All About Me

During the first few weeks of school, we have been learning all about people.  While we have talked about family members and people who work at our school, the preschoolers have primarily learned about themselves.  In doing so, they have learned that all people have many things in common, but that there are also some characteristics that make us unique.  Throughout the unit, the preschoolers had the chance to learn about each other by playing games & reading stories about why they were so special.

To highlight their unique characteristics, the preschoolers created some art projects and enjoyed working on their fine motor skills in the process.  They giggled with delight as they traced each others' shapes for their life-sized portraits & practiced the skills of cutting, painting and gluing, independently.  Lastly, the preschoolers were able to use vegetables, objects from nature & scented markers to enhance their overall sensory experience during art time.

When the preschoolers are finished with their artwork, we hang it proudly around our classroom as well as in the hallway for everyone else to see!  Then, we encourage our students to give each other positive feedback for all of that hard work.  In the end, we also practiced poems, rhymes & songs about ourselves because...it's all about us this month!  

 

 

Riding the School Bus

 

The preschoolers in our class love to ride the bus to school!  Each morning, we are able to greet the preschoolers as they get off the bus at Ocean Lakes Elementary.  Our goal is to make our students feel welcome from the start!  We are very lucky to have such kind and patient bus drivers at our school.  Each bus driver does a great job of keeping our students feel safe on the drive to/from school.  

We also use the "real life" opportunities of arrival & dismissal to teach our students about bus safety and about the importance of communicating with others.  To do so, we model the language of "Goodbye" & "Thank you for the ride."  This type of language not only encourages the preschoolers to interact kindly with their bus drivers, but to do so with others that they interact with during the day.  We encourage the preschoolers to call their bus drivers by name.  In doing so, the preschoolers are learning how to communicate effectively with others and showing the bus drivers that they appreciate the service that they are providing each day.

Welcome OLES Students & Families!

If you are new to Ocean Lakes Elementary, I want to welcome you to our learning community.  My name is Julie Sill.  I am an early childhood specialist & a teacher of the deaf/hard of hearing.  I am a passionate educator who truly enjoys working with young children and their families.  In fact, I have spent my entire career working with students who are in their early childhood years, ages birth to age 8.  My goal is to provide an inclusive learning community for all children so that each child feels safe, welcome and respected.  If they feel this way, they will be able to learn something new each day.  To make this possible, our staff at OLES focuses on getting to know your child better, so that we can help him/her reach his/her full potential for learning.

Our classroom is an Early Childhood Special Education (ECSE) preschool classroom that has been specially designed for deaf and hard of hearing students who are learning to talk.  In our multi-age classroom, we have deaf & hard of hearing children ages 2-5 years old who utilize assistive technology such as hearing aids and cochlear implants to help them access sound.  We call our room, the oral preschool because the students in our class and their families have chosen to pursue a goal of spoken language.  We also have children in our class who are developing language typically.  Our goal is to provide a quiet, language rich environment that focuses on listening, learning through play and purposeful talking & communicating.

My two, fabulous teaching assistants, Ms. Wendy & Ms. Mattee, will join me in welcoming your child to OLES each day.  Together, the three of us will provide a unique learning experience that will focus on the individual needs of each child, so that we can help them to be more successful thinkers, speakers and communicators.  Please use this classroom blog as a window into our classroom.  Our goal is that you can observe what we are doing in class & continue this learning at home with your child.  Don't forget that you were your child's first teacher & will continue to be the most important influence on his or her life.  Please join us on this journey and help us to make listening and talking, a way of life.

Here's to another year of learning, listening and talking!

Sincerely,
Julie Sill