Types of Art (U, V, W and 1-5)

Our theme this week was "Types of Art" and we focused on reviewing the numbers 1-5, and the letters U, V and W.

(To be honest... I'm not really sure what I was going for here. My kids wanted to know if our theme was "Hair") =/

We read this week:  Duck and Goose by Tad Hills
                                Yertle the Turtle by Dr. Seuss
                                The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss
                                Little Hoot by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
                                The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt

Our question of the week was "What is your favorite kind of art?" We went over the different kinds of art projects that we have done before they gave their answers.

For our theme of the week, we started to prepare for graduation! This makes me both happy and sad at the same time. But, time keeps marching and so do we! We started to work on their class shirts for graduation. It's a very simple design but they turn out so cute last year, that I knew I wanted to do them again! We used simple white t-shirts and different colors of fabric paint. I have each child do their hand-print in a different color (we had some repeats this year, but on their side of the shirt they were the only ones with that color.) This is a bit time consuming, so we did it over the course of 4 days.
(The fabric paint doesn't last very long on the hand, it's really only good for one handprint. For each shirt I had to repaint their hand) They were really good sports about it.)

After the paint dried, I wrote their first names on their handprints in Sharpie. Some of my kids from last year still wear their shirts and they held up nicely!

Then we talked about some of the different kinds of pictures that you could make; landscapes, portraits, still life and self portraits. Then they drew and colored self portraits.

And they also painted self portraits.

We made collages that I'll talk about more in the "our numbers" section below. =]

For their journals this week, we went back to the beginning page where I had them write "My name is...." and draw a picture of them selves. (Wow, we did a lot of self portraiture this week!) Now their journals have a nice introductory page!

Our song of the week was "I'm a Little Graduate". Time to start practicing for Graduation! (Only three weeks away!) We sang this song last year, and to be honest, I'm not sure where I found it. We sang it to the tune of "I'm a Little Teapot".

"I'm a little graduate, Aren't you proud of me?

I know my numbers and ABC's.

I made lots of friends and had fun too,

Now, I'm off to the big kid school!"

For our numbers, we made those collages that I talked about! I gave each child the numerals 1-5 and pre-cut pictures that correspond. I handed them each their little packet and asked them to color their pictures first, then to glue them on their construction paper. We talked about how with a collage, you can really put them on the paper however you want. I showed them mine, where I grouped the numbers together. Some kids talked about lining them all up, some grouped them like me, and some just made a fun jumbled collage! This was fun project because they got to make it their own and they practiced their counting. Believe me! They sure knew if I forgot to give them one of their picture! =]

From Alphabet, Colors, Numbers and Shapes, I found this great worksheet for practicing counting and one-to-one correspondence.

And I also had a handmade worksheet like that too.

For our letter activities, we reviewed writing and finding the letters that we are talking about; U, V and W. These pages came from Letters for Little Learners.

The letter of the week books have pages that you can make into a book. I picked from both to get my "favorites". Each week, we work on some of these pages, and each child at the end will have an alphabet book. I like to do these pages, because not only do they get more practice writing the letter, but they also have to finish the sentence on the page, which is really cool. It gets them thinking!

This week the "U" page came from Book 2, the "V" page came from Book 1, and the "N" page came from Book 2.

We also worked more on recognizing our review letters in the tongue twisters from Alphabet and Counting. We used this book to turn our letters into fun animals, but on the pages is also a little tongue twister. I printed it large and made a picture, then laminated them with contact paper. Using wet erase markers, we take turns finding the letters that are hidden!

We kept working on our sight words! Every morning we go over around 10 of them. Once we've mastered them, they will go on our sight word wall! So exciting! We're working our way through the 220 Dolch sight word list.