What do we know about Penguins?

Do you want to know how to sign Penguin? We know how!

You can see it on "Signing Savvy" here: http://www.signingsavvy.com/sign/penguin

Or....
You can see JTT signing it here!

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What do we know about penguins? The M-F kids talk about some of the things they know here:

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Here is a cute video from YouTube if you want to sing a penguin song with your child!

All About Social Media

In December I went to a technology presentation with Miss Erin and we left even MORE excited about technology than we already are! We saw Chip Donohue from the TEC Center and he was awesome!

Since then I have created:
a School Facebook page as a place to share links, information, posts, and to have a group where all of my parents can get to know one another
http://www.facebook.com/MissStephaniesClass

and a professional Twitter account as a another place to share great resources, articles, and talk about being an early childhood teacher
https://twitter.com/StephKHopkins

In addition, I am involved in the U-46 Give Me Five birth to 5 initiative and we have some super awesome social media sites! Give Me Five partners with families, child-care providers, schools and the community to ensure that all children are prepared for learning in kindergarten.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/U46GiveMeFive
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/U46GiveMeFive
Pinterest http://pinterest.com/u46givemefive/

Come visit me at all of these sites!

Penguins and Letters

This week we started learning about penguins. We have had a lot of fun looking at some really neat YouTube videos. We also have some great books about penguins. We learned what sounds a penguin makes, how they walk, and what they eat.

In the following slideshow, you will see pictures we drew of penguins. Then you will see us making penguin sounds and walking like a penguin!

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We also did a letters activity this week with a penguin paper. We rolled some dice that had letters on them. Then we had to find that letter on our paper and use the BINGO dotter to mark it off! Some of us used capital letters and some of us used lower case letters.

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Our favorite video of what a penguin sounds like. We thought it sounded like a donkey!

This one made us laugh!
 

 What 500,000 penguins sounds like! We thought they sounded like birds!


 We also loved this cute penguin being tickled!

Playing Teacher with Ling Sound Check

Almost every preschool student plays teacher at one point or another! Today during Work Time, some of us decided to play teacher and practice the Ling Sound Check!

In the second video, you will even notice that one of them practices doing the "silence" and the student being the student catches on right away!

I posted about the Ling Sound Check here last year. You can print off your own copy at home!

We use the Ling Sound check every day at Circle Time to make sure all of our hearing equipment is working properly.

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More resources:
Ling Sound Check Flashcards from Cochlear
Some notes about the Ling Sounds from an SLP blog

Notes from Cochlear:

What is the Ling 6 sound test?
The Ling-6 sound test was developed as a quick and easy test that parents and professionals can use to check their child has access to the minimal amount of sounds required to hear, understand and learn speech. 

The test checks that your child can hear the sounds (detection) and in time, identify what the sound are (identification) across the different speech frequencies. 

The test checks that your child’s entire auditory system is working correctly – from the sound processor microphone to their brain


Why These Six Sounds?  
The Ling-6 sounds are the particular sounds that occur at particular speech 
frequencies or pitches. For example: 


m  /m/ is a very low frequency sound and if your child cannot hear this sound it is likely they will not have sufficient low frequency information to develop speech with normal prosody (tune) and without vowel errors.  

oo  /oo/ – [u] has low frequency information. 

ee  /ee/ – [i] has some low frequency information and some high frequency information. 

ah  /ah/ – [a] is at the centre of the speech range. 

sh  /sh/ is in the moderately high frequency speech range. 

s  /s/ is in the very high frequency speech range.

San Diego Zoo Safari Park Slideshow

Over Christmas break, I was lucky enough to be able to go to California with my husband, parents, and even my sister (who came from Egypt) to visit my grandparents.

One day we visited the San Diego Zoo Safari Park and it was a GREAT experience. It is about 45 minutes from the San Diego Zoo and set up more like a Wild Life Preserve (it used to be called the San Diego Wild Life Park). It was really neat to see the animals in a really life like habitat. It was REALLY spread out and included a lot of walking, but also a lot of neat animals!

One of the neatest experiences was looking out over a huge area and seeing giraffes, rhinos, and antelope roaming free together. The second neatest was the Cheetah Run. Once a day they do a Cheetah Run where EVERYONE gathers around and watches a cheetah run full speed! We didn't realize how early people start gathering, so we are pretty far back. I found another video on youtube so you can see it better!

We have watched the slideshow several times this week! The kids love the animals!

Here it is:

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Close up of cheetah run: