by Angela Shelly

In The Friendship Academy, we like to display our friends’ art proudly! Last week our friends created buses for letter B, and cupcakes for letter C using dot markers for sprinkles. Our friends love to see their artwork displayed on our art wall!

When our friends created their B-B-Buses, they practiced using their fine motor skills and memories as they used a glue stick to place wheels and stop signs on the buses. They used their memories and imaginations to remember what color a school bus is (even our friends who don’t take the school bus yet!) and where the wheels go. Our friends got to use dot markers to decorate C-C-Cupcakes during C-week, and practiced writing the letter “C.” They also practice writing the letter of the week on the iPad, white boards, and several other mediums. Our student teacher in The Friendship Academy likes to have the children say the sound of the letter of the week as an “exit ticket” to finish up circle time in the mornings! Our friends are truly becoming masters of the letters of the alphabet!

Each week in The Friendship Academy in Montgomery County, we practice a new letter of the alphabet! Our friends are getting better and better at recognizing words that start with the letter of the week. We work together to create a long list of words that start with the letter of the week. Then, two friends get to pick a word for our Word Wall. We learn the ASL sign for those words, and practice the words and their signs throughout the week! Any visitor to The Friendship Academy would find that our friends are masters of the ASL signs for our word wall words: airplane, apple, ball, boy, cat, and cloudy.