Humphrey's Farm Adventure by Sally Hunter
The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle
Little Oink by Any Krouse Rosenthal
Barnyard Banter by Denise Fleming
Our question of the week was "What would you grow on your farm?"
The shape of the week: hexagon was fun to talk about. At our morning meetings, we tried to think of things that were hexagons in real life. We also practiced drawing hexagons in the air, and counted the sides. The children worked on their fine motor skills and shape recognition by finding hexagons. I made this sheet myself based on recognition sheets that we have already done.
"A hexagon has 6 sides, has 6 sides.
A hexagon has 6 sides, has 6 sides,
The sides are equal and angles are the same.
A hexagon has 6 sides, has 6 sides!"
In some papers in my room I found a random number page like this from education.com, so I made my own for the number 5. The children had to practice writing the number and then color in that number of squares. What a great way to really introduce graphing and what a great way for them to work on their one-to-one correspondence.
From the Complete Book of Numbers and Counting, we worked on this coloring page with a key for the number 5.
We danced the Chicken Dance!
We made animal handprints to go on this farm mural. I let each child pick what animal they wanted to do, and we did it!
We played farm animal charades! It quickly dissolved into giggles and all of us pretending to be the animals, but it was a lot of fun.
The letter of the week: H activities that we worked on this were were helpful! The book Sounds Like fun, Phonemic Awareness has great phonics activities for the alphabet. For the letter G, the children have to cut out and glue the words that "Begin like Horse". Together we talked about the beginning sounds of the words, and then they work on their fine motor cutting skills.
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 put the "H" H items in the house. All the other letters? Find a realtor!
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 hummingbirds out of pom poms and feathers. I have not quite figured out how to get these onto the wall.
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.
The children turned a capital letter H into a horse. 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.
From a Letter of the Week book, we made these cool "hats" that have h pictures you can slide through the flower. They were a bit difficult to make, but the kids really liked them.
I made a cube of cardboard and glued pictures of "H" things one each side. The children say "Happy Face, Happy Face, 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, 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 H. Here is what we thought of!
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