All About Me! (Aa, Square)

The theme for the 3rd week of the school year was "All About Me". We also started our Letter of the Week study, with the letter A. Throughout the year, we also have a focus each week of either a color or shape, as well as number. The numbers will start soon, and this week we focused on the square shape.

This week we read: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr.
                                        Always by Alison McGhee
                                        Curious George Feeds the Animals by Margret and HA Rey
                                        LMNO Peas by Keith Baker
                                        Animalia by Graeme Base

Our question of the week was "What animal would you like to be?"

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

For our song this week we sang "This is a Square". I've seen this song all over (and other shape variations) so I'm not exactly sure where to give the credit. =/

For our theme "All About Me", we made a book! I was given these pages when I started at my school a few years ago, but I believe they came originally from Education.com.

The letter of the week: A activities that we worked on this were were Absolutely fun! 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 find the apples with "A" words on them to put on the tree.

We began 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 apples! The children ripped small pieces of red paper and glued them on a round circle of white paper.

The children turned a capital letter A into an alligator. 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 A, the children have to cut out and glue the words that "Begin like Antelope". Together we talked about the beginning sounds of the words, and then they work on their fine motor cutting skills.

Playing memory with letter A pictures was a fun way to practice the letter.

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.

We made apple print art!! Those apples get slippery, let me tell you. I think we had more paint on our hands than on the paper! =] I cut each apple the opposite way so we could get both prints.

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!

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. This week we started the journals with the letter A. I start the children out by tracing, and once they are comfortable and controlling the crayon well, they move onto copying.

We tasted three different types of apples: Red Delicious, Granny Smith and Honeycrisp. They tried each kind of apple and then "voted" for the one that they liked the best. Great way for us to start talking about graphs. We talked afterward about the most popular, least and what other things the graph tells us (title, types of apples, names)

Our bunnies really enjoyed the extras!

I made a cube of cardboard and glued pictures of "A" things one each side. The children say "Astronaut, Astronaut, what do I see.... I see a ____ looking at me!" They roll the cube and fill in the blank. This 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 a. Here is what we thought of!

 Leave a comment below and let me know that you stopped by!

Falling for Fall! (F, 3, Octagon)

Our theme this week was "Falling for Fall" and we focused on the letter Ff, the number 3 and the shape octagon.

We read this week: Fletcher and the Falling Leaves by Julia Rawlinson
                               The Frog Prince (Classic Fairy Tale)
                               The Frog Prince Continued by Jon Scieszka
                               One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss
                               Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban

Our question of the week was "What is one reason you like the Fall?"

theme of the week, we talked about and did activities that highlight some seasonal changes that happen in the fall.

We made a fall themed tree using paint and Q-tips. I like to let my kids create their own art. so they even made their own tree trunks! (great cutting practice!!) I saw this done on this page.

We made fall wreaths with fall colors. We used orange tissue paper, red and brown construction paper and yellow feathers. This project let us talk about why we associate the colors with the season.

We had fun collecting leaves from all around outside and then sorted them by size, and then by color.

Using those leaves that we collected, we then made leaf rubbings!

I made a new mural for our library center and the kids made acorns! I drew the outline of the acorn on brown construction paper. Then they glued torn up brown paper bags fro the "cap" and we glued on oatmeal for the bottom.

We talked a lot this week about the shape octagon. I couldn't find a song that I really liked, so I wrote my own modeled on the ones that we've already done..

"This is an octagon, this is an octagon,

How can you tell? How can you tell?

It had 8 sides,

And looks like a stop sign, 

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

The kids practiced recognizing octagons.

When we worked on our number activities, we practiced writing the number and word for the number.

I made these worksheets that reinforces the one to one concept. They kids practice writing the number and have to color a square for each picture that they see.

For our letter activities, we used our handwriting sheet for the letter F,  and the sheet that helps work on letter recognition, both are from books that are mentioned in the "All About Me" post. The students also wrote in their journals for the letter F.

 
We went "fishing for F's". On cutouts of fish I wrote letters A-F. I put a paperclip on each fish and the kids used a fishing pole with a magnet on the end to catch a fish! They had to name the letter they got. If it was and F, they got to keep it, and if it was a different letter they had to "throw it back in".

We danced the Hokey Pokey, pretending that we were foxes (bushy tails, pointy ears, paws) Love it!

We turned F's into Fish.

For our alphabet wall we made fish that we finger painted.

And with the F addition, our wall now looks like...

I didn't realize until now that my little  pond looks a little bit like Texas...

We got into a competition with the older class for who could think of more words.. by the end of the week both classes tied! It was an awesome job done by both classes. Our list for words beginning with F's was awesome. Here it is!

Up next week: The letter Gg, the number 4, hexagon and "Creepy Crawlies".

All About Me! (A, Squares)

The second week of school we started to really get used to the routine of the classroom and really started to get to know each other. The school's weekly theme was "All About Me" and we started with a letter and shape focus this week. We started with  the letter A and squares.

This week we read: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr, John Archambault
                                L, M, N, O, Peas by Keith Baker
                                Curious George Feeds the Animals by Margret and H.A. Rey
                                Always by Allison McGhee
                                A Book of Friends by Dave Ross

Our question of the week was "What kind of animal would you be?" but I LOST THE PICTURE! I'm so bummed, but i will try to ask the question again.. The answers were great.

I have a few books that I have some great letter activities. Every week we have a handwriting day (Tuesday) and I use the pages from The Original Summer Bridge Activities PK-K. ISBN 978-1-60418-817-2. At the top of the page there is room for the students to practice writing the capital and lowercase letters, and then on the bottom of the page there are pictures, that they have to figure out which words have the same beginning sound.

For letters, I also like the alphabet pages from Alphabet, Colors, Numbers and Shapes. ISBN 0-88724-419-x. They challenge the kids to recognize the letters in different pictures and they love them.

I also love to have the kids turn letters into different animals. I got the idea from the book Alphabet and Counting from Twin Sister Productions. ISBN 157583819-2. They give tips for how to make it 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.

Our big project this week was an All About Me book. These pages were given to me by another teacher, but I found them again here. We didn't do all the pages, but we did one or two a day. The books I kept and will be giving to the parents on Back-to-School night. It's a fun book for the parents to look at while exploring the classroom.
Here is one page where the kids made their handprints.

The kids made a page about their family, their pets, their eye color, favorite color, favorite food, their age, hand prints and a self portrait.

They practiced tracing squares with this cool worksheet I found here.

We also played a game this week where they had to pick a picture out of a basket and name the "A" think that they were looking at.

The school bought my class student writing journals and I LOVE these! Every week for the alphabet, the kids pick about what they want to write about for that letter. This week I introduced them to their journals, and i think they love them just as much as I do.

We tasted Red Delicious and Granny Smith Apples and talked about the differences between them. We also made apple prints!

I found these great short videos on YouTube about the journey of apples from tree to store to home that the kids loved. We watched each one twice by request. They especially thought it was hilarious when Jim says "From Blossom to Awesome."
Video One
Video Two
Video Three
There is a wall in the classroom that I made the "Alphabet Wall". Each week we do a project to go up on the wall. Last year the kids loved to guess the possible things we could be making.  This week we made apples. I cut the inside circle of a paper plate, the stem and leaf and a rectangle of red paper. The kids got to rip up the red paper to glue onto the circle. The kids really enjoyed the glue and the ripping, and the apples came out great and unique!

 And here is what our alphabet wall looks like so far!

This was our first week! I will leave you with the list of words that begin with "A" that the kids came up with!