Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss! (V, 19, Rectangle, Red)

The theme for the first week of March was "Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss". We continued our Letter of the Week study with the letter V and our number study with the number 18! 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 started off with red and stars.

This week we read: Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss
                                        Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss
                                        The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss
                                        One Fish, Two Fish by Dr. Seuss
                                        The Lorax by Dr. Seuss (We ultimately did not read this book because one
                                                                               of our days was very snowy and we just had a play                                                                                  day with the few children that ventured out.)

The beginning of a new month means that we finished our calendar pattern for February, and we compared this year's weather to last years!

Our question of the week was "Do you like green eggs and ham?"

To review the color red we colored pictures of red 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, then I am all for it!

To review the rectangle shape the children practiced recognizing the shape and colored rectangles.

For the number of the week:19 we started off by counting to and backward from nineteen. 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 nineteen. 

When I started in my class, I found a page like this from education.com, so I made my own for the number 19. 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 "Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss", we ate Green Eggs and Ham! Yum!

We sang "The Cat in the Hat Song" to the tune of the Adaams Family.

The kids each decorated their own Cat hat.

After we read The Cat in the Hat, we were inspired to try to balance like the cat. We balanced on each foot, held different objects and had a lot of fun!

After reading "One Fish, Two Fish..." we went alphabet fishing! I love when I get to use a project more than once. It makes all the time making it so much more worth it! I wrote the capital and lowercase letter on each fish, and when the children "caught" one, they had to tell us what letter it was and think of a word that starts with it.

One of our amazing families this year sent in these adorable One Fish, Two Fish cupcakes... Yum!

We painted Truffula trees to put a very colorful mural in our room. I created the trees and painted everything but the tuft, and each child got to pick their own tree color and paint it.

The letter of the week: V activities that we worked on this week were very fun!!
The book Sounds Like fun, Phonemic Awareness has great phonics activities for the alphabet. For the letter V, the children have to cut out and glue the words that "Begins like Vulture". Together we talked about the beginning sounds of the words, and then they work on their fine motor cutting skills.

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 "V" items in the vegetable bag.  All the other letters? No purchase today!

From a Mailbox Letter of the Week book, the kids made a project called the "Village of V". I love these kinds of projects because it reinforces the letter sounds and it is also a project that the kids can prety much do on their own. I give short instructions, and then they color and cut, and when they are done, they recycle their scraps.

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.

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 vegetables. The children painted different vegetables and then we put them in a little vegetable patch on the wall!

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 V into a vulture. 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 "V" things one each side. The children say "Vulture, vulture, 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 V. Here is what we thought of!

We also celebrated FOUR birthdays this week!

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

Types of Art (U, V, W and 1-5)

Our theme this week was "Types of Art" and we focused on reviewing the numbers 1-5, and the letters U, V and W.

(To be honest... I'm not really sure what I was going for here. My kids wanted to know if our theme was "Hair") =/

We read this week:  Duck and Goose by Tad Hills
                                Yertle the Turtle by Dr. Seuss
                                The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss
                                Little Hoot by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
                                The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt

Our question of the week was "What is your favorite kind of art?" We went over the different kinds of art projects that we have done before they gave their answers.

For our theme of the week, we started to prepare for graduation! This makes me both happy and sad at the same time. But, time keeps marching and so do we! We started to work on their class shirts for graduation. It's a very simple design but they turn out so cute last year, that I knew I wanted to do them again! We used simple white t-shirts and different colors of fabric paint. I have each child do their hand-print in a different color (we had some repeats this year, but on their side of the shirt they were the only ones with that color.) This is a bit time consuming, so we did it over the course of 4 days.
(The fabric paint doesn't last very long on the hand, it's really only good for one handprint. For each shirt I had to repaint their hand) They were really good sports about it.)

After the paint dried, I wrote their first names on their handprints in Sharpie. Some of my kids from last year still wear their shirts and they held up nicely!

Then we talked about some of the different kinds of pictures that you could make; landscapes, portraits, still life and self portraits. Then they drew and colored self portraits.

And they also painted self portraits.

We made collages that I'll talk about more in the "our numbers" section below. =]

For their journals this week, we went back to the beginning page where I had them write "My name is...." and draw a picture of them selves. (Wow, we did a lot of self portraiture this week!) Now their journals have a nice introductory page!

Our song of the week was "I'm a Little Graduate". Time to start practicing for Graduation! (Only three weeks away!) We sang this song last year, and to be honest, I'm not sure where I found it. We sang it to the tune of "I'm a Little Teapot".

"I'm a little graduate, Aren't you proud of me?

I know my numbers and ABC's.

I made lots of friends and had fun too,

Now, I'm off to the big kid school!"

For our numbers, we made those collages that I talked about! I gave each child the numerals 1-5 and pre-cut pictures that correspond. I handed them each their little packet and asked them to color their pictures first, then to glue them on their construction paper. We talked about how with a collage, you can really put them on the paper however you want. I showed them mine, where I grouped the numbers together. Some kids talked about lining them all up, some grouped them like me, and some just made a fun jumbled collage! This was fun project because they got to make it their own and they practiced their counting. Believe me! They sure knew if I forgot to give them one of their picture! =]

From Alphabet, Colors, Numbers and Shapes, I found this great worksheet for practicing counting and one-to-one correspondence.

And I also had a handmade worksheet like that too.

For our letter activities, we reviewed writing and finding the letters that we are talking about; U, V and W. 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 "U" page came from Book 2, the "V" page came from Book 1, and the "N" page came from Book 2.

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.

Shamrocks! (V, 19, Green, Circle)

Our theme this week was "Shamrocks" and we focused on the letter V, number 19 and we revisited the color green and circle shape.

We read this week: The Rain Came Down by David Shannon
                               Little Pea by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
                               Llama Llama and the Bully Goat by Anna Dewdney
                               Yertle the Turtle by Dr. Seuss
                               The Night Before St. Patrick's Day by Natasha Wing

Our question of the week was "What would you do with a leprechaun's pot of gold?"

For our theme of the week, we had so much fun getting ready for St. Patrick's Day!

We embraced the theme and made a rainbow with hand prints, complete with a pot of gold at the end. I like this project, but if you can hang things from your classroom/home ceiling, this is a cool variation on the same idea.

Making shamrock hats was super fun as well! This great blog shows how to make easy and awesome hats for any occasion out of paper plates.

We also make leprechaun traps. There are so many great ideas out there for making some pretty elaborate traps. I wanted to make it a little more simple, so we used a paper towel roll and half of a paper plate to make a tunnel that the leprechauns would get stuck in while they were trying to get to the rainbow. The kids had a lot of fun with this!

The Leprechaun's came!! Unfortunately our traps didn't work, but they did leave us some goodies!

No Leprechauns came to visit us, but we did have some visitors outside! This prompted a very involved discussion about camouflage.

Our song of the week was "I'm a Little Shamrock" from here.

"I’m a little shamrock with petals three.
You’ll have good luck if you pick me.
One of my petals will bring you health,
One’s for love and one’s for wealth."

 (C) Jean Warren www.preschoolexpress.com

We talked again about the color green, and we made collages of the color.

Since we already found green items in the classroom. We played a little game called "Category Brainstorm,  and tried to list as many things that we could that are the color green.

We played the same game for the shape circle.

The kids also practiced tracing and recognizing circles. These came from the book Alphabet, Colors, Numbers and Shapes.

When we worked on our number activities, we practiced writing the number and word for the number 19.

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.

From the book Numbers and Counting, I had my students draw 19 cookies in the cookie jar. These are great exercises because they have to count while they are drawing which really strengthens the 1:1 concept. and I always have them count when they're finished to check, so it's even more counting practice! 

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

The students wrote in their journals for the letter V. It's really cool to see the children thinking about what they want to put in their journal. They love these books and always want to go through them when they're finished writing for the day.

We turned a V into a Vulture! This book is great.

This book has great pages for helping the kids work on the letter recognition of both the capital and the lowercase versions of the letter, and they are always a little different, which is great!

Coloring, cutting, gluing... my kind of a project! And this one is super cool. From Letter of the Week Book 1, the kids made the Village of V's! Each door opens to a picture of something that starts with the letter V. And I like that it is something different than just a book. Shakes things up a bit =].

We acted out a Vulture poem from Sounds Like Fun.

For our alphabet wall we made a vegetable garden! I drew pictures of carrots, green beans and lettuce that the kids painted.

Here are the words we came up with this week!

Up next week: "Use Your Noodle!" and a focus on the letter Ww, number 20, color blue and triangle shape.