Preschool Activities For The Letter T

Goal is to ensure academic success even before school year begins

The first day of kindergarten often is bittersweet for parents - but it shouldn't be a challenge for the students. Education needs to start long before a child enters the doors of elementary school to ensure academic success, according to local educators.

Fortunately, a number of kindergarten preparation programs, from day camps to back-to-school nights and home visits from kindergarten teachers, aim to ease the transition to kindergarten and help children acclimate to the structure of the classroom more quickly.

Need for preparation

Preschool and child care programs sometimes aren't enough to prepare children for kindergarten, Laurie Welch, family living educator for the Penn State Cooperative Extension in Clinton County, said.

Welch conducted a school readiness survey last year in collaboration with the Clinton County Early Care and Education Initiative and found that many kids are lacking the necessary skills to successfully navigate kindergarten.

"A lot of kindergarten teachers that I work with were saying these kids coming from preschool don't have the skills to give them a good first school experience. I wanted to know what the kindergarten teachers were seeing," Welch said. "I surveyed all the kindergarten teachers in Keystone Central School District."

The survey reported that students entering kindergarten are lacking fine motor development skills, attentiveness and social adaptation skills. Teachers reported that families underestimate the importance of their impact on a child's education and also lack adequate support and access to training in parenting skills and child development.

Easing the transition

Programs led by the Local Education and Resource Network (LEARN) group, a United Way organization formerly known as the Community Engagement Group, aim to fill the gaps between early childhood education and kindergarten. The LEARN group's transition team implemented a number of initiatives last year to improve the transition to kindergarten for local students thanks to a grant from the Office of Child Development and Early Learning (OCDEL). The transition team is made up of officials from Williamsport, East Lycoming and Jersey Shore school districts and from Pre-K Counts, STARS child care and the James V. Brown Library.

Letter T Lesson Plan for Preschoolers

Teachers of preschool and child care providers can help children learn to recognize and write the letter T through fun activities that clearly support learning objectives. The implementation of activities that clearly support learning objectives, pre-school teachers can create brilliant lesson plans that help young children learn the letter T and the T.

Learning Objectives

Students will identify the letter T. Create a poster showing the letter T in both the upper and lower T. Glue pictures of objects from magazines that begin with T. Otherwise, draw or paint objects that begin with T. Introduce the children to the letter T along with simple objects that begin with the letter T.

Demonstrate the T sound and ask the children to make (repeat) the T sound. Ask students what they can think of (objects, names, etc.) that begin with the letter T. Let children practice tracing the letter T in both upper and lower case using letter T worksheets. A good example of such a worksheet in a variety of languages is available on the DLTK website. Also, children can practice tracing upper and lower case Ts on blank sheets of paper using pencils or crayons.

Story Time: Letter T Books

Make (or instruct each child to bring in) foods that begin with a letter T and have a letter T snack party.  Some ideas include tea, turkey, tacos, tuna, tart, tomatoes, toast, and turnips. Write the name of each snack on the board and emphasize the T sound. Alternatively, have a tea party and emphasize T is for tea.

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