga this morning?
The children wanted to know What is yoga? One child confused it with "Yoda". We worked on the different sounds between yoGa and YoDa and how yoga is a form of exercise while Yoda is a character in Star Wars movies. Some of the children wanted to know if it was like the exercises - the push ups, sit ups, jumping, running - that we did two weeks ago. A few children did know what yoga was and proceeded to demonstrate yoga breathing, downward dog, and other poses they were familiar with. We followed their lead and moved on to other ideas.
I wonder how I can stretch the muscles in my legs? What about my arms? What is a good way to balance on one foot?
We identified body parts, and gave directions using the concepts high/low and up/down. As the children were showing their ideas, we asked them to describe where their hands and feet were so we could follow. There was a lot of Look at me! and I can do that! The children thought it was hilarious when they could do something that Miss Carrie could not. Sometimes we used partners to hold hands with when we were trying to balance.
DO THIS AT HOME: Turn on some music at home and move your bodies. Talk about what you are doing and narrate what you see you see your child doing. Follow their lead. Don't turn on a yoga video. Your focus needs to be on each other, not on a screen. Don't worry about doing proper poses, just stretch up high, down low, and communicate back and forth.
