Big & Little! (R, S, &T)

The theme for the last week of May was "Big and Little!". Since we finished our Letter of the Week study, we are now reviewing our letters! This week we reviewed letters R, S, & T!
I was on vacation this week, and my substitutes did an AMAZING job.... but I didn't take a whole bunch of pictures! =/

The end of the month brings us a completed calendar pattern, AB this month, and weather graphs to compare!

This week we read: Maple by Lori Nichols
                                        Big and Small by Elizabeth Bennett
                                        There's a Hippopotamus Under My Bed by Mike Thaler
                                        Little Puppy and the Big Green Monster by Mike Wohnoutka
                                   
Our question of the week was "What are you bigger than?"

Whoops!

For a number review the children practiced the numbers 1-5, counting and recognition.

For our theme "Big and Small",  we had a lot of fun comparing measurements and objects. We started off the week by measuring each child to see how much they have grown since their first day of the school year. Wowza, they got tall!

I gathered a few items from around the classroom and asked in small groups about what larger and smaller means. One day I asked them to tell me which was larger, and the next day I asked for the smaller object. I always ask them why they think their answer is correct, and I love to see their reasoning and thought process. To go along with this, I had them complete these  two worksheets that I found in Shapes and Measurements. When they were done coloring the smaller or larger picture, they each found something in the room that they were larger or smaller than, and drew a picture of it on the back of the paper.

While reviewing the letters R, S, and T, 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 "run".

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, R, S, and T. 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, with a worksheet I made saying "Rita and Stacey went to the train station. They tried raspberries and snozberries."

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 rabbits, raccoons one and raccoons two, rats one and rats two, reindeer one and reindeer two and rhinoceros. Seahorse, seal, sea lion, sheep, shark, skunk one and skunk two, sloth, snail, snake one and snake two, spider, squid, squirrel and stingray. Also  tiger one and tiger two, tortoise one and tortoise two and turtle. Whew!

I made an "I have, who has" game filled with R, S, and T 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!

Landscapes! (X, Y, Z and 1-10)

 Our theme this week was "Landscapes" and we focused on reviewing the numbers 1-10, and the letters X, Y and Z. This week we also got ready for Father's Day!

We read this week:  Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss
                                Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barret
                                I Love My Daddy by Sebastien Braun
                                I Love My Daddy by David Bedford
                               The Night Before Father's Day by Natasha Wing

Our question of the week was "Why do you love Dad?"

For our themes of the week,  we took long walks outside and down our nature trail. Our school is in such a great location, and my classroom looks out on the woods behind us. The playground has trees and plants all around it and our nature trail goes down in to the woods, so we are always talking about the plants and nature around us.

We painted pictures of trees and forests.

One of the other teachers in our school made paint ice cubes by mixing some tempera paint and water together and freezing them with popsicle sticks in them. These were so fun! I had planned for us to paint outside, but the day that we were going to, we had torrential rain, so we had to make do with indoor ice painting! The finished products look so cool!

This was a neat alternative to just using watercolor paints I think. I will say that there is a small window of when the paint cubes are the perfect temperature. Once you pass that and they start to really melt we ended up with very wet paper and drips on the floor under our drying rack. I'm not afraid of a little bit of cleaning, and I actually think the "drippy" pictures are super cool! They remind me  of the style of paintings that my sister does!

For father's day, we drew pictures of our dads.

We wrote in our journals about why we love Dad.

And we made our gifts for Dad. This year I wanted to do something a little different, and something that my kids could use with their dads. First they drew and colored pictures on a page that I had drawn out puzzle pieces. Then I glued them to a piece of construction paper and then cut them out. I thought about having the kids cut them, but I realized that the curved cuts and the thicker paper would be really hard for them. Then I put the pieces in an envelope with a little poem glued on the front and tied it together with 2 chocolate chip cookies. When I talked to my kids the following Monday, they were all so excited about sharing a cookie and doing the puzzles with their dads.

The teachers in our school also hosted a "Donuts for Dad" breakfast.

Our song of the week was "We Are Here to Graduate", to the tune of London Bridge. We will sing this song while we walk into graduation. It's getting close!

"We are here to graduate, graduate, graduate.
We are here to graduate, on this special day."

For our numbers, I found these great review sheets for the numbers 1-10 in The Complete Book of Numbers and Counting.

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 "X" page came from Book 1, the "V" page came from Book 2, 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.

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

Our American Toads wanted to model this week. =]

Eggs, Eggs and MORE Eggs!!

In the weeks leading up to Easter, I decided to take advantage of the abundance of inexpensive plastic Easter eggs from the Dollar Tree and the really cool project ideas on Pinterest. Here are the games that i made. I would put these out as special center options or special game time with me!

From this pin, I got the idea to make a matching game with the alphabet letters. It's a great review tool and a unique way to do a matching game than with just cards.

I also did the same thing with the numbers that we study in our class, 1-30. (This one is a little trickier than the alphabet, but my kids do a great job of trying!)

And don't forget our shapes that we study!

I wonder how something like that would work with word families??

From this pin, I got the idea for this SUPER CUTE mix, match and sort game. I mean how cute is this?? All you need is some felt, hot glue, eggs and an empty egg carton!

The Dollar Tree also had some cute crystal and patterned eggs that I got to make a mix and match game. the kids love it.

To add to these egg-cellent games, Walmart had a cute Pickup sticks game that came in a carrot and a bunny tic-tac-toe. Why not, right??

I love it!