October 2019 News from the Computer & Tech Lab
Interactive learning at its best!
Happy Autumn! With the warm weather, it has been quite misleading and more challenging to speak about the beauty that we are supposed to see in the change of season! Hopefully it will arrive soon!
The last month has been amazing! It gives me such pleasure to watch your children settle into their new school routines, and to see their happy faces as they visit the Computer Lab! They enter the room excited to see what I have in store for them each day and are quickly becoming acclimated to the different technology in the room and the software that we use. The little ones love the music video “Way Up High in the Apple Tree” and actually request it when they come to my class – they yell “shake the tree” which is one of the gestures that we make during the song to help the apples fall off of the tree!
As we welcome Autumn, we covered the season by discussing apples, the colors of apples and changes in our environment. We watched a Scholastic learning video on our new interactive SMART panel about fall and all its beauty. I love to incorporate creativity with technology, so several of them have already created beautiful online fall pictures using ABCmouse.com, which are hanging in the computer lab. There will be many more to come with Halloween and pumpkin season right around the corner!
Following along with the Park Shore academic curriculum, over the course of the past month we have focused on the colors yellow, red and green, circles, squares, triangles and reinforced all shapes and colors for our preschoolers by playing online learning games on the SMART panel and iPads. The SMART Panel is one of my favorite tools and I love incorporating it into our computer lessons as much as possible. Two of my favorite go-to learning websites are sheppardsoftware.com and abcmouse.com. I also love abcya.com and use that very often in our class.
This week marks the beginning of the alphabet series, so your children should expect to be entertained as they continue to learn and practice each letter in Computers as well! Ask them about our alphabet music and learning videos and how they practiced writing the letter A on the SMART panel and iPads!
Robotics for PreK and Kindergarten
Last week marked the kick-off of our Robotics in the Classroom program. By the end of this week, all PreK and Kindergarten classes will have received an introduction to the concept of robotics and directional programming and will have met our family of robots! I am so excited and proud of this program and will continue it throughout the school year. The teachers will also utilize the robots in their classrooms and incorporate the concepts within their every-day learning curriculum. Please ask your children about what they have learned thus far! They are so excited and have been amazing and enthusiastic learners and “Programmers”!
Enjoy the beauty of the season and please reach out to me with any questions, comments or suggestions you may have!
Warmly,
Miss Samantha
Park Shore Computer & Technology Teacher
Park Shore News
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