Groundhogs & Shadows (Rr, 15, Purple)

The theme for the first week of February was "Groundhogs and Shadows". We continued our Letter of the Week study with the letter R. This week we continued talking about colors with the color purple, and we kept going on our number study with the number 15!

This week we read: Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson
                                        When I Feel Angry by Cornelia Maude Spelman
                                        Ish by Peter H. Reynolds
                                        Not a Box by Antoinette Portis
                                        Jeremy Draws a Monster by Peter McCarty

Our question of the week was "How much longer will winter be?" Some of these are great!

The color of the week: purple was a lot of fun to explore.  We talked about things that are the color purple and went on a hunt around our classroom to find things that are purple.

We sang "We Love Purple" to the tune of Three Blind Mice.

""We love purple, we love purple,
yes we do, yes we do.
Purple grapes and eggplant too,
Purple plums and grape juice
Just for me and just for you,
we love purple."
I got it from here!

For the number of the week:15 we started off by counting to and backward from fifteen. 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 fifteen. 

When I started in my class, I found a page like this from education.com, so I made my own for the number 15. 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.

From The Complete Book of Numbers and Counting, the kids practiced counting to fifteen when they drew 15 bows on the tail of the kite.

I found this idea I think on Pinterest for the children to search for numbers. I created the worksheet, and each child had a different color combination. These are a great worksheet to stick in their portfolios too!

For our theme "Groundhogs & Shadows", we talked about Groundhog day and what it symbolizes. The class made collages with groundhogs, suns and clouds, and an adorable poem about ground hog day.

We sang "Here's a Little Groundhog" to the tune I'm a little teapot found here.

"Here's a little ground hog furry and brown,

He's coming up to look around.

If he sees his shadow down he'll go,

Then six more weeks of winter, Oh No!"

My director actually found the inspiration for this show project, I'll have to be sure to find out where it came from. The kids colored their groundhog, and painted black on a rough outline that I made on a piece of construction paper. When they were dry, I stapled the groundhogs on so that when they "stand up", their shadow appears!

The letter of the week: R activities that we worked on this week were rad! 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 "R" items onto the the rabbit. All the other letters? Keep on hopping!

From a Mailbox Letter of the Week book, the kids made a booklet about "Robot's Rocket". I like doing these kinds of books because they can go back and look at the pictures to help tell the story, and they are also able to do the project mostly on their own. When they are finished coloring the pages, they come and get their scissors. When they are finished cutting, they bring their pages to me, put away their scissors and clean up their area of paper scraps. I love it!

The book Sounds Like fun, Phonemic Awareness has great phonics activities for the alphabet. For the letter R, the children have to cut out and glue the words that "Begins like Raccoon". 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 made raindrops. On a construction paper shaped raindrop, the kids finger painted, which is always fun!

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.

The children turned a capital letter R into a rabbit. 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 cut up rectangles of various sizes and colors, and the class turned them into robots!

I found these short videos about "r" animals that we watched through the week. There was one about Rhinos, raccoons, rats, rabbits, and of course I had to show my kids the video of the raccoon stealing cat food. They went nuts for it! The kids really enjoy when randomly throughout the day we take a break to watch an animal video.

I made a cube of cardboard and glued pictures of "R" things one each side. The children say "Rocket ship, rocket ship, 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 R. Here is what we thought of!

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

Big and Little! (R, S, T and 30)

Our theme this week was "Big and Little" and we focused on the number 30, and reviewed the letters R, S and T.

We finished the month of May this week, perfectly on Friday =], so we talked about our weather this year and last year. We do the weather every day as one of our Morning Meeting jobs.

For our calendar, we made an AAB pattern. They did awesome!

We read this week:  The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle
                                There's a Hippopotamus Under My Bed by Mike Thaler
                                Little Cloud by Eric Carle
                                The Lorax by Dr. Seuss

Our question of the week was "What are you bigger than?"

For our theme of the week, i gathered a few items from around the classroom and asked in small groups about what larger and smaller means. One day I asked them to tell me which was larger, and the other day I asked for the smaller object. I always ask them why they think their answer is correct, and I love to see their reasoning and thought process. To go along with this, I had them complete these  two worksheets that I found in Shapes and Measurements.

The class wrote in their journals about something that they are smaller than.

I cut colorful straws into different sizes, and the kids in small groups organized them into piles by size. (I forgot to take a picture =[)

Our song of the week was a review of "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" which we'll be singing at graduation..... which is only 3 weeks away!! Yikes, I need to get moving!

For our number,  I made a worksheet 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.

30 is the highest number that we focus on in detail. (My kids definitely love counting to 100 and higher at lunchtime) We used our math boxes to help us count, and then we worked on their writing of the number and the word for 30.

For our letter activities, we reviewed writing and finding the letters that we are talking about; R, S, and T. These pages came from Letters for Little Learners.

The letter of the week books have pages that you can make into a book. I picked from both to get my "favorites". Each week, we work on some of these pages, and each child at the end will have an alphabet book. I like to do these pages, because not only do they get more practice writing the letter, but they also have to finish the sentence on the page, which is really cool. It gets them thinking!

This week the "R" page came from Book 2, the "M" page came from Book 2, and the "N" page came from Book 1.

We also worked more on recognizing our review letters in the tongue twisters from Alphabet and Counting. We used this book to turn our letters into fun animals, but on the pages is also a little tongue twister. I printed it large and made a picture, then laminated them with contact paper. Using wet erase markers, we take turns finding the letters that are hidden!

We kept working on our sight words! Every morning we go over around 10 of them. Once we've mastered them, they will go on our sight word wall! So exciting! We're working our way through the 220 Dolch sight word list.

Speaking of sight words, from Confessions of a HomeSchooler, I got these great sight word pages. We continued this week with the words "run".

Be My Valentine (R, 15, Pink)

Our theme for the week of Valentine's Day was, of course, "Be My Valentine" and we focused on the letter R, number 15 and color pink.

*Two more snow days!!! Ahh! Good thing I'm flexible! =] Some of these activities we actually did the next week on Monday.*

We read this week: Happy Valentine's day, Curious George by HA Rey
                              Love Monster by Rachel Bright
                              Always by Alison McGhee
                              The Night Before Valentine's Day by Natasha Wing
                              Love, Splat by Rob Scotton

Our question of the week was "Who would you like to give a valentine to?"

For our theme of the week, we spent a lot of time getting ready for Valentine's Day. We started by making out Valentine's Mailboxes. I like to use these bags from Michael's (they come individually or in a pack of 13) because of the number of kids in my class, and I know we always have some little goodie bags. (like from me =]) Plus they have handles which make them super easy to take home!

Here are the little Valentine bags that I made for my kids. Between Walmart, Michael's and the Dollar Tree, I always find great little toys and trinkets to put in class goodie bags.

The kids also made Valentine's to give to their parents. I found the idea here. I pre-cut the plates and the poems for the middle and the kids got to decorate them however they wanted.

We had our Valentine exchange and party! =]

We talked about the color pink, and we sang "I'm a Little Piggy"

"I'm a little piggy, with a round nose.
I am all pink from my head to my toes.
Here's my piggy tail, as you can see.
It's pink and curly as can be."
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 pink. Here is what we found.

When we worked on our number activities, we practiced writing the number and word for the number 15.

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.

I "tested" their knowledge of the number 15 by asking them to draw 15 bows on the tail of a kite. They had to make sure they were counting while they drew, and checked their work.

For our letter activities, we used our handwriting sheet for the letter Rr from this book.

The kids practiced recognizing the letter R and r.

The students wrote in their journals for the letter R.

We turned a R into a Rabbit! This book is great.

I cut all different color and size rectangles and the children made robots with them!

The kids also made a book about all the things that a robot would bring on his rocket.

We acted out a poem from the book Phonemic Awareness.

"Come on racoon, run in place. (run slowly in place)

Are you ready for the race? (run in place at a moderate pace)

Racoon, run and ramble along. (Run quickly in place) 

Run, run, run, the race is long! (Run more slowly in place. Pant as if tired.)

Run, run, run! Pick up the pace! (Run quickly in place)

Now Rejoice! You won the race!" (Smile with arms up in victory)

For our alphabet wall we made rain! They painted the rain drops, and then I attached them to the clouds that we made in the beginning of the alphabet.

Here are the words we came up with this week!

Up next week: "Music" and a focus on the letter Ss, number 16 and color black.