Spring Has Sprung! (Yy, 22, Yellow, Star)

The theme for the last week of March was "Spring Has Sprung", and boy were my kids happy to celebrate the return of Spring! We continued our Letter of the Week study with the letter Y and our number study with the number 22! 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 worked this week on yellow and stars.

This week we read: The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle
                                        Fletcher and the Springtime Blossoms by Julia Rawlinson
                                        The Story of the Root Children by Sibylle von Olfers
                                        Jamberry by Bruce Degen
                                        Duck by Randy Cecil

Our question of the week was "What is your favorite thing to do in the springtime?"

To review the color yellow we colored pictures of yellow 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 for coloring an object, then I am all for it!

To review the star shape the children practiced recognizing the shape and colored stars. I created this little picture with full of stars in it. They needed to color the stars yellow and then the rest of the picture!

For the number of the week:22 we started off by counting to and backward from twenty-two. 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-two. 

When I started in my class, I found a page like this from education.com, so I made my own for the number 22. 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 "Spring has Sprung", we went outside to search for spring! Out on our playground and on our school's nature trail, we looked for signs that spring was really here.

We sang "Pretty Little Flower" to the tune of Itsy Bitsy Spider.

"Pretty little flower, smiling at the sun.
Down comes the rain, now she looks so glum.
Back comes the sun and dries up all the rain.
And the pretty little flower, is smiling once again!"

(C) 2001 - 2011 Jean Warren www.preschoolexpress.com

The kids played a quick flower sorting game that I made. I made a set of flowers that I "laminated" with contact paper. The set worked so that they could be sorted by color of the petals or number of the petals. They did so great!

We painted giant flowers! I can't show you the final projects because this is something we will be putting into our Eric Carle themed art show in April, but here's a preview!

The letter of the week: Y activities that we worked on this week were y-great!! 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 "Y" items in the yard.  All the other letters? Back in the shed!

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.

The children turned a capital letter Y into a Yellow Jacket. 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 Y, the children have to cut out and glue the words that "Begins like Yak". Together we talked about the beginning sounds of the words, and then they work on their fine motor cutting skills.

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.

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 yaks with some yarn hair. They colored their yaks and glued on some yarn!

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 made a class book call "Yakking about Yesterday" where each child illustrated something that they did yesterday. They got such a kick out of it when we read it later in the day!

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

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

Going Green! (C, D, E, 25 and Hexagons)

Our theme this week was "Going Green" and we focused on the number 25, and reviewed the letters C, D and E, and hexagons.

We read this week: Duck and Goose by Tad Hills
                              The Story of the Root Children by Sibylle Von Olfers
                              Living Sunlight by Molly Bang
                              The Lorax by Dr. Seuss
                              My Garden by Kevin Henkes

Our question of the week was "How can you 'Go Green'" It was such a strange saying to my kids that some of these answers are hilarious!

For our theme of the week, we made Earth Sun-catchers using wax paper and crayon. They almost glow when the sun shines through them!

We also made recycle themed collages and talked about why recycling is better for the planet then just throwing something away.

I already know that my kids love the newer movie version of the Lorax, so I wanted to show them the original. (Be warned! There is some not nice name calling... chalk it up to being from the 70's I guess...)

We also wrote in our journals this week about ways that we could help the planet. We brainstormed a list, and then the kids picked what they were going to do.

We planted seeds!

Our song of the week was "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" from here. This song was big hit with my class last year, so I'm hoping my kids this year like it just as much!

"Reduce Reuse Recycle

Are words that we all know

We have to save our planet

So we can live and grow

We might be only children

We have to try, you’ll see

We will save our planet

It starts with you and me!"

We talked about the shape hexagon practiced recognizing them. I created this page based on ones that we had done in the past.

For our number, I made these worksheets that reinforce the one to one concept. The kids practice writing the number and have to color a square for each picture that they see.

We also used our math boxes to help us count to 25. This is a great way to really get kids to learn that each number stands for something.

For our letter activities, we reviewed writing and finding the letters that we are talking about, C, D and E. These pages came from Letters for Little Learners.

We Celebrated "C" with a cake full of c pictured candles. Cut and paste projects are so fun because my kids can do them now completely on their own and they are so proud of themselves! This project came from Letter of the Week- Book 1.

From Sounds Like Fun, we did the "Elephant Exercise" It was really fun to bend and stretch and swing our trunk, all while listening for the sounds that the letter E makes.

The letter of the week books have pages that you can make a book into. I picked from both to get my "favorites". Each week, we'll work on these pages, and each child will end up with an alphabet book at the end of the year. 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 "C" page came from Book 1, the "D" page came from Book 2, and the "E" 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 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.

Here is what we have mastered so far!

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