Keep Calm and Teach On: Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss! (V, 19, Rectangle, Red)

The theme for the first week of March was "Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss". We continued our Letter of the Week study with the letter V and our number study with the number 18! We have gone through our shapes and colors once, so from now until graduation, we will talk about two each week and do some small review activities. We started off with red and stars.

This week we read: Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss
  Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss
  The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss
One Fish, Two Fish by Dr. Seuss
  The Lorax by Dr. Seuss (We ultimately did not read this book because one
of our days was very snowy and we just had a play day with the few children that ventured out.)

The beginning of a new month means that we finished our calendar pattern for February, and we compared this year's weather to last years!

Our question of the week was "Do you like green eggs and ham?"

To review the color red we colored pictures of red things. I found these pages on pinterest, and I love the concept! My general rule of thumb is that if the children can explain to me their reasoning, then I am all for it!

To review the rectangle shape the children practiced recognizing the shape and colored rectangles.

For the number of the week:19 we started off by counting to and backward from nineteen. They love doing this every day and when we get to the end of counting backward, they all scream blast off!! ;) The kids also practiced writing the number and word for nineteen.

When I started in my class, I found a page like this from education.com, so I made my own for the number 19. The children have to practice writing the number and then color in that number of squares. It's a great way to introduce graphing and helps them to work on their one-to-one correspondence.

For our theme "Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss", we ate Green Eggs and Ham! Yum!

We sang "The Cat in the Hat Song" to the tune of the Adaams Family.

The kids each decorated their own Cat hat.

After we read The Cat in the Hat, we were inspired to try to balance like the cat. We balanced on each foot, held different objects and had a lot of fun!

After reading "One Fish, Two Fish..." we went alphabet fishing! I love when I get to use a project more than once. It makes all the time making it so much more worth it! I wrote the capital and lowercase letter on each fish, and when the children "caught" one, they had to tell us what letter it was and think of a word that starts with it.

One of our amazing families this year sent in these adorable One Fish, Two Fish cupcakes... Yum!

We painted Truffula trees to put a very colorful mural in our room. I created the trees and painted everything but the tuft, and each child got to pick their own tree color and paint it.

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

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!

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 place the "V" items in the vegetable bag. All the other letters? No purchase today!

From a Mailbox Letter of the Week book, the kids made a project called the "Village of V". I love these kinds of projects because it reinforces the letter sounds and it is also a project that the kids can prety much do on their own. I give short instructions, and then they color and cut, and when they are done, they recycle their scraps.

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.

As we work through the alphabet, the children make projects to go on our "alphabet wall". It's a very fun way for the class to see the alphabet in a new way. This week we made vegetables. The children painted different vegetables and then we put them in a little vegetable patch on the wall!

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 V into a vulture. 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 "V" things one each side. The children say "Vulture, vulture, 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 for the letter A, and let me tell you, it was a hit!! They loved it!