December 22-27

This was our last week of December and so wrapped up our theme of the month and a few of our focal vocabulary words this month. We finished the month of December and our theme of Christmas with our Christmas performance and party! We had a lot of fun showing everyone our hard work and we hope everyone enjoyed the performance! After our performance we got a chance to play a few christmas themed games, such as finding presents and then unwrapping presents with gloves, and a few other really fun Christmas themed games! We has a lot of fun and we all got little presents to keep as little Christmas gifts! To wrap up our theme of Christmas we made Christmas stockings and hung them on our classroom door in hopes that Santa clause would leave us a little presents for being good this year! After Christmas we began another theme of weather and seasons which we will continue working on into the beginning of January. For the theme of weather and season we began with a short cartoon about weather and a worksheet to reinforce everything we learned from the video. We continued working on our phonics and phonetic awareness skills this week with a number of activities and worksheets. We finished our work on the letters r and q in our workbook. We learned a number of new words beginning with the letters r and q including quiet, quilt, question, rainbow, robot, red, and rose. We also practiced our phonetics and letter recognition skills with a few activities including letter recognition bingo, "erase" to the board, and a letter recognition board game. We have become very good at recognizing the different sounds of the letters which is an essential skill for learning how to spell and read properly. We used play dough as a tool to help us build letters and shapes for practice. For vocabulary this week and this month we practiced with flashcards by playing "memory" and go fish - through these activities we were able to practice our understanding and recognition skills. We added a number of new sight words to our list of words and we practiced recognizing and spelling them with worksheets and a race to the sight word activity. We also read a book together to practice our listening, reading, and oral skills. This week for our writing practice we practiced writing with the focus on the letter "o". We practiced writing and learning a number of new vocabulary words beginning with the letter "o" including octopus, oranges, oval, owl, and ostrich. We had a very busy and very fun week of learning and I can't wait to see everyone's smiling faces bright early Monday morning!

December 15 - 19

This week we spent time working on our theme of Christmas, and practicing our songs, speeches, and dances for the upcoming performance! We are all very excited for Christmas and we want to make sure we work hard to show everyone all the hard work we've put into our Christmas practices! For the theme of Christmas this week we talked about Santa clause, and all the things we are grateful for and the things we like about Christmas (and the gifts we hope Santa will bring us!) To help practice vocabulary and learn more about Christmas we watched a short cartoon about Franklin the Turtle donating a Christmas gift to less fortunate children. We also made a few crafts this week including Santa clauses made from tracing our hands and drawing and colouring in Santa. It was a lot of fun and we put them up around our classroom to help us get into the Christmas spirit! We also worked on phonics this week with the focus on the letter recognition of the letters r and q. We worked hard to add a few new words beginning with r and q to our vocabulary! So far we have added the words rainbow, queen, quiz, question, and we will continue practicing and adding more words next week! We practiced our letter recognition and spelling skills with a few activities including memory, go fish, and letter-bingo. We worked on math this week as well by practicing our number writing and counting skills with both worksheets and an activity where we use blocks to aid us in our adding skills. For writing this week on the letter n. We practiced writing little and big N's and learned new words that begin with n, as well as reinforcing our letter recognition of the letter n sound. We finished the week off with reading a book about apple picking to practice our listening, reading, and verbal skills. We recognized a number of our sight words while reading and added a few new words to our vocabulary while reading! We had a great week and we are excited for Christmas next week and I can't wait to see all their smiling faces on Monday morning!

December 8 - 12

We are getting closer to Christmas as we continue our classes into December and we are very excited to celebrate Christmas together! We worked very hard on our Christmas speeches, songs, and dances this week so that we are prepared for our Christmas performance next week. For the theme this week we continued to work on Christmas and winter, so we made a few crafts! We made Christmas ornaments, Christmas stockings, and we talked about Santa clause and all the things we hope he'll bring us this year, and all the things we are grateful for. We also watched a short cartoon about Frosty the Snowman and talked about all the fun things we can do in the winter when it snows. We also worked on a number of worksheets in our phonics workbook. This week we focused on the letters n and p. we practiced our vocabulary, spelling, and phonics of many words that begin with the letters and p. We practiced letter recognition for all of the letters of the alphabet with a few activities. We played a board game where we had to recognize the picture and the letter to move forward, we also played go fish and memory to continue our practice. We worked on math and writing this week. We focused on writing that letter m and writing numbers 1, 2 and 3. We completed a number of writing and math worksheets to reinforce our skills. We also read a book together and practiced our sight words as well as our oral, and reading skills. We had a fantastic week of fun learning, and I can't wait to see everyone's faces on Monday morning!

December 1 - 5

It's December and Christmas is upon us this month! We are getting very excited about Christmas so we've begun learning about Christmas and adding new Christmas vocabulary to out vocabulary. We coloured and decorated a Christmas tree craft this week as part of our art and theme project. We also spent time working on our Christmas speeches, songs, and dances. We are practicing had every day so that we can do a really good job for everyone on Christmas Day! This week we worked on writing with the focus on the letter "L". In our phonics workbook we worked on the letters n and p and practiced recognizing the sounds they make and many new words that begin with n and p. We are working hard at our phonics and phonemic skills as a way to help build our understanding of the English language so we can begin spelling words properly and reading words! We had a great week and I can't wait to see everyone's smiling faces on Monday morning!

Hess Grape November 24-28

We worked on Science by watching a short cartoon about the solar system; we leaves about  of the planets - Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. We worked on math this week by using blocks and playing a game to see who could get the correct answer the fastest. It was a lot of fun! We focused a lot of attention to phonics and phonemic awareness - we continued practicing out alphabet sounds and letter recognition. We completed a number of worksheet that reviewed letters a-m and began working on the letters n and p. we also played a few games such as matching the sound to the letter and rhyming words. We watched a song about rhymes to begin working with rhyming words. This is an essential skill in learning how to read! We read a book about a family of bears together to practice out reading and oral skills and to further our theme of family. We identified many of our sight words while  reading. Weve also begun practicing our speeches and our dances for the Christmas performance at the end of the month. We had a lot of fun leaning the new dance moves and song lyrics. We still need a lot of work, so we will be working hard of them over the next few weeks! This month we worked on the themes of family and thanksgiving. We made a few crafts of family portraits and we finished our week off with a thanksgiving craft to celebrate American thanksgiving on Thursday. We had a great week of learning and playing and I can wait to see all their smiling faces on Monday morning!

Hess Grape November 17-21

This week we continued working hard in our phonics books and completing many worksheets. We worked on the letters l and m this week. We learned many new vocabulary words, which we practiced with worksheets and many games. We also reviewed letters a - m so that we can practice recognizing the sound each letter makes. We played a fun game called "erase the letter" in which I would say a word and the first person to recognize the letter, erase it, and say the letter gets a point! It has been a great way and fun way to practice the alphabet letters. We focused on writing this week we the emphasis on the letter j. We learned many new j words and we practiced how to properly write a big and small j. This week for math we worked on worksheets in our math book and we practiced our numbers by writing them out and using blocks to add numbers. We had a lot of fun learning while we played with blocks! This week we continued our theme of thanksgiving by colouring a thanksgiving Turkey, and learning about thanksgiving through a short cartoon about thanksgiving! We continued working on out sight words - we practiced the ones we've previously learned and added new ones to learn. We practiced our sight words with a game and by reading a book together. Finally we have begun practicing our speeches for our upcoming Christmas party. It's very important that we practice every day so that we can do a really good job! We had a very productive and fun week and I can't wait to see my students bright and smiling faces on monday morning!

Grape class November 10-14

This week we continued practicing our writing skills with the focus on the letter "i". We added many new words to our vocabulary, such as ice cream, igloo, iguana, icing, island, and so forth. We are also building our reading skills with new sight words. We started with a lot of 2 and 3 letter words, and now we are beginning to add 4 letter words. We spent a bit of time working on our math workbooks and a lot of time focusing on our phonics workbook. We focused on the letters L and M in our workbooks and practiced learning, recognizing, spelling and saying the words for this weeks phonics. This week we worked on the theme of family. We learned many vocabulary words about family such a mommy, daddy, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, grandma, grandpa and cousins. We drew family portraits, we made a family house, we watched a short cartoon and read a book about family this week! We had a great week filled with fun and learning and I look forward to seeing my smiling students faces on Monday morning!

Grape class November 3-7

This week we continued working hard on our writing skills. We spent a lot of time practicing all the letters of the alphabet that we've learned this far. We began with tracing the letter and then practiced writing them correctly in the lines. We will be continuing to perfect our alphabet writing before moving on to writing words and sentences. It's very important that we create good writing habits now and catch any mistakes before they become habits! We worked on theme of family and finished of theme of the season fall by making a crow craft. They turned out really well and after we were finished we taped them on our cupboards in the classroom! We worked on patterns and math this week. We practiced writing numbers correctly in the lines. We worked on the letters F and H in our phonics workbook this week and we added many new word to our vocabulary beginning with F and H. We worked a lot on recognizing the sounds of each letter makes. We played a number of matching games, and race games to practice with flash cards and words! We also started a new book to practice our reading and oral skills. We are bringing to recognize and learn more and more words each week! We had a lot of fun learning this week and I can't wait to see my students bright and cheery faces on Monday morning!

Halloween week

This week we spent a lot of time preparing and practicing for our Halloween performance on Friday. We practiced every morning doing the speeches and doing the songs and dances. We really wanted to do a great job for the parents and teachers! It was a fantastic performance and the Halloween party and tricker treating was a ton of fun! Since it was the week of Halloween and this month's theme was Halloween we made a few Halloween crafts including a skeleton, which we built as a class and then taped to our wall. It was a lot of fun learning what part went where and then putting it up on the wall! It really got us into the mood of Halloween and into our song - them bones! In the afternoons we continued working hard on the alphabet sounds, writing the letter g, and working on worksheets in our phonics book. We are doing really well and progressing very quickly with our letters and sounds. We have added a number of new words to our vocabulary and learning how to spell and recognize a number of words, individual letters, and sounds. These are all very important skills for learning how to create sentence patterns! It was another fantastic week with the grape class, and I'm excited to see their smiling faces on Monday morning!

Hess Grape October 13-17

This week we are continuing to prepare for Halloween! We are working hard on our speeches, and we began learning new Halloween songs for our Halloween party at the end of the month. Since Halloween is our main theme this month we spent some time adding Halloween words to our vocabulary and doing various crafts and activities that are Halloween oriented. We coloured mobsters, and we built a skeleton together, and identified all the body parts that build up the skeleton as a class. We are getting very excited for Halloween! This week we continued to work on the alphabet. In particular we are learning how to write and recognize letters and the sounds they make. Our main focus this week was the letter e and various e words, such as egg, elephant, eagle, and ears. Letter recognition and the individual sounds of the alphabet will help us learn how to sound out words in order to spell them correctly. This is an essential part of learning how to spell, and build sentences. The sentence patterns we worked on this week were identifying clothing, such as "I am wearing a dress." "I am wearing pants." The last point of focus this week was reviewing our vocabulary words from the previous few weeks. We played a game of bingo on Tuesday in order to practice the older ones! We had a fantastic week and I look forward to seeing my students smiling faces on Monday!

October 6 - October 9

This month we are looking forward to Halloween! We are focusing on Halloween as our theme all month, and this week as a theme project we coloured and cut pumpkins. We are also preparing for our Halloween party where we will show everyone a few of our sentence patterns. We spent a lot of time this week focusing on worksheets from our phonics book, letter recognition, and recognizing letter sounds. The week of the letter was d, so we practiced writing the letter d, and added new d words to our vocabulary. Finally we spent a little bit of time focusing on our math skills and continuing to practice patterns. We had a great week. I hope everyone has a wonderful long weekend and everyone has a wonderful Taiwan National Day! I look forward to seeing my students smiling faces on Monday morning!

Grape Class September 29 - October 3

This week we worked on letter recognition, with the emphasis on the letter c. We worked on our penmanship with the focus on the letter c. We worked on building our vocabulary with many new words beginning with the letter c. We also continued working on our spelling skills by arranging letters in the correct order. This weeks key sentences patterns were - "I am a boy", "I am a girl". Today it is sunny/rainy/windy. This week month theme is weather and Halloween. We worked on identifying different types of weather, such as rainy, sunny, stormy, windy, and cloudy. We also continued working on patterns: which is the foundational skill for understanding sentence patterns - in particular understanding the patterns helps us understand how letters are arranged in words, and how words are arranged in sentences. For sentence patterns we have been practicing "I am a boy", "I am a girl", "I am wearing a yellow shirt/pink dress/orange shorts" and so forth. We added more sight words to our sight word recognition, which we were able to quickly identified as we read story books this week. We finished the week up with identifying rhyming words and short vowels with a fun puzzle! We had a wonderfully productive week learning and having fun and I can't wait to see my Grape classes smiling faces on Monday morning!

Grape class September 22-26

The main focuses of this weeks Grape classes were practicing writing the letter b, continuing to improve letter recognition, adding to our sight word vocabulary, continuing our phonemic awareness practices, and working on our reading and oral skills. These fundamental and foundational elements are key skills in ensuring our students can read, write, and speak English properly! Throughout the week the grape class continued working on learning how to correctly write the letter b. We moved from tracing the lines to learning how to write the big B and small b without the guidelines. It's very important that we practice, practice, practice! We are making wonderful progress! The worked on patterns, rhyming words, and phonics this week are part of our building process towards learning how to sound out words and spell words. This is the first step in learning sentence patterns, which is a very important skill and technique when etching and learning the English language. Letter recognition is another important skill we are working on and we began breaking down three letter words and learning how to spell them. We played a number of games, activities, and crafts to reinforce what we've been learning! It's always important to have a little fun while learning. Since this week we were focusing on the letter B and the theme was animals, we made bear masks. The grape class did a wonderful job this week, and I look forward to seeing all of their happy faces on Monday morning!

Hess Grape Class

This week the Hess Grape class students worked on learning how to properly hold their pencils, and writing a small and big "B". We worked a lot on practicing words that start with B so that we can continue to build our vocabulary! We learned a lot of great b words this week, including bear, basket, banana, boots, bus, bumble bee, and bow. We also spent time on phonics and our phonics book. The main focus of this week was practicing how to sound out words, particularly words with short a sound, and listening closely to how each letter sounds individually to make the whole word. This ability to hear each letters individual sound is a very important skill in learning how to pronounce new words. We also began listening to words to hear words that rhyme, or sound alike, such as cat, bat, mat and hat. The ability to recognize rhyming words is another important step in learning how to read and pronounce words properly. These are very important building blocks in ensuring the students can read and write properly. 

In the afternoons we read storybooks so we could all work on our reading and speaking skills in a fun and interactive way. We really enjoy books that have actions! We also play games, such as memory, so we can quickly identify English words! The themes this month are back to school, and animals! We have been playing games, and learning about various animals and themes around going back to school. Jayme, Art, and Dean did a wonderful job this week. They are all bright and wonderful students and I look forward to seeing their smiling faces every morning! - Teacher Ellen

Welcome To The New Semester!

hello, dear parents!
I'm teacher Cookie!

Welcome to HESS American Preschool's blog!

In this semester, we have Art, Dean and Jayme in our class!

Hope you like the blog~

Enjoy^^

Jayme

Art

and Dean!

Teacher Cookie will write the blog every Wednesday!

-Cookie

A Week in Photos (June 9-13)

Here are some pictures of what we've been up to in June. You can see so many more in the June Photo Album. Enjoy!

Theme Class

 We are playing Twister!

Phonics Class

Art Class

 We are using our toes to paint caterpillars!!

And then we painted rain drops.

Science Class with Strawberry Class

With the sailboats we made, we will put them on the water and watch them go!!

Art tried very hard!!! ^_^

See you next time!
- Teacher Micky