Falling for Fall! (Ee, Oval, 2)

The theme for the 7th week of the school year was "Falling for Fall". We continued our Letter of the Week study, with the letter E. This week we also focused on the oval shape, and we kept going on our number study with the number 2!

This week we read: Little Owl's Night by Divya Srinivasan
                                       Little Raccoon Learns to Share by Mary Packard
                                       The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons
                                       Fletcher and the Falling Leaves by Julia Rawlinson
                                       Oliver Finds His Way by Phyllis Root

Our question of the week was "What does Mom do at work?"

The shape of the week: oval was fun to talk about. At our morning meetings, we would talk about the shape and things in real life that are an oval. We also practiced drawing ovals in the air. The children worked on their fine motor skills by tracing ovals and squares to make a man's face. I found this worksheet on Kidzone.

The children also worked on their oval recognition. I got this page from The Original Summer Bridge Activities, for PreK-K.

For our song this week we sang "This is an Oval", I found it here.

"This is and Oval, this is an Oval,

How can you tell? How can you tell?

It is long on one end,

And short on the other, 

It's an oval, it's an oval."

For the number of the week: 2 we started off by counting to two and backward from two. The kids had no problem with this one. ;) The kids also practiced writing the number and word for two.

The children used a key with the number 2 to color in a picture of a penguin. This was great because the kids were able to do this with very little to no help, and they were so proud of themselves when they finished!

In some papers in my room I found a random number page like this from education.com, so I made my own for the number 2. The children had to practice writing the number and then color in that number of squares. What a great way to really introduce graphing and what a great way for them to work on their one-to-one correspondence.

For our themes "Falling for Fall", we found leaves outside and made leaf rubbings!

The kids painted with fall colors and made fall leaves. They also glued ripped paper and oats to make their own acorns! We put these on our autumn tree mural in our classroom to get into the seasonal mood.

We went outside and collected leaves from the playground, and talked about different ways that we could sort them. They decided that they wanted to sort by color, so we did!

While we were outside we also went on hunts for acorns. This was so fun, they wanted to keep going forever!

I love this project. I gave the kids a rectangle of brown construction paper, white paper, scissor and glue. They cut their tree and glued it on the paper however they wanted. Using q-tips to paint, they made dot trees. they are each so unique, which is why I love them.

The letter of the week: E activities that we worked on this were were Excellent! I created envelope games for each letter of the alphabet. I adapted them from activities from Mailbox Letter of the Week projects, both book one and two. The children had to put the "E" objects in the Elf's house. All the other letters? No admission!

The book Sounds Like fun, Phonemic Awareness has great phonics activities for the alphabet. For the letter E, the children have to cut out and glue the words that "Begin like Elephant". Together we talked about the beginning sounds of the words, and then they work on their fine motor cutting skills.

We practice and work on our handwriting for each letter as well. The Original Summer Bridge Activities, for PreK-K has great handwriting practice sheets. The kids trace and write the letters and then have a little phonics practice at the bottom.

From a Letter of the Week Mailbox book, I got the Elephant Exercise song. We swung our trunks, stomped our feet, flapped our ears and shook our tail.

From the book Alphabet, Colors, Numbers and Shapes, the kids practice letter recognition AND direction following. Some weeks certain letters have to be colored specifically and sometimes it's up to them. I love these!

We continued to work on our Alphabet Wall. In the classroom I taped up two trees. As we work through the alphabet, the children will make projects to go on the wall. It's a very fun way for the class to see the alphabet in a new way. This week, we made eagles! We also watched a few videos of eagles so the class could see what they look like.

Each child has a journal that they write in every week. When we focus on a letter, they write for that letter. On shorter weeks and during our review later in the year, they write to the theme. This is such a great way to get children excited about writing and reading. I start the children out by tracing, and once they are comfortable and controlling the crayon well, they move onto copying.

The children turned a capital letter E into an elephant. I got the idea from the book Alphabet and Counting from Twin Sister Productions. They give tips for how to make it a glue and paste projects, but I like to give them crayons and the challenge to add the parts of the animal to the letter. It opens up room for more conversation about the shape of the letter AND the features of the animal.

I made a cube of cardboard and glued pictures of "E" things one each side. The children say "Elephant, Elephant, what do I see.... I see a ____ looking at me!" They roll the cube and fill in the blank. This idea came from a Mailbox activity book, and let me tell you, it was a hit!! They loved it!

During the week we made a list of words that begin with the letter e. Here is what we thought of!

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