Friday, December 5, 2014

Farm Animals! (Hh, 5, Hexagon)

The theme for the 10th week of school and first week of November was "Farm Animals". We continued our Letter of the Week study, with the letter H. This week we also focused on the hexagon shape, and we kept going on our number study with the number 5!

This week we read: Duck for President by Doreen Cronin
                                        Humphrey's Farm Adventure by Sally Hunter
                                        The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle
                                        Little Oink by Any Krouse Rosenthal
                                        Barnyard Banter by Denise Fleming

Our question of the week was "What would you grow on your farm?"

The shape of the week: hexagon was fun to talk about. At our morning meetings, we tried to think of things that were hexagons in real life. We also practiced drawing hexagons in the air, and counted the sides. The children worked on their fine motor skills and shape recognition by finding hexagons. I made this sheet myself based on recognition sheets that we have already done.

For our song this week we sang "A Hexagon has 6 Sides". I found this cool song on Pinterest to the tune of "Head, shoulders, knees and toes."
"A hexagon has 6 sides, has 6 sides.
A hexagon has 6 sides, has 6 sides,
The sides are equal and angles are the same.
A hexagon has 6 sides, has 6 sides!"

For the number of the week: 5 we started off by counting to and backward from five. The kids had no problem with this one, and we made it to a whole hand! ;) The kids also practiced writing the number and word for five.

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 5. 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.

From the Complete Book of Numbers and Counting, we worked on this coloring page with a key for the number 5.

For our theme "Farm Animals", we really got into character! We Sang Old MacDonald A LOT! So fun!

We danced the Chicken Dance!

We made animal handprints to go on this farm mural. I let each child pick what animal they wanted to do, and we did it!


We played farm animal charades! It quickly dissolved into giggles and all of us pretending to be the animals, but it was a lot of fun.

The letter of the week: H activities that we worked on this were were helpful! The book Sounds Like fun, Phonemic Awareness has great phonics activities for the alphabet. For the letter G, the children have to cut out and glue the words that "Begin like Horse". Together we talked about the beginning sounds of the words, and then they work on their fine motor cutting skills.

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 "H" H items in the house. All the other letters? Find a realtor!

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 hummingbirds out of pom poms and feathers. I have not quite figured out how to get these onto the wall.

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 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.

The children turned a capital letter H into a horse. 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.

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.

From a Letter of the Week book, we made these cool "hats" that have h pictures you can slide through the flower. They were a bit difficult to make, but the kids really liked them.

I made a cube of cardboard and glued pictures of "H" things one each side. The children say "Happy Face, Happy Face, 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 H. Here is what we thought of!

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