Happy Birthday, Dr Seuss! (and Me!) (U, 18, Orange)

Our theme this week was "Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss" and we focused on the letter U, number 18 and color orange.

We read this week:  The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss
                               The Cat in the Hat Comes Back by Dr. Seuss
                               One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss
                               The Lorax by Dr. Seuss
                               Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss

Our question of the week was "Who is your favorite Dr. Seuss Character?" We've read some Dr. Seuss already this year, so I quickly reminded them of the different characters that we have met.

For our theme of the week, we had so much Seuss-y fun. On Youtube, I found some of the original movies, so we watched The Sneetches (beware- they say "stupid" which prompted a discussion about not-nice words), and The Zax. I saw that there are also the original cartoons of Green Eggs and Ham, and Horton Hears a Who. We also watched The Lorax, and Horton Hears a Who. We stopped centers a little early and split each movie into 40 minute sittings before lunch. the kids LOVED the special movie treats.

The kids were so great and really enjoyed celebrating my birthday AND Dr. Seuss's.

We balanced like The Cat in the Hat. It was fun to have them try balancing on one foot while doing all sorts of silly things with their hands. We jumped and hopped on one foot, and even tried to dance!

The kids each decorated a Cat Hat with crayons and tissue paper. I love the individuality!

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.

Each child got to paint a Truffula tree for our class mural. I even made a vine while getting it ready!

We made and ate green eggs and ham!! It was so fun!

The Cat in the Hat even came to visit with us!

We talked about the color orange, and we sang "We love orange"

"We love orange, we love orange,
yes we do, yes we do.
Crunchy carrots so good to eat,
Juicy oranges, oh so sweet!
Pumpkins ready for trick-or-treat,
we love orange."
 (C) Jean Warren www.preschoolexpress.com
I got it from here!

When we focus on a color I love to do "color hunts" in our classroom. Each child takes a turn to walk

around the classroom and bring back something that they found that is orange. Here is what we found. 

When we worked on our number activities, we practiced writing the number and word for the number 18.

I made these worksheets that reinforces the one to one concept. The 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 Uu from this book.

The students wrote in their journals for the letter U. It's really cool to see the children thinking about what they want to put in their journal. They love these books and always want to go through them when they're finished writing for the day.

We turned a U into a Unicorn! This book is great.

This book has great pages for helping the kids work on the letter recognition of both the capital and the lowercase versions of the letter, and they are always a little different, which is great!

My kids did a great job of turning shapes into an underwater picture! I cut out the different shapes for them ahead of time, they picked three, and then let their imaginations run wild! It came from this Letter of the Week book.

From this Alphabet on Parade book, I got the idea to have the kids practice the concepts of "over" and "under". I drew and umbrella and 12 small pictures for them to cut out and glue either over or under the umbrella. I let them pretty much do their own thing on this project and then tucked it away in their portfolios.

From Sounds Like Fun, I got the idea to buy little paper party drink umbrellas and say different vowel sound words. Anytime they hear a long or short u sound, they had to put up their umbrellas! So fun. Bonus, they got to keep the umbrellas and were thrilled!

For our alphabet wall we made urchins! (I know it's a bit of a stretch, but the kids went with it and loved it. That being said, I had to make an ocean portion of our wall, which will come in handy when we make whales!

Here are the words we came up with this week!

I was not the only birthday we celebrated this week. Yum!

I know I put a lot of updates on here about our pumpkin plant from the Halloween post, but it has not yet ceased to amaze me with it's growth! We are still getting new shoots... and this week, we got our first blossom!!! Really for a project that was so easy to do, the kids just filled the pumpkin with dirt and as they started to decompose I planted them under dirt, we are fascinated every day!

Up next week: "Shamrocks" and a focus on the letter Vv, number 19, color green and circle shape.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom! (ABC review)

Our theme was"Chicka Chicka Boom Boom"Because of the short week, we had an ABC review week. **This week we did not get to do all of the activities that I had planned. We had a shortened day because of snow and I was also not able to get to school one day because of  the snow. I'll still include the descriptions and a picture of my example for the projects that we did not get to do. It's always good to have more letter activities than less!**

  

We read this week: Dr. Seuss' ABC's by Dr. Seuss
                              LMNO Peas by Keith Baker
                              Animalia by Graeme Base
                              Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr.
                              
Our question of the week was "What is your favorite letter of the alphabet? Why?" This was one of those questions that really got the wheels turning in their heads, because they couldn't just give me a letter, they had to give me a reason why.

Our song of the week was.... The alphabet! So creative, wasn't I? =]

For our theme of the week, we did SO much with letters!

I have thick plastic lacing letters that I put out for the kids to play with. These are great for practicing that fine motor control.

Each child decorated a hand print with their name on it to put onto our "Alphabet tree". I made it Valentine-y so that I could leave it up for a little longer. =]

In our school gym we did another obstacle course like last week, but we did this one while talking about the letters in the action that we were doing (ie. C=climb, S=slide, J=Jump...) I love to get my kids really moving!

Last year I made a "game" for each letter of the alphabet. Using projects from the two Letter of the Week Mailbox books that I have, I colored and laminated pieces that the children have to figure out if they start with the letter. These took a LONG time to do, but the kids love when I put them out, so it was definitely worth it. Here's the game for Aa. *If you are interested in any of the other letters, message me and let me know!*

I had planned for the kids to finger paint letters, because what's more fun than that?? But alas, the snow had other plans.

We went fishing for letters! I cut out fish and put one letter on each one. We played this is small groups and took turns "fishing" (I attached a paper clip to each fish and we used a magnet fishing rod from a puzzle in the classroom). Whichever fish they picked, they had to tell the group what letter it was and come up with a word that starts with that letter.

Ever seen a rainbow letter? Aren't they pretty?? So colorful!

Freeze dance to fun alphabet songs from Twin Sister Productions was a blast too.

Using the letters in each of their names, this children wrote poems!

We played alphabet toss. As each child got tossed the beanbag, and had to say the next letter of the alphabet. We started by just passing the beanbag around the circle. It got more challenging when they tossed it across the circle. They loved it!

When we read Chicka chicka Boom boom, of course we had to make our own letter trees!

Up next week: "Construction" and a focus on Pp, 13 and yellow.