The Letter K

Thank you, letter K, for staying true to your letter sound.  Unfortunately, your wanna be, the letter C is constantly trying to steal your glory and confuse my child.  All week as we tried to come up with words that began with K to write on our board, Little Guy would name words like "castle" or "catch."  When he asked me why "cat" starts with C and "kitten" starts with K, the only answer I could come up with was "Good question!  Well, because sometimes letters are tricky and they pretend to sound like other letters."  !?!?!?  What are you supposed to say?  Because C is a letter that rips off 2 sounds, the S and the K, neither of which it would actually make if I had designed our alphabet (I would use it only to make the ch sound, in case you're wondering).  Oh, the joys of teaching...

Anywho, let's get back to the Letter K and what we did this week.  Since Little Guy is so into painting lately, I've been trying to incorporate it as much as I can.  I thought it would be fun to make a "blank" letter K, so we taped a construction paper K onto a paper and Little Guy got to work painting every bit of white he could find. 

We got outside and played some "kickety kickball."

Little Guy got familiar with the letter K by tracing it with his finger in his I Can Trace book. 

Our Letter Tile Matching page was once again this week made using lower case letters that Little Guy had to match using his upper case letter tiles.

We did a couple of letter K worksheets from our Preschool Beginning Sounds and BrainQuest Pre-K workbooks.

Although not K related, we made the mini book at the back of Little Guy's High Five magazine.  Little Guy cut out the pages, we put them in numerical order, folded them in half, and stapled them together.  The best part was that the book was super easy and Little Guy could basically read it out loud with me!

We used a giant push pin to poke holes along the lines of letter K's, and did the Letter K Writing Page from Confessions of a HomeSchooler.  I tape the writing page on the easel to change things up a little bit.

On Friday, Little Guy made his own kite.  I set out construction paper, glue, and ribbon, and Little Guy got to work. 

I also found a kite in the dollar section at Target!  Little Guy had a blast flying it on a windy day.

This week we read:

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Letter O Week

Back in October, we worked on the Letter O.  I'm not sure what happened, but for some reason, I never got around to posting about what we did that week. 

We used glue, construction paper, and oatmeal to make a multisensory letter O. 

We did some tracing pages out of Kumon: My First Book of Tracing, and did the Find the O's page from Confessions of a HomeSchooler.  

We also learned about octopuses by reading "Octopuses" by Lola M. Schafer.  Then, we made out own octopus!  I cut strips of construction paper for the tentacles and Little Guy used a bingo marker to make suckers on them.  Then he glued the tentacles to the back of the letter O that I had cut out.  Once he stuck the googly eyes on, tada!  Octopus!

I guess by now you're noticing the "o"range theme we've got going on too! We also did some writing practice pages and then started learning about owls.  We read some great owl books that I will post a link to below. 

I ran across this really cute and Little Guy appropriate Owl Foam Craft at Michael's we just had to do.   I ended up using it as a Christmas tree ornament, but during Christmas time, Little Guy kept pulling the pieces off until it was just a brown outline so now we have no more cute little owl ornament. 

Little Guy also got the hang of the "Days of the Week" song and wanted to sing it "by himself!" all week. 

We did our Letter Tile Matching page:

and made owls out of pine cones!  We squirted glue all over the pine cone, then stuffed stretched out cotton balls in all the cracks.  Once our pine cones were stuffed, we glued on googly eyes and an orange triangle for a beak.

On Friday, we watched "Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Gahoole."  We had seen it in the theater, but we rented it from the redbox for family movie night, and Little Guy just couldn't make it through the whole thing.  He was really restless and bored, so we just turned it off.  I suppose it is a bit hard to follow for the little ones since all the characters are owls and they do look very similar.  I will say, that is one of the most visually beautiful movies I've ever seen.  Especially on BluRay.

This week we read:

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Letter Q

What to do for Letter Q?  I was pretty stumped on this one.  There really aren't too many things that begin with the letter Q in the first place, let alone things that are preschool age appropriate. 

We started out getting familiar with the letter Q and identifying it's sound.  We traced the letter with our finger, and then did a worksheet about the q sound.

We were really in need of some kind of fun activity that would leave Little Guy with a positive memory for the letter Q.  I was having a tough time when I finally thought of something. 
Do you remember being a little kid and watching Bozo the Clown in the mornings?  There used to be this game that they played where the child had to stand behind a line and toss a ping pong ball into buckets that were different distances away for a prize.  Well, this game is kind of like that. 

Here's what you need to play:

Some quarters
A bucket/box/bowl/container
Pipe cleaners (we used 5)
A chart for tracking number of tosses.

Here's what the set up looks like:

Little Guy stood behind the red line with his little bowl of quarters and started tossing.   

Whenever he made a basket, we recorded how many tries it took on our chart.  We did the same thing for all the colors.

It was so much fun!!  Naturally we had to play about 6 times.  I was happy Little Guy recorded his stats all by himself!

We also read "Quack! Quack! Come back!"  (You know, "5 little ducks went out to play.  Over the hills and far away...")  Little Guy just loves that song, and we have it in a book.  The back of the book has little duck play pieces too!

We did our letter matching worksheet.  They were getting a bit too easy for Little Guy, so this week I made the letters lowercase on the sheet, since the letter tiles are in capitals.  This way it's a little more challenging. 

The Letter Practicing Writing page below is from Confessions of a Homeschooler. 

I really wanted to involve a quilt somehow this week.  While browsing around Hobby Lobby, I came across bandanas for $.99 and came up with the best idea!  Whenever I was a kid and was on an airplane or in a waiting room with my dad, he'd draw a grid of dots on a paper.  Then you take turns drawing a line to connect 2 dots.  Whoever ends up making a square gets to put their initials in that square.  The person with the most squares wins.  Well, what we did was the same concept, except we were making a "quilt," and instead of putting your initial in the square, I was little q and Little Guy was big Q. 

I made a grid of dots on the bandana.

Then, we each chose a color crayon to use and started drawing lines and making squares.
Here's a picture of our finished quilt:

Little Guy really liked this activity, but what he like most was turning the quilt into his "cape" so he could become Super Q!

This week we read:

Quack! Quack! Come Back!


My Q Book  by Jane Belk Moncure



Quack and Count by Keith Baker

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Letter R

Rabbits, Rain, and Rainbows were the focus of Letter R week.

I found these cheap awesome lacing cards at the dollar store and love them!  The rabbit pops out so you can trace it if you'd like (which we did), or just use it in regular fashion.  It came in a set with a bunch of animal choices.  Little Guy canot stand lacing cards, so we've come up with a new system of doing them together.  I lace a hole, he laces the next hole, etc.  He likes it much better when it doesn't feel like such a big task to do alone. 

Then we did a cut and paste page.  These are great, because Little Guy loves cutting and pasting, and I love how he has to put the pictures in the order that they happened. 

We learned all about rain; what makes it happen, and how the system works.  I drew Little Guy a picture to explain the rain cycle. 
Then we boiled water and pretended it was the sun warming up the water and causing it to turn to steam.  When I put the (clear, glass) lid on the pot, we watched to see how our "rain drops" started forming on the lid our cloud.  I lifted the lid our cloud off of the pot and said, "Oh no!  Our cloud is getting heavy!  What do you think will happen?"  Little Guy said, "It's going to rain!"  and I shook the lid a bit to make our raindrops fall.  It was pretty fun and I think it really helped Little Guy to see how the cycle works.

We also did another experiment using cotton balls and water.  I gave Little Guy some cotton balls and asked him to describe them.  Were they heavy or light?  Soft or hard?  Wet or dry? 

Then he dipped them in water and described them.  We observed that when they were heavy with water they started dripping.  

Then......we went a little nuts and just had a free for all playing with the water and the cotton balls! 

Fun, Fun!!

I found a really great Rain themed prewriting page at 2 Teaching Mommies.  It's a free printable, and they have a whole unit on rain.

I also made this prewriting page using a rainbow and had Little Guy use the corresponding color to draw a line on each arc.

This week we read:

My R Book by Jane Belk Moncure

(we just love this series)

Rabbit's Good News by Ruth Lercher Bornstein

(We both really loved this one.  Little Guy had me read it 3 times in a row. Great book for Spring)

Rain, Rain, Everywhere by Christine Leeson

(Little Guy was into it, but I just thought it was ok)

Little Bill:  A Rainy Day to Remember by Kitty Fross

(Little Guy just loves Little Bill)

The Story of Rumplestiltskin by Heather Amery & Stephen Cartwright

(this was an Usborne First Stories book, so it grows with your child)

Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Over the River

(great interactive book)

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Jumping Jellybeans!

This week we had fun getting familiar with the letter J and it's sound.  We did some J-related workbook activities and had fun with jellybeans!
We did a jellybean transfer activity using these awesome chopsticks we got for Little Guy back when we went to EPCOT last fall. 

In his typical fashion, Little Guy started out using the grip I'm trying to get him away from, despite my suggestion to use, what we call, his pinchers.  He likes to make sure he's doing things by his own decision, not my request, so I didn't say anything else about it.  Since this grip is much stronger, everytime he'd try to pick up a jellybean this way it would pop right out of the chopsticks.

Eventually, he decided for himself it would work better if he used his pinchers.

We used the Letter J writing practice page (again, using the easel) from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Sticking with our jellybean theme, we did a graphing activity.  I poured out a handful of jellybeans and made a graph for Little Guy to color in.  I also made a question page so we could answer questions about our graph.

Little Guy counted how many of each color jellybeans there were and colored it in on the graph.  (After we figured out how far up Little Guy should color, I drew a line at the top of that box so he wouldn't go past it.  That seemed to really help.)

Then we answered questions about the graph and Little Guy got to eat some jellybeans!

We played Candyland about a million times this week.  Little Guy is kind of in love with it lately.

I also made up a Jumping for Jellybeans game that Little Guy loved!  I wrote a bunch of words (with an emphasis on words beginning with the letter J) on cut up index cards.  Little Guy started at one end of the rug and everytime I called out a word beginning with J, he could take one jump forward.  If the word didn't begin with J he had to stay still.  If he accidentally jumped on a non-J word, then 2 jumps backward.  Everytime he reached the end, he got a jellybean.   He LOVED playing this game!

This week we read:



My J Book by Jane Belk Moncure
(great intro to letter J and it's sound)


Jamberry by Bruce Degen
(Little Guy liked it, especially since we've been tasting all sorts of different jams and jellies lately)


Jumping Day by Barbara Juster Ebenson


The World that Jack Built by Ruth Brown
(I really liked this one)

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