F is for....

My daughter, Leia, has seemed to be interested in learning her letters more and more lately. Being a former preschool teacher, one would think that I would know the perfect order in which to actually teach the letters, but I don't. So, I decided to go to the web to search different recommendations. Ultimately, I decided to go with the order suggested by Handwriting without Tears. The order makes the most sense to me and so far seems to be working with Leia. I will be teaching her a new letter each week, but also will continue to have her practice writing her own name on EVERYTHING she does.

The first letter that we tackled was the letter "F". To kick off the letter of the week, I decided to have everything that week have something to do with the letter "F," this is something I will not be continuing because I want to make sure I am also focusing on topics that the girls are interested in.


 Math
Leia practiced number recognition this week. We used a farm themed worksheet and I turned it into a file folder game, that way she could continue to to practice.

 Sensory

We made "hot chocolate" play dough this week. I figured "hot chocolate" is a food and went with the "F" themed week. I used this recipe but instead of adding food coloring, I added a packet of hot chocolate mix. It smelled yummy! What a great way to really include the sense of smell to sensory play.

Ripley exploring the play dough through a bag.

Leia using one of her play dough mats.

Annabelle feeling the play dough with her hands

Letter Practice
Here are a few of the different things that I do with Leia throughout the week to make learning her letters fun.

Walking the letter is great for kinesthetic learners

Tracing with water. She also wrote with chalk.

Built the letter "F" with paper.

Building "F" with homemade playdough

Swimmy....sort of....

I am going to be honest, this week has been sort of a bust. Between my little one having an unexplained fever and having to move everything from the basement to the first floor, things have been hectic. However, I still managed to squeeze a few activities in.

The book of the week was, "Swimmy," by Leo Lionni.



Toward the end of the book, I had Leia predict what she thought the fish would form with their bodies. At first she did not understand. So I rephrased, "they are going to use there bodies to make a puzzle, what puzzle do you think they will make to scare away the fish?' Leia replied, "a square." When we turned the page and saw that they created a big fish, she said, "like in Nemo!!"

Art

I found this idea on pinterest, in fact, I find a lot of my ideas there. I printed out the picture and had Leia use a q-tip to fill in each of the dots.

I also had one of the girls that I watch paint with q-tips. Instead of coloring in the dots, she used the q-tip and made different designs in her paint.













We also did a few art projects based on "Swimmy." The first was a simple handprint project. I don't know about you, but my parents LOVE getting hand print art work. For this project, I simply cut out a piece of paper in the shape of a fish bowl (yes, I know Swimmy lives in the ocean) had the girls color the bowls and then we add there hand print. For some reason, I can't seem to find a picture of there work, but it looks similar to this.

Leia rolling the bubble wrap over the fish. 

The girls also did another art project where they had to follow some basic steps. The first step was to paint the sheet of paper blue. The second step was to place the fish that I had pre-cut out on a dry piece of paper and use the bubble wrap roller to paint the fish.

Next the girls placed the fish onto the wet paint, doing this while the paint is still wet, eliminates the need for glue.












Math

Math this week really had nothing to do with the book of the week, but we did focus on numbers. The first thing Leia did was a number chart. She had to put the correct amount of stickers in each of the squares. Before she started this, I had her count each of the squares. Her friend, who isn't quite 2, listened as she counted.

Counting the squares.

After counting the squares, she placed one sticker in each of the squares. We then talked about the different numbers on the paper. The next day, I had Leia place jelly beans in each of the squares. She noticed that I didn't give her enough to fill in all of the squares and she said, "I need just one more." I had her reach in the bag and grab, "just one."







Late during the week, I created a number sheet for Leia. I wrote the numbers 1, 2, and 3 in random order on the page. I assigned a certain color to each number, and had Leia do a dot on the correct number.


 Science
 We did some baking this week. We made corn muffins and chocolate chip banana muffins. The girls watched as I put the ingredients into the measuring cups and listened as I talked about the different measurements. They also helped put the ingredients in the bowl, mashed the banana, and help stir.
 

Mashing bananas

Mixing

 

 

Adding the mix