G & H

November has been a very busy, crazy month. Holidays, Teacher Work Days, etc. We did manage to learn something this month is Preschool though.  The first week we reviewed A-F and then we went right into the Letter G.  We made a fun mess with gold glitter, glue and green finger-paint.  We also played with green playfoam and colored big paper guitars!

This week we learned about the Letter H.  Our favorite part was painting a wooden horse and having a Hat Parade and Dance!  We also made a H and outlined a house using wiki-sticks, played housekeeping and hospital and we played Hungry, Hungry Hippo.  We made a H with popsicle sticks and made a heart pin.  We played two hammer games, Whac-A-Mole and hammering plastic golf tees into a styrofoam block.  We made pretty hearts to hang in the window with glitter glue and we played Hullabaloo.  To celebrate Thanksgiving and the letter H, we made hand-print turkeys.

Letter F

We finished up letter F today - how fun!  We painted flower pots that we will plant pansies in next week.  We also worked on patterns with red and purple flowers.  We made finger paint bags inside ziploc bags (with extra tape!)  We also finger-painted fire - red, yellow and orange paint!  We made Fs with popsicle sticks and put on football pictures.  We made a feather picture and paper fans.

We had counting 5 fingers and then making finger puppets - "Five Little Monkeys!"  We made a fantastic flower necklace and played a fishing color game.  We also used stamp pads to make finger-prints on the Letter F.

Our favorite activity this week was "Will it Float?"  We took a bunch of little toys from around the room and put them in a big bucket of water to see if they would float or sink.  We were amazed at how many of them floated! It was a super fun week!

Next week we will take a break from the alphabet to have fun with pumpkins, bats and black cats!  We are even having a costume parade and party on Thursday!

Letter E

We had an exciting E week!  We were very eager to learn about all E things.  We water colored elephant pictures and then we did a size game with elephant pictures putting them smallest to largest.  We also made a picture for someone we love and put it in an envelope.  Tuesday we danced and sung while using musical egg shakers, we had so much fun, that on Thursday, we made our own egg shakers with Easter Eggs and macaroni!  We also painted an Elmo paper plate, they were adorable!  We did exercise with our exercise cube, we took turns to throw the cube and we all had to do the exercise that it landed on, I think our favorite was jumping jacks!

We made a capital E out of popsicle sticks and used Bingo dot markers to trace a letter E. We also put food coloring into glue and painted it onto an egg shape cut-out to make pretty shiny eggs.  We had fun doing eraser art - erasing pencil marks on a paper to make a design.  For our cooking project, we made an Easy Egg Omelet with eggs, ham and cheese - it was yummy!

Letter D

We had a delightful week learning about the letter "D!"  We made a "D" picture with D, dolphins and dinosaur stamps, we also made a collage of diamonds (the shape, not the gem!) picture.  We talked about how awesome our dads are and we drew a picture and wrote what we liked most about our dads.  We also spray painted dragonflies, made dot pictures with BINGO dot markers and made Ds on our MagnaDoodle boards.  Doodling on aqua-doodle mats, playing Lucky Ducks, dominoes and Dinosaur Match games were also fun this week. We are now eager to move onto the letter "E!"

Letter C

Well, it has been a wet and rainy week, but we have done many fun activities inside to celebrate the Letter C!  This week we read the book, "Counting the Way Little Brown Bear" and then made our own counting books!  We also made cotton ball clouds, chalk pictures and confetti glue pictures.  We even made our own crayons by taking the paper off of some old broken crayons, and then breaking them and putting them into a heart shaped ice cube tray.  After about 6 minutes in the microwave and 30 minutes in the freezer, we had new heart crayons! We played some games including a candy counting game and Clip-a-Pattern.  To get the wiggles out we made crepe paper streamers and danced to the song "Celebration."  We also played with calculators and tried to find numbers, made Cs out of clay and played with cars.  Of course, we also made a big deal out of the fact that Carson started with the letter C!

Letter B

We had a Beautiful week learning about the Letter B! We painted butterflies and then used them for necklaces and added beads.  We ate a butterfly sandwich snack made from one piece of bread and one piece of celery spread with peanut butter, then we cut the bread in a diagonal and turned them to look like wings with the celery as the body and added raisin eyes and noses. They were very cute and yummy! We finger-painted with Brown, Blue and Black paint.  We played with bubbles and a bean bag toss game outside.  We had lots of messy fun playing inside in our bean table, a large tub full of assorted beans (even added coffee beans so it would smell good) and cups, spoons and small toys.  We played with blocks and the game Balloon Lagoon.  We also listened to the story Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? After listening to the story we made character puppets to go with the story and then we retold the story using our puppets. We also played with balls, Barbies and baby dolls. To end the unit we added the B page to our book by sticking band-aids onto the letter B page!

Letter A - Day 2

To make this easier on everyone, I will try to only post once a week and tell of all the fun activities we do for the letter all week in one post, however, I wanted to finish up Letter A today.

So, yesterday we made Crockpot applesauce - my house smelled delicious and it tasted so good - warm cinnamon applesauce - yummy! (Yes, I counted the points for Weight Watchers!) Today, we stated the day making paper Airplanes, sorting apple shapes by colors and sizes, and making apple stamp pictures for our Alphabet Soup Books we will put together by the end of the year.  We then went outside to fly our paper airplanes and look for more acorns (we now have a huge bucket full of acorns - I can feel the angry stares of the squirrels every time we go outside! )  When we came back inside, we made apple prints and talked about the star you can find inside an apple.  We also read Under the Apple Tree and practiced tracing an apple outline on paper so I can get an idea how close the kids are to learning to trace the letters of the alphabet.  So next week, on to the Letter B!

Letter A

So today we started the new curriculum!  We began at the beginning, the Letter A!  We talked about the letter during snack, while we were eating apples.  Afterwards, we opened the Letter Jar and found an airplane, an astronaut, an apple, Ariel from Little Mermaid and an ape.  We then painted apples (paper paints painted red) and went for an acorn hunt.  Later this morning, we used our magic noodles and "glued" them on an A page (see http://www.makinglearningfun.com/themepages/MagicNuudlePages.htm for pattern.)  We then practiced writing "A"s on our white-boards and then played a fun game rolling dice and putting that many red apples (pom-poms) on a cut out picture of a tree.  I will have to start taking some pictures during these activities so you can see how much fun they are having!

Intro to Curriculum

I am very excited to be starting a new curriculum with the children this week.  We will be focusing on a letter each week so the children can begin to learn the alphabet.   Each week, we will learn what the upper and lower case letter looks like, what sound it makes and some common words that start with that letter.  Each week, we will also be doing art activities, reading stories, and do games and manipulatives that will help reinforce the letter. 

We will also do “Show and Share” each Thursday and I am asking that each child brings in a book or toy that starts with the letter of the week.  Even though numbers, colors and shapes are not listed on the chart below, we will be learning about these items also throughout the year.   

 Alphabet Soup Weekly Themes

Week of……	Letter	Show & Share
September 14	A	Letter A
September 21	B	Letter B
September 28	C	Letter C
October 5	D	Letter D
October 12	E	Letter E
October 19	F	Letter F
October 26	Halloween Theme	Costume Party
November 2	Review A-F	Any Letter A-F
November 9	G	G
November 16	H	H
November 23	No Preschool	-
November 30	I	I
December 7	J	J
December 14	Christmas Theme	Christmas Party
December 21	No Preschool	-
December 28	No Preschool	-
January 4	K	K
January 11	L	L
January 18	Review G-L	Any Letter G-L
January 25	M	M
February 1	N	N
February 8	O	O
February 15	P	P
February 22	Q	Q
March 1	R	R
March 8	Review M-R	Any Letter M-R
March 15	S	S
March 22	T	T
March 29	U	U
April 5	V	V
April 12	Easter Theme	Easter Egg Hunt
April 19	No Preschool	-
April 26	W	W
May 3	X	X
May 10	Y	Y
May 17	Z	Z
May 24	Review S-Z	Any Letter S-Z