Showing posts with label letter l. Show all posts
Showing posts with label letter l. Show all posts

Monday, May 25, 2015

Birds & Bugs! (L,M&N, 29, Grey, Hexagon)

The theme for the second week of May was "Birds and Bugs!". Since we finished our Letter of the Week study, we are now reviewing our letters! This week we reviewed letters L, M & N and continued our number study with the number 29! 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 hexagons and grey.

Just for fun, I added water into the sensory table full of shredded recycled paper. It was awesomely gross!

This week we read: I Took a Walk by Henry Cole
                                        Little Hoot by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
                                        The Pigeon Wants a Puppy by Mo Willems
                                        Some Bugs by Angela Diterlizzi
                                        Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late by Mo Willems
                                        Duck & Goose by Tad Hills
                                        Duck, Duck Goose by Tad Hills
                                     
Our question of the week was "If you were a bird, where would you fly?"

To review the color grey we talked about things in real life, at morning meeting, that are grey. The kids also colored pictures of grey 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 hexagon shape the children practiced recognizing the shape and colored hexagons. I created this little picture full of the shape. They needed to color the hexagons yellow, the triangles blue, and the trapezoids purple. 

For the number of the week:29 we started off by counting to and backward from twenty-nine. 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-nine. 

When I started in my class, I found a page like this from education.com, so I made my own for the number 29. 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 "Birds and Bugs",  we walked outside and took special care to look for birds and bugs around us.

We sang "the Itsy Bitsy Spider". 

To the block center structure pages, I added pages about homes for birds and bugs.

To the science center binder, I added pages about some interesting bugs and birds.

In their journals, the children wrote about the type of bug that they would like to be.

The children played the board game, The LadyBug Game. Board games are always a blast, and the children really do well practicing math and social skills all at once!

The children made handprint bugs! The children drew and colored the background first, and then we put their handprint over!

How about a hand-print bird as well? We used feathers to make them fancy and even gave them a nest out of ripped up lunch bags!

While reviewing the letters L, M, and N, 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 "like".

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, L, M, and N. 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 one, two and three about lions, one, two about leopards, llamas, and lionfish. We also watched one, two, three about Meerkats, one, two about monkeys, manatee and moose.

I made an "I have, who has" game filled with L, M, and N 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.

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

Monday, January 26, 2015

The North Pole! (Ll, 9, Grey)

The theme for the second week of December was "North Pole". We used this week to get ready for Christmas celebrations. We continued our Letter of the Week study, with the letter L. This week we started talking about colors with the color gray, and we kept going on our number study with the number 9!

This week we read: The Christmas Quiet Book by Deborah Underwood
                                        Duck and Goose, It's Time for Christmas! by Tad Baker
                                        How Santa Got His Job by Stephen Krensky
                                        Bear Stays Up for Christmas by Karma Wilson
                                        Fletcher and the Snowflake Christmas by Julia Rawlinson

In our sensory table we popped popcorn! They had so much fun watching the popcorn air pop, and grabbing it as soon as it shot out. We played with just the popcorn for a little bit, and then I added some christmas finger puppets.

Our question of the week was "If you went to the North Pole, what would you do?" Some of these answers were hilarious!

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

We sang "Three Grey Mice" to the tune of three blind mice.
Three grey mice, three grey mice,
Oh how nice, oh how nice.
They ran around the house at night, 
They found some cheese and had a bite,
The farmer's wife turned on the light,
As three grey mice, ran from sight.

For the number of the week: 9 we started off by counting to and backward from nine. 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 nine. 

When I started in my room I found some papers in my room I found a random number page like this from education.com, so I made my own for the number 9. The children have to practice writing the number and then color in that number of squares. What 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, I found this picture to color using a key of the number 9.

For our theme "North Pole", we decorated Christmas lights to help make our classroom a little more festive. I drew the outline of a bulb and let the kids decorate them however they wanted.

We sang the song "Jingle Bells" a lot! and very loudly.... very loudly.

The kids also made reindeer art with construction paper, google eyes, q-tips and pom poms. I found the idea for this project here! On that page their is other great ideas for using triangles in winter art projects.

This week we started working on the kid's Christmas gifts to their parents. One of our teachers found the idea here, and we thought it would be great if all the classes made the same gift. To start this week, we made the salt dough and cut out the shapes. Then the children pressed their thumbprints into the trees and we baked them at a low temperature for a few hours. DONT FORGET TO MAKE A HOLE FOR HTE RIBBON BEFORE YOU BAKE. Narrowly avoided a catastrophe there!
The oven at school doesn't have a very accurate thermometer, so i just checked them constantly until they were not soft anymore, but before they began to brown.
Salt Dough
2 cups flour
1 cup salt
1 cup warm water
When the trees were baked and cooled, I used Modge Podge to seal the surface where we will paint next week.

For wrapping for our gifts, I drew the outlines of a gingerbread house onto a white paper bag that the children each colored. I thought that would be a festive, unique way to wrap the gifts for their parents. Check out last year's post, where we used brown bags to see which way you like the most!


The letter of the week: L activities that we worked on this week were were lots of fun! Usually to start off the letter, I would use a the page from, Sounds Like fun, Phonemic Awareness, but I actually found a page in a Mailbox Letter of the Week book that I preferred, because it had more words for the children to work with. They had to decide which pictures were of things that began with "L", color them, cut them out, and then glue them onto "Ladybug's Leaf".

While playing outside I yelled out some words. If it began with the "L" sound, the children had to leap across the area. It really got their blood pumping!

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!

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 "L" leaves on the tree. All the other letters? Fall came a bit early!

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 glued green tissue paper squares to construction paper and made leaves to make our trees extra leafy!

The children turned a capital letter L into a lion. 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.

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.

From a Mailbox Letter of the Week book, the kids made a booklet about "Lizard's Lollipops". 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!

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

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