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