Use Your Noodle! (W, 20, Circle, Brown)

The theme for the second week of March was "Use Your Noodle". We continued our Letter of the Week study with the letter W and our number study with the number 20! 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 brown and circles.

This week we read: Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
                                        Baby Beluga by Raffi
                                        A Garden of Whales by Maggie Steincrohn Davis
                                        The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle
                                        I Took a Walk by Henry Cole

Our question of the week was "What do you use your "noodle" to do?"

To review the color brown we colored pictures of brown 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 circle shape the children practiced recognizing the shape and colored circles.

For the number of the week:20 we started off by counting to and backward from twenty. 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 twenty. 

When I started in my class, I found a page like this from education.com, so I made my own for the number 20. 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.

Using our math boxes, the children found two numbers that can add to 20. They counted out twenty objects, and separated them into two boxes. Practicing their one-to-one correspondence, they had to draw for each one of their objects. It was a lot of counting, and a bit difficult, but they all stuck with it and did an excellent job!

For our theme "Use Your Noodle", each morning I would give the kids some riddles to solve. I didn't write them down and pretty much improvised them, but they had such a fun time with them. I started off with giving three clues and if they were stumped I would keep going.
Example: You can only see me at night, I am above you, sometimes I twinkle....answer: a Star!

We made a class riddle book! I found the idea on Pinterest to have the children write answers to simple questions. Then on the back of the page I wrote their name and glued a picture of them. So cute!

A bit off topic.... we worked on another Art Show Eric Carle project for The Very Busy Spider. Here's a sneak peek!

The letter of the week: W activities that we worked on this week wonderful!! We sang "Have You Seen the Big Blue Whale?"

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 "W" items in the whale.  All the other letters? Keep swimming!

After reading Where the Wild Things Are,  the children all got to make their own symmetrical Wild Thing. They folded their paper in half and cut along the edges, and then added paint to only one side, folding their paper to transfer the paint to the other side while they were working. That was their favorite part... the smooshing of the paper!

The children turned a capital letter W into a worm. 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.

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

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 painted whales with watercolor! I put out 3 different solutions of blue watercolor, and they had fun painting! When they were dry, they dove right into the ocean with our sea urchins from two weeks ago.

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.

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 Mailbox Letter of the Week book, the kids made a book called "What's in Walrus's Window?" I love these kinds of projects because it reinforces the letter sounds and it is also a project that the kids can pretty much do on their own. I give short instructions, and then they color and cut, and when they are done, they recycle their scraps.

I made a cube of cardboard and glued pictures of "W" things one each side. The children say "Walrus, Walrus, 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!

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

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