The letter S

We've been going to a preschool rotation thing once a week. Each week they focus on a letter and this week it was our turn so here is what I did.

First I read the "S the snake" story from our flip book here.

Then I used these flannel board cut outs from DLTK to tell the story of Stone Soup. I laminated the food and passed them out to the kids then when we came to the food that they had I would have them put it in a pot. It worked really well.

For our activity thing we made these snakes. I cut out the tongues and the ovals ahead of time. I wrote and S on most of the ovals but then I put a few different letters on some of them. Then I laid them out on a cookie sheet and the kids had to find ovals that had S' on them to make their snake out of and then they glued them on the paper.
For our snack I made bread stick snails. You can find the recipe here at parents.com. It's very simple. I forgot pesto though so I just brushed them with butter and rosemary.

E is for...

E is for egg...

We did an egg hunt for these puzzle eggs. We found the pieces throughout the house and then put them together at her table.
We did this egg shell craft. I've been dreading doing this but it actually was really great. This was the first time May has actually understood that glue makes things stick if you leave them there long enough. I just rinsed out some egg shells and then dyed them with food coloring. May mixed them up in the bag and glued them on the E paper.
E is for elephant...

We did some stuff from Confessions of a Home schooler although not very vigilantly. We also did just some regular coloring pages that we had in our coloring book that had elephants on it.

Our flip book animal was an elephant. May had a really hard time making the "eh" sound and she didn't really recognize it when we came back to it later so we'll have to revisit this one soon.

E is for envelope...

I have some bright colored envelopes that I put the numbers 1-10 in and put them around the house. I taped different numbers and envelopes up on the wall. When may found the envelope then she would take the number inside and match it to the number on the wall and then match the envelope to the other one on the wall.

Z is for...

It was hard to think of things to do for the letter Z! Here are the few things that we did.

We made a Zebra puppet found here.

We played Zebra dominoes and did some coloring pages from Confessions of a Home schooler found here. She has a cute little game that is similar to the cootie game which I think would be fun to try.

We practiced zipping up the zippers on our jackets.

Our crowning event was going to the Zoo. Can I just say our Zoo is terrible. I got half price because we have an aviary membership and M* is free- would never pay full price to go to our zoo. There are hardly any animals!

C is for...

C is for clothespins.
We practiced putting clothespins on things a lot this week. M* didn't quite get it but she had a lot of fun pretending to clip things on and of course she knew exactly how to get them off. I cut some clothes shapes out of felt and we made a mini clothes line for her to clip them on. She had fun just trying to put them on but I would also ask her to find me the one that was pink or blue etc... and then ask for a specific clothes item like a sock.

For this activity you need clothespins circle stickers (like the garage sale stickers) and bowl or a cup. I used a cool whip bowl and put paper around the outside. Stick different color stickers around the outside and have a coordinating clothes pin for it. I put sticker on the inside and outside of the bowl. M* wouldn't turn the bowl or let me turn the bowl so this way she could do all around it without upsetting her.

C is for cake. We made a cake this week. M* loves to bake. She is a pro and dumping all the ingredients in and stiring them up.

C is for camping.
We set up a tent in my mom's backyard for the day. (I am greatly looking forward to the day when we have our own backyard to set things up in). The first thing we did in our tent was put together a simple puzzle. I used this picture here and cut it up into about 5 pieces. Then we did our caterpillar activities that we had been doing through out the week (see below). And then we went on a "C" hunt. I clipped some papers with the letter C written on them around the tent (using clothespins) and had M* find them and put them in her bag. To finish the camping fun we made some smores in the microwave.

C is for caterpillar.
I found this new great website. This gal is amazing I can't believe how talented she is. We will definitely be using her things as part of our letters. The blog is called Confessions of a Homeschooler. Here is the link to her letter C stuff. Some of it was a little too old for M* but we used the color matching caterpillars, the letter lace card, and the lacing cards for the story "The Very Hungry Caterpillar". All of which M* was able to do with to problem (she is almost 2 just to give you an idea).

Also, just out of pure happenstance we made this cute chicken at the library story time.
You need a cup, a piece of string, a small piece of felt, a small piece of sponge, and something to poke a small hole (we used a skewer). They also gave us eyes and an orange nose (that was torn off before I took this picture) but you could just draw those on.

Poke a small hole in the top of the cup. Thread the string through and tie a knot onto a red piece of felt.
Tie the small piece of sponge onto the bottom of the string. Then let your child color it and decorate it however you want.

When it's done you make it make a noise by wetting your fingers a bit and pulling down on the string. It actually makes a chicken noise it's pretty cool.

G is for... and B is for..

G is for garden.
We went to the Thanksgiving Point Gardens. We looked at the flowers for a little bit but spent most of our time in the children's garden. M* had lots o' fun hiding in the trees and running in and out of the bear cave.
G is for grow.
I found these at the dollar store you put them in water and then they grow. M* wasn't terribly impressed with the growing part but had lots of fun putting the beans in the water and then taking them back out.
G is for green.
We did a "green" scavenger hunt where we looked for things in the house that were green. M* decided about 10 mins into it that she was done finding green things and wanted to find pink things instead. What a girl.
G is for goat.
We also got a book from the library on goats and made a trip to the farm to look at them but of course we mostly looked at the bunnies instead.

Other things I wanted to do but we didn't get around to was make a giraffe puppet here are the instructions here, plant some flowers (garden), and make gingerbread men.


B is for balloon.
We did a couple things with balloons. The first thing was I hung balloons from the ceiling and let M* hit them with a bat. In the picture below though she had decided that the golf club was a better tool for the job. She was quite distracted by the static electricty. You will notice her small amount of hair is sticking up.
We also painted some balloons. It was a nice change to just painting on paper. I taped ours down onto bigger paper it was easier for her to paint and easy clean up for me. I also saw an idea on perpetual preschool that said to tape a few balloons (not full of air) to a dowel and let the child use it as a brush but we didn't try it so I don't know how well it works.

B is for bird.

We did some bird watching outside our complex. We live right by a canal so there is nice variety. We also took some bird seed out there and threw it out for them.

B is for bubble.

The library had a bubble party (this was my sole reason for doing b on the week we did). M* had lots of fun. We were going to try an activity at home where you tape a clear lid (like on a pringles can) to a flash light and catch the bubbles on it. It's supposed to make it easy to see all the colors in the bubble. I bought cans just for the occasion and threw them out without thinking about it.

Other things I had planned but we didn't have time to do were float some boats in the bath tub (you could make your own or just use a toy boat), and go bug hunting.

D is for

D is for drip. We did a fun art activity with eye droppers.
Materials:
paper towels
paper or Styrofoam plate (if it's paper it needs to be a higher end one that repels water not soaks it in)
3 bowls with water
red, yellow, and blue food coloring

This has 2 parts to it. Put a few drops of food coloring into each bowl. First set up the paper towel on top of the plate and let your toddler squeeze the water onto the towel, it makes a pretty cool painting. Then once he or she is done with that then just let them squeeze water directly onto the plate. The colors will mix to create new ones! As you show them how to squeeze use the word drip as you drop stuff onto the plate and talk about what colors are on the plate.

Just a side note- If you have leftover eye droppers from an empty liquid medicine bottle use that instead of real ones. Why? Because they are plastic. If you have to use the glass ones just make sure they get put away so your toddler doesn't get a hold of one the next day unbeknownst to you and proceed bite and chew the end off while you're not looking...What's that you ask? Why no this didn't happen to us why would you assume that?....okay maybe it did happen.

...and a p.s. I know she looks super unhappy in this picture but this is her concentrating face-it really was a great activity.

D is for dinosaur. We checked out a few dinosaur books and colored some pictures of them. I think some great books are the "How do Dinosaurs..." series M* paid the most attention to them. We also went to the dinosaur museum where we got a dinosaur puzzle to put together. M* hasn't ever really been too exposed or had much of an interest in them but she picked up the word about 30 seconds into the museum. I found a dinosaur egg at dollar tree that you got to dig at and find dinosaur bones. It was a little bit hard for M* but she still had fun with it. I saw a recipe at perpetualpreschool.com that was edible that you can make eggs out of too but we didn't have time to try it this week.

D is for digging. We dug in the dirt and made mud pies this week too. M* loves Snow White so we sang the "dig dig dig dig" song while we dug.

D is for dressing up and dancing. M* put on her tutu and cut a rug. She loves dancing and our letter this week was "D the dancing dinosaur" so we made the sound that D makes while she dances (ddd) while we danced!

A if for

We worked on the letter A and our colors this week.

For colors I took the bottom of an egg carton and colored the pockets each a different color. Then found things for each color for M* to sort out into the cups. She did the "sort the colors" thing for about 10 mins and then she just played with the little things and had a good ol' time. When your child masters the 6 colors then you can add 9 then 12 etc. A is for...
Airplane- we flew paper airplanes around the house on Monday. Make 4 or 5 for your toddler to throw some where and pick up.

A is for...animals. It is currently 2 dollar Tuesday at Thanksgiving Point so I've been planning our letters around what we can do there. We went to the petting zoo and looked at all the animals.

A is for...apple. This was super simple. The tree is just construction paper taped together with small pieces of velcro glued to it. The apples I just cut out of felt and wrote "A" on some "a" on some and "apple" on others. M* then picked them and put them in her basket. Also check out http://www.perpetualpreschool.com/ for some fun apple songs and crafts.


A is for... Alligator. I didn't take a picture of this one-maybe one day I will and I will get it up here. I just painted and Alligator with an "A" on his back on a piece of cardboard and cut out a hole for his mouth and the center of the A. Then I made some quick bean bags and had M* play a toss it in game. Just for the record it looked more like a lizard with a shark fin on his back but M* humored me and called it an Alligator anyway.

We also did our rice pit with the letters in it. Remember when you are doing these activities to emphasize the word that starts with the letter.

F is for...

We are starting doing things using the Amazing Action Alphabet book. You can check our their products at http://www.seeheardocompany.com/ The idea is to do their flip book and then do activities with the letter. You introduce a letter every 2 weeks or so. Along with all these activities we always looked at the flip chart before we started them to review the letter and the sound.

The first thing we did with the letter F is a rice pit. You make a rice pit by buying a small container with a lid I bought a 16 quart and pour a bunch of rice in it. I used 3 bigger bags. I also used beans but I would recommend just using rice. We started with things that are the letter F or start with F, like magnets, cookie cutters, frog, farmer, feather, flag. As your child digs things out say the name with emphasis on whatever letter you are doing it with. After we do the letters M* likes to play in it with spoons, bowls, and measuring cups.

F is for feather.
In the morning we did a craft with feathers. I drew a bird on a paper and then M* glued feathers on it and painted it with water colors. That afternoon we visited the aviary and I pointed out all of the feathers on the bird.

F is for fort and flash light.
We built a blanket fort and played under it all morning. We played with flashlights under it and read books.

F is for fish.
In the morning we did a fish pond. Tie string onto a small dowel or pencil and then glue a magnet onto the other end of the string. Cut out fish shapes and place paper clips on them. On the back of the Fish you can write things like, "jump up and down 10 times" or "sing wheels on the bus". You can spread the fish around the room or I put them in a small basket to keep it a little contained and easier to catch a fish. That afternoon we went to the aquarium. If you don't live by and aquarium you can head to the pet store to look at fish.

F is for face.
I drew different eyes, ears, noses, and mouths and taped them on the wall then had M* move them around to create different faces. Another way to do this would be to put them on flannel or Velcro and use it on the flannel board.