Our theme for September is All About Me (Miss Mellow and I decided to heed the advice we were given at a workshop — we are going to do fewer themes, better), and this past week our focus was on ourselves, namely, our bodies and our feelings. I did some lessons about recognizing feelings from a social skills curriculum we have, and also some lessons on the parts of our bodies. The children were particularly interested in their bones and their muscles. Here are some of the things they told me this week:
“I look five because I eat healthy food but ackshully I’m four.” (This from one of my boys who just turned four and still looks and acts three…..)
“Mrs. X! I have muscles!!” (From a skinny girl who had been practicing hanging from a bar on the playground.)
“Did you know I have bones in my hand? Look!”
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At arrival time there were two parents in the room, getting ready to say goodbye to their respective children. The dad turned to me and said, “When do you start reading instruction?” The mom perked up and came over to listen. I was a bit concerned — do they think their children are bored already? Do they think preschoolers should be able to read at the beginning of the year or soon after?
But I started talking about the things we will be doing and they relaxed. I told them that we will soon start learning the letters of the alphabet , and will do it in an order so that we will have words that can be sounded out within the first 4-5 weeks. We will have readers’ workshop once a week starting in October, and then writers’ workshop once a week in the spring semester. I talked to them about phonemic awareness, and things they can do at home to support their children. And I found myself saying, “I’ll have an evening workshop for parents this fall on preschool literacy, so we can cover a lot of this stuff then.”
So now I have to plan a parent workshop for this fall!
Elbows, knees, dreams 
I have an awesome early literacy workshop I (and all Pre-K teachers in my system) do called Raising Readers that I can share with you. It has a agenda of questions and activities to walk through with parents, and a make and take for them to take home, as well as suggested childrens titles for each month (we do them monthly! eek!) It’s a really nice opportunity to share developmentally appropriate practice with parents! Email me if you’d like a copy!