MDA Hop-a-Thon! (E&F, 26, Black, Diamond)

The theme for the fourth week of April was "MDA Hop-a-thon!". Since we finished our Letter of the Week study, we are now reviewing our letters! We started off our review with letters E & F and continued our number study with the number 26! 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 diamonds and black.

This week we read: Can I Play Too? by Mo Willems
                                        Leo the Late Bloomer by Robert Krous
                                        The Mixed Up Chameleon by Eric Carle
                                        Max and Tallulah by Beverly Gooding
                                        Love Monster by Rachel Bright

Our question of the week was "What can you do with your muscles??"

To review the color black we talked about things in real life, at morning meeting, that are black. The kids also colored pictures of purple 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 diamond shape the children practiced recognizing the shape and colored squares. I created this little picture full of the shape. They needed to color the squares purple and then the rest of the balloons other colors!

For the number of the week:26 we started off by counting to and backward from twenty-six. 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-six. 

When I started in my class, I found a page like this from education.com, so I made my own for the number 26. 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 "MDA Hop-a-thon",  our school raised money for muscular dystrophy and learned about our muscles.

We sang "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes."

The MDA has a week of activities that are really great to introduce children to muscles and differences. To go with the lessons, there is a short video each day and then an activity in little workbook. The kids really enjoyed them!

Everything was topped off on Friday with our Hop-a-thon! We hopped to music while holding puppets that we had made.

While reviewing the letter E and F, we are really focusing on practicing writing, having good control over letter formation, and having a solid knowledge of the letter sounds.

My children that are moving on to kindergarten next year, are working on sight words and this worksheet from Confessions of a Homeschooler are amazing! They challenge the children to think of the word in a new way and get creative. This week they worked on the word "eat".

I created envelope games for each letter of the alphabet that we played the first way through the alphabet. My children that are staying with me another year played these again to work on their letter sounds.

We reviewed writing and finding the letters that we are talking about, E and F. The pages for my younger group came from Letters for Little Learners, and I found these more advanced worksheets for my older children from education.com.

The book Alphabet and Counting that we used used  to turn our letters into fun animals, also has cute little tongue twisters for each letter. I printed them large and illustrated them, then I laminated them with contact paper. Using wet erase markers, we take turns finding the letters hidden!

On their own, they searched for the letters as well!

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!

There is a 15-20 minute span of time while the children are waking up from our rest time and afternoon snack. During this time, we talk about what they will be doing in the afternoon with their afternoon teacher, and what we did in the morning. We also spend some time learning about animals through videos. This week we watched about the flamingo one, two, three, fox one, two, elephants one, two, three, falcon one, two, frog, ferret, eel, and eagle.

I made an "I have, who has" game filled with E and F things. I love this game because once it starts, the children completely direct it. I love seeing them help each other and play with each other.

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Falling for Fall! (Ee, Oval, 2)

The theme for the 7th week of the school year was "Falling for Fall". We continued our Letter of the Week study, with the letter E. This week we also focused on the oval shape, and we kept going on our number study with the number 2!

This week we read: Little Owl's Night by Divya Srinivasan
                                       Little Raccoon Learns to Share by Mary Packard
                                       The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons
                                       Fletcher and the Falling Leaves by Julia Rawlinson
                                       Oliver Finds His Way by Phyllis Root

Our question of the week was "What does Mom do at work?"

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

The children also worked on their oval recognition. I got this page from The Original Summer Bridge Activities, for PreK-K.

For our song this week we sang "This is an Oval", I found it here.

"This is and Oval, this is an Oval,

How can you tell? How can you tell?

It is long on one end,

And short on the other, 

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

For the number of the week: 2 we started off by counting to two and backward from two. The kids had no problem with this one. ;) The kids also practiced writing the number and word for two.

The children used a key with the number 2 to color in a picture of a penguin. This was great because the kids were able to do this with very little to no help, and they were so proud of themselves when they finished!

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 2. 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.

For our themes "Falling for Fall", we found leaves outside and made leaf rubbings!

The kids painted with fall colors and made fall leaves. They also glued ripped paper and oats to make their own acorns! We put these on our autumn tree mural in our classroom to get into the seasonal mood.

We went outside and collected leaves from the playground, and talked about different ways that we could sort them. They decided that they wanted to sort by color, so we did!

While we were outside we also went on hunts for acorns. This was so fun, they wanted to keep going forever!

I love this project. I gave the kids a rectangle of brown construction paper, white paper, scissor and glue. They cut their tree and glued it on the paper however they wanted. Using q-tips to paint, they made dot trees. they are each so unique, which is why I love them.

The letter of the week: E activities that we worked on this were were Excellent! 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 "E" objects in the Elf's house. All the other letters? No admission!

The book Sounds Like fun, Phonemic Awareness has great phonics activities for the alphabet. For the letter E, the children have to cut out and glue the words that "Begin like Elephant". Together we talked about the beginning sounds of the words, and then they work on their fine motor cutting skills.

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.

From a Letter of the Week Mailbox book, I got the Elephant Exercise song. We swung our trunks, stomped our feet, flapped our ears and shook our tail.

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 continued to work on 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 eagles! We also watched a few videos of eagles so the class could see what they look like.

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 E into an elephant. 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 made a cube of cardboard and glued pictures of "E" things one each side. The children say "Elephant, Elephant, 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 e. Here is what we thought of!

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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".