Letter F fun!

Since it's Fall, it seemed like the perfect time to introduce the letter F.  We started out the week discussing the sound it makes and trying to come up with some words that begin with f.  Little Guy got familiar with the shape and sound by gluing some feathers on a big letter F.

I usually have him paint glue on because if I just hand him the bottle we end up with a huge mess.  Plus, it's good practice for his grip.

It's little projects like these that I really love, because I get to see how differently Little Guy thinks than I do.  I had a pile of feathers out for him to use, thinking he would fill up the space with as many feathers as possible.  Turns out he's a much more practical kind of guy.  Just enough feathers to make an F were all he used.

We also did a couple of pages from the Kumon mazes book (at Little Guy's request).  Here's an example of the pages in the book.

We also did some prewriting practice pages from Over the Big Moon

During our week filled with letter F activities, we also had a Fire Safety Day, which you can read about HERE!  We discussed the importance of Fire Safety and acted out what we do in certain fire related situations.

Here's a pic of Little Guy crawling to stay low under the "smoke."

We also read a book about frogs, found a workbook page about thier life cycle, and made a cute frog puppet that I found at No Time for Flashcards

No Time for Flashcards is also where I found this adorable paper football.

He especially loved showing Dad when he got home from work!
As usual, we did our Find the F's story page, and Letter F writing practice sheet from Confessions of a Homeschooler

Little Guy is starting to get really good at his letter tiles page each week!  I guess I'm going to have to start using bigger words!

We finished our letter F week with a Fall wreath.  You can see how we made it and the adventure that it sparked HERE,   but here's a pic of the finished product.

The books we read this week were:




"Fox's Adventure in Alphabet Town,"  by Janet McDonnell
(Perfect.  The whole book is filled with words that begin with F)

"If I were a Firefighter," by Thomas Kingsley Troupe
(Got a round of applause from Little Guy at the end)

"Frogs," by Laura Driscoll
(Informative without being too boring)

"Kick the Football, Charlie Brown," adapted by Judy Katshce
(we read this because Little Guy has been into Peanuts lately, but boy, was this book terrible!)

"The Fall Festival," by Mercer Mayer
(We love the Little Critter books, but this was an I Can Read book, so there were a lot of short, choppy  sentences.  Little Guy still liked it though.)

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Fire Safety Day!

Since we are spending this week talking about the letter F, I thought this would be a great time to cover fire safety. 

Little Guy and I went over when and how to call 911.  When I was younger, it was so much easier.  You just pick up the phone, dial 911, and wait for the dispatcher.  Now, with cell phones, it's very important that your little one knows how to call from your phone.  This is one of the main reasons I stuck with a blackberry instead of a touch screen phone.  I want to know that in an emergency, Little Guy can press 9-1-1-and the send button.  We call it "9-1-1-green."  If you happen to have a touch screen phone, make sure your little one knows how to find the dial pad and make the call.  We also went over our address again, and how we need to stay calm and LISTEN to the operator's questions so that we can give them the answers they need.

We also talked about what to do if you catch on fire. Everyone was taught "stop, drop, and roll" growing up, but if you were like me, you were never taught quite how serious it was.  I remember we would all have a turn and we would get down on the ground and roll once and "Hooray!"  Our turn was over.
I wanted Little Guy to know that if you catch on fire, you stop, drop, and roll UNTIL YOU PUT OUT THE FIRE.  We talked about how running makes the fire bigger, so when you stop, drop, and roll you are working on putting it out.  Key word: work.  You have to keep trying and rolling until it goes out.  To help drive this point home, I cut out some flames from construction paper and used 1 piece of tape to stick the flames to our backs.  We stopped, dropped, and rolled until the flame came off. 

I put a blanket down to make our drops and rolls a little softer. 

We also talked about the smoke and how we need to get down low so we can breathe better.  To illustrate this point we pretended Little Guy woke up and the room was filled with smoke.  He had to crawl under the smoke (a sheet) to escape.

We also discussed how to get out of our house, and where to wait once outside. 

I saw a cute idea for a fire station made of milk cartons at www.notimeforflashcards.com, but we didn't have enough milk cartons so we used a Cheerio box covered in brown paper.  We had a great time sticking the flame in places around the house and then going to put the fire out with our fleet of trucks!

We read a book between each activity today.

"If I Were a Firefighter" by Thomas Kingsley Troupe
(Got a round of applause at the end from Little Guy)

"Felix the Fire Engine" (No Author Listed)
(Had some great safety tips at the end)

"Clifford the Firehouse Dog" by Norman Bridwell
(Honestly, aren't some of the Clifford books horrible?  No flow, almost like the pictures were drawn and someone just put a caption at the bottom.) 

Today was a paper free day!  There were no worksheets, coloring pages, or any use of a pencil.  It's really great to see how much kids can learn by doing rather than sitting.

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