Alphabet Time Archives - Page 10 of 13

The Preschool Corner: Letter S

Mar272009

March 27, 2009 by Jolanthe 3 Comments

I took the majority of our ‘S’ activities from Bo’s Curriculum from Itty Bitty Bookworm this week. Be sure to check back a little later today, because I will be posting a review on Itty Bitty Bookworm and there will be a giveaway for a full year of Bo’s Curriculum – $300 worth of curriculum! You don’t want to miss that!!

We read the book Silly Sally by Audrey Wood every day this week. When we first sat down with the book, I let Zachary look at the pictures and had him ‘read’ the book to me and tell me what the story was about. He is able to read some of the words and was piecing it together, but it was so fun to hear how he interpreted the illustrations of the book! This is one idea that I pulled from Itty Bitty Bookworm that I am going to continue doing with our kids.

I’ve posted all the activities that we did along with the story, most from Itty Bitty Bookworm with one or two that were just too fun to pass up: our alphabet book page, letter sheet and a wooly sheep.

ABC Book: Spiderwebs

This (as pitiful as it looks) is actually a spider web. Don’t ask me where the spider disappeared to – more than likely somewhere where it will scare me some morning into thinking it is real.

I cut out a circle from black construction paper and we put it into the bottom of a 9″ round cake pan. Zachary dropped a few marbles into some silver paint and then rolled the marbles around to make the circle look like a spider web. Supposedly he glued a few spiders on it, although I can’t seem to figure out where they are.

Alphabet Activities:

Fun Activities: Wooly Sheep

Since a sheep is one of the characters in the book Silly Sally and we have an over-abundance of toilet paper rolls, this little craft was so.much.fun ~ and too cute! I found the craft at Kids Craft Weekly some time back.

Ordering by Size: Big Shoes, Little Shoes

At the end of Silly Sally there are shoes everywhere up in the air. One of the curriculum suggestions was to pair and size the shoes up. With so many people living in our house, we have an abundance of shoes. Zachary paired up 12 pairs of shoes and lined them up from smallest to little.

Illustrating His Favorite Part

After we’d read Silly Sally several times I asked Zachary what his favorite part of the story was. After he’d told me it was the part when Ned comes into the story I asked him to draw it out for me – just.too.sweet.

Letter Sheet/Collage

S Worksheet

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Academic Work alphabet alphabet worksheets

Stories and Books

Silly Sally by Audrey Wood

We put together our own “Silly Sally” booklet this week to go along with our story. Zachary had fun tearing pink paper and gluing it onto the the pig. Later we painted some ‘mud’ onto the page too. The sheep turned nice and wooly after gluing cotton balls and Zachary insisted on coloring the loon and the dog spotty and brown. The book turned out great and he has been happily carrying it around with him as a book HE made.

Writing

Itty Bitty provided several different writing opportunities for Zachary this week. He wrote color names to go along with Sally’s bows in one of the mini-books and was so excited that he figured out the names on his own (copying them from the word list on the wall).

About the Preschool Corner:

The Preschool Corner is a place for us to share the ideas we are using during our “preschool time” with our kids. You can join in the fun and record what you are doing in your house. Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below (if you have questions feel free to ask). Be sure to link back to this blog post so that your readers can find some other great ideas too!

The guidelines can be found here if you need them.

Share what you’ve been doing in your house this week!

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Filed Under: Alphabet Time, Itty Bitty Bookworm, Letter Ss, Preschool Corner 3 Comments

The Preschool Corner: Letter W

Mar202009

March 20, 2009 by Jolanthe 1 Comment

This week I used lesson plans from Itty Bitty Bookworm‘s Bo Curriculum to review (and just as a head’s up – I’ll be hosting a giveaway for a FULL year of her curriculum next week…so stay tuned!!). Next week I’ll be posting about Silly Sally and the letter ‘S’, another lesson used from Itty Bitty Bookworm.

We borrowed the book I Went Walking by Sue Williams from the library and had a lot of fun doing the activities that Itty Bitty Bookworm lays out in the plans ~ let me tell you, it’s all there for you! We still continued with our alphabet book and letter sheet activity on our own, but otherwise pulled our activities from the lesson plans.

ABC Book: A Window of Weather

‘W’ is for window and weather, so the two were put together to show weather out our window: windy, sunny, rainy and snowy.

Activities: Critters Book

The plans provide a booklet to print off that has each of the animals in the story along with a blank to fill in with a color. Zachary used a word bank to fill in the missing color word for the animal (according to the story animals – his choice) and then colored each page of the book to make his own special story. He was so excited to read it to us all!

Fun Activities: Charades & Follow the Leader

One of the games we played was charades. We had to act out one of the animals in the story: cat, cow, horse, duck, dog, or pig ~ Kaleb had fun along with us on this one. After we were done with the story animals we had fun trying to guess other animals that we acted out.

All of the animals in the story are following the child, so throughout the week we played “Follow the Leader” at different times: while at the store, walking through the house, etc…

Language: Words of Movement

We played a fun game of acting out different movement words. In the story we go walking, but then we pretended we slithered, jumped, ran, skipped, hopped, etc…and got a little energy out. It was fun to see what words Zachary could think of too.

Math: Sequencing & Money

Sequencing: The curriculum provided sequencing cards of all the animals. I printed them off and colored them all like they were colored in the story. Zachary then put them in the order that they appear in the story. We did this activity several times to test his recall on the story. We also used the sequencing cards to sort the animals from smallest to largest.

Buying a pet: Play money and animal cards were provided through the curriculum for me to print off. Zachary was given all the money and chose one of the pets to buy with his money. He had to tell me how much it cost and then pay me with the correct amount of money if he still wanted that pet.

Movement: Walking

Zachary and I took a walk together and pretended that we were the main characters in the book. I went walking and I saw…. we tried to find things that were all the different colors and then remember all the things we had named. Earlier in the week it was cold, so our walk only went around our house, but later in the week we took a walk outside. He loved it. :)

Letter Sheet/Collage

W Worksheet

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Academic Work alphabet alphabet worksheets

Stories and Books

I used some different approaches this week with Zachary in reading. Before I read the book, we sat down and flipped through the pages (a suggestion from the lesson plans) and had him tell me what he thought would happen in the story just by looking at the pictures. We also talked about if the book was real or pretend (fiction/non-fiction) and and then read the story together.

Each day we read the story I had Zachary try to recall what happened before we opened the book. We also added a few similar books to our list (see below) and read those too. Other things that we did included acting the story out (we walked through the house and pretended to see what the book saw) and talking about what our favorite animal was in the story (and why).

Books we read:

I Went Walking by Sue Williams
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See? by Eric Carle
Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What do You Hear? by Eric Carle

Writing

We used our Peterson’s Handwriting sheets to practice our W’s – even though it’s just two V’s, Zachary was getting so frustrated (and he has the M down pat – go figure).

Amazon.com Widgets

About the Preschool Corner:

The guidelines can be found here if you need them.

Share what you’ve been doing in your house this week (and don’t forget to check back next week for another Itty Bitty curriculum post and the giveaway!!)

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Filed Under: Alphabet Time, Letter Ww, Preschool Corner 1 Comment

Preschool Corner: Letter Q

Mar132009

March 13, 2009 by Jolanthe Leave a Comment

‘Q’ can be a tough letter in some aspects…but once the ideas start coming, you might eventually run out of time to do it all! Especially because quarters {i.e. money} can be a little boy’s favorite thing…and there are oh.so.many things one can do with them!

ABC Book: Quilt

I have tons of excess fabric left over from quilting years ago, so I cut up some squares for Zachary to use to make a quilt square. He worked on making it a pattern on a 6 x 6 piece of cardstock and then glued the ‘quilt square’ onto his alphabet book page.

Alphabet Activities: Painting a Quilt and Pipecleaner Q’s

Everyone wanted to paint this week, so we pulled out the watercolors and I printed off a quilt block pattern (Zachary helped me choose one) and sat down together and picked what colors he wanted to use. He dotted the pattern out first and then went back and filled in the squares and triangles. He has been so proud of his quilt square – carrying it around all week (too sweet).

Zachary also ~~mangled~~ ~~twisted~~ shaped a pipecleaner to make both upper and lower case Q’s.

Fun Activities: Quesidillas and Quarter Tossing

Daddy’s ‘specialty’ is quesidillas so we had them for lunch one day when he was home. Zachary helped spread the cheese and butter the tortillas – pure heaven.

We put a big bowl in the middle of the floor and practiced our aim by trying to toss quarters into the bowl and see how many we could get into the bowl. He got 100 points for getting a quarter in the little green cup inside the bowl and 25 points for the other green cups. Every time he got one in, he would raise his hands and yell “SCORE!”

Math: Quarters and more Quarters

This week we had fun counting quarters (money) and cutting circles into quarters. Zachary drew his own circles, cut them out and then had fun cutting them in half and half again. We did several different colors so that he could put them back together. Piecing together all circles reminded him of our pizza fractions earlier.

I made a little sheet for Zachary for him to also do quarter rubbings. Just place a quarter under a piece of paper and rub a gray or silver crayon over it. Zachary loved seeing George Washington’s face appear every time! We practiced counting by 25’s up to 100 during the week too (a little confusing, but he does have his counting by 10’s down pat now).

How Many Quarters

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Academic Work money quarters

Movement: Quick and Slow

The weather was beautiful several days this week so we spent time outside playing a game of “Quick and Slow”. We raced each other and then had fun slowing down and then speeding up {and Mommy enjoyed a few children getting some extra energy out}.

Music: Quartet

We have been having much fun listening to music this week in the form of string quartets…and learning that quartets means four.

Letter Sheet/Collage

Q Worksheet

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Academic Work alphabet alphabet worksheet

Stories and Books

Quick as a Cricket by Audrey Wood
Quick, Quack, Quick! by Marsha Arnold
Quack by Phyllis Root
Little Quack by Lauren Thompson
Giggle, Giggle, Quack by Doreen Cronin

Amazon.com Widgets

About the Preschool Corner:

The guidelines can be found here if you need them.

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Preschool Corner: Letter R

Mar62009

March 6, 2009 by Jolanthe 2 Comments

This week I’ll be sharing about our preschool fun studying the letter “R” and the lapbook for Runaway Bunny that I created to go along with the book. At the end of the post you will find Mr. Linky so that you can participate too in the fun by sharing what you’ve been doing during your preschool time.

Rick had a business trip this week and I was able to tag along for a few days, so I spent some of my alone time during the day sketching out the lapbook pieces and putting them together for us to do. I based most of the minit books on the areas that Before Five in a Row covers. All of the pieces I made are now posted at Homeschool Share and Ami was great to make the cover (which I forgot) and also a few bonus games to go along with it.

We did do a few activities that weren’t related to the book, but it’s all listed below, so enjoy looking around. I’ve provided links to the various activities and sites that we used whenever possible. Of course now that I’m posting, I’m thinking of a bunch of other little minit books that I could have made too ~ sigh.

ABC Book:

The alphabet book page for the letter “R” was a rainbow using fingerprints for each of the bands of the rainbow. We glued some clouds (cotton balls) on at the ends of the rainbow…and made a general mess. {grins}

Alphabet Activities: Rice Tracing

Zachary had a lot of fun with this activity…and then Kaleb joined in and the REAL fun began. He practiced his uppercase and lowercase ‘R’s’ and also made rectangles.

Fun Activities: Shadow Matching and Patterning

Homeschool Share has a fun game that uses images of rabbits with long ears, short ears, etc…and then has a shadow image of it to match. We stored our game pieces in a pocket on the back of the lapbook. You can find the shadow match and patterning games here.

Lapbook: Runaway Bunny

The lapbook pieces that I created can be found at Homeschool Share . Here are the links for the lapbook cover and some other games to go along with the lapbook. I used a full size folder for this lapbook and glued some of the game pieces directly onto the folder so that we could open it up and play it. On the back of the lapbook I glued our math game (only three sides) so that the pieces to the game can slide down in between the game board and the lapbook cover. You can see it in one of the pictures below if you can’t visualize it.

Lapbook pieces closed:

Lapbook pieces open:

Here are the minit books that we worked on:

Types of Art ~ Runaway Bunny uses two different kinds of art for the pictures ~ pen and ink drawings and also coloring paintings

What is Round? We looked throughout the book for different things that are round (spheres, disks, circles).

Catching a Bunny ~ Zachary had to remember what the Mommy bunny used as bait for her ‘fish’ son

Scarecrow puppet ~ We made a popsicle stick puppet for Zachary to play with since there is a scarecrow in the garden

Animal identification and matching ~ There were several different animals in the story at some point: bird, rabbit, monkey, donkey, kangaroo, fish, dog and donkey. There are two sets of cards to use either as a matching game or as animal id cards.

If/Then ~ Throughout the book the little bunny says he will become different things and his mother then says she will be something to find him (if you are a rock then I will become a mountain climber). There are cards for each of the If/Then’s in the book.

Shapes throughout the book ~ This minit book has four different shapes: square, crescent, circle and triangle.

Letter Sheet/Collage

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Academic Work worksheets alphabet activity

Math: Rectangles

I pulled out a bag of rice and poured it into a shallow baking pan so we could ‘trace’ letters and shapes in the rice. We also had fun with our geo boards making rectangle shapes with rubber bands.

We also had other things that would fit in the math category (rabbit patterns) but they are listed above. :)

Stories and Books

Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown
Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister
I’ve Been Working on the Railroad by Nadine Westcott

Verse: Exodus 20:8

“Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.”

Writing

We’re still using the Peterson’s Writing book for our handwriting. There are great prompts and reminders for him to visualize how the letters are formed. Here’s a look at his work from this week:

Amazon.com Widgets

About the Preschool Corner:

The guidelines can be found here if you need them.

Share what you’ve been doing in your house this week!

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Filed Under: Alphabet Time, Lapbooks, Letter Rr, Preschool Corner 2 Comments

Beginning Consonant Cards

Feb242009

February 24, 2009 by Jolanthe 7 Comments

Our printer has been on the fritz lately and I really wanted to try these out before posting them…but since I’m pretty sure they will be fun, I figured I’d share them even before I get to play along myself at home!

These are beginning consonant cards to use with your tot/preschooler and are designed to help identify the beginning consonant sound in words. There are 3 pictures provided for each consonant (with the exception of ‘x’ – go figure). I do have them printed off and am going to laminate them to make them a little more sturdy

Match the pictures to their beginning letter sound. You can also use the picture cards to practice identifying objects with your child.

You can download and print the pdf by clicking here for the printable. Be sure to download the long and short vowel cards that I posted as well!

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Filed Under: Alphabet Time, Early Learning Printables, Notebook and Worksheets, Preschool Corner, Preschool Printables, Tot Tools 7 Comments

The Preschool Corner: Letter P

Feb192009

February 19, 2009 by Jolanthe 1 Comment

There are a plethora of activities to do with the letter P and unfortunately just not enough days in the week to do them all!

ABC Book: Penguin

Before you run in terror, screaming “What is that THING?”… rest assured, it is a penguin. It’s just an odd little penguin, who’s creator was a little lazy and decided that a blob of construction paper glued onto his head would be much better than cutting it out and making an actual beak…or something. More of a ‘hat and earmuffs’ kind of day apparently.

Art Activity: Painting Pigs

Pink pigs. And mud. That was the request, so two colors were given to paint with and the little man went to work painting.

Fun Activity: Playdough

Not much work was done in the sculpting department – but this was what he proudly showed me after working very hard for about 10 minutes with his lump of playdough. I wasn’t quite sure what to think until he let me know that it was a pattern on the playdough. And for that I have to give the boy credit. :)

Math & Money: Pennies, Pickle Counting, Patterns, and Pizza Fractions

Math was apparently on my brain this week. Because we did a lot of activities relating to math. First we counted out 100 pennies. Zachary made lines of 10 pennies and then stacked them into piles. When he had stacked 100 pennies, we counted by 10’s together.

I pulled out some of my old folder games this week too and we had one counting the dots on pickles, so we practiced 1:1 counting and number identification.

I can’t remember what in the world these little manipulatives are called (anyone, anyone??) but Zachary sat for quite awhile playing with them and created his own pattern for me: blue, yellow, yellow until he ran out of the stacking rings.

I made some ‘mini’ pizzas using small paper plates and cut them up into different fraction sizes (1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/6 and 1/8). Zachary had fun putting the little pizza puzzles together and we talked about fractions and how many pieces made up each puzzle.