Letter E Week

Curriculum:

      -Preschool: Letter E week from Confessions of a Homeschooler (each activity downloaded separately)

      -Tot School: Letter E activities from 1plus1plus1equals1 (all activities included in one document)

MONDAY

Calendar/Notebook time remains consistent each day, although we did switch to our new LDS Scripture Verse for the week: "Even so, faith, if it hath not works, is dead." (James 2:17)

After putting together my ideal weekly calendar for school after last week, I was much more confident in the plan for the day. I put together a box of "scavenger hunt" items that started with the short E sound.  Here is what my box looked like:

 

I had a library book on eggs, a train engine, Elmo, Miss Elaina from Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, a cd with Ernie on it (not quite the sound I wanted, but I wanted more things), and a few elephants. 

I explained we would be focusing on the Letter E this week (showing the large E lacing card for the next activity), sang the E Sound Song from Leapfrog Letter Factory*, and we went through the box together. 

*"The E says "eh," the E says "eh." Every letter makes a sound, the E says "eh."

 Our first table activity with E's included Jack putting small Lego bricks in a pattern on his large E lacing card, while Alex used the pom-pom magnets with his egg lacing card. Jack's curriculum uses elephants as the main focus, while Alex's uses eggs. We will incorporate both into our activities.

Next we did our coloring pages. Jack's page was an elephant color-by-number, which he had never seen before. I found crayons to match the colors beforehand and laid them out in order.  I walked him through coloring the specific spots, although he mostly just colored around the number instead of in the whole section.  

After coloring, we moved onto the floor to play with our large floor numbers. You can print off elephant-themed ones for the week, but we just reused the apple cards from last week since I'm too cheap to print off all 10 cards on cardstock each week. I first laid them out on the floor in random order, called out a number, and we all ran like mad to find the card first. We then jumped that many times in place before moving on to the next number.  After the first game, I collected all the cards and just held up a random card, one at a time, to have the boys quickly recognize and name each number. 

Alex is so gleeful when he is the first to find the card.  ;)

I had the Leapfrog Letter Factory DVD on hold at the library, and it came late last week!  We probably could have just watched the parts around the letter E, but I decided to let the boys watch the whole (35-minute) movie while sitting on my bed.  It was a very cute, educational movie!  It animates letters and teaches children what sound each letter makes (short-vowel sounds and the more common consonant sounds), and I really feel like it is a nice classroom aid.  I already had it in my "Preschool Supplies" wishlist on Amazon, but now I definitely would like to order it to have on hand.  

As the movie was finishing, I snuck back into the playroom/school room to "hide" my ABC Find It cards. When the movie ended, I brought the boys back in for one last activity. I had the main E card sitting on a table and had the boys "hunt" for the E cards around the room.  They always love this activity.  I have reading books related to the letter/theme on the schedule on Monday afternoons, but we do 15 minutes of reading after nap time every day (using letter/theme books, as well) so I ended school at this point and we went downstairs for snack time.  

Books we found for this week:

1. What's for lunch? Eggs by Claire Llewellyn

2. National Geographic Kids Great Migrations: Elephants by Laura Marsh

3. Amazing Animals: Elephants by Jacqueline Dineen

4. National Geographic Kids Great Migrations by Elizabeth Carney

5. World Book's Learning Ladders Wild Animals

TUESDAY

We always start with Calendar/Notebook time, so I'm going to stop mentioning it each day.  From now on I will just show our activities AFTER Calendar and Notebook time.

We started off with our cutting skills practice page (Alex just cutting with scraps of paper). Reopening scissors is hard for Jack, still. I would like to buy these spring-loaded scissors to make it easier for the boys to cut, but they are expensive! So it will wait a little longer.

After cutting, I pulled out our cookie sheets and homemade magnets to use with our magnet pages.  I like to do Alex's vocabulary pages during this activity, and he loves using the big rock magnets because they are easier to grip.  Jack is always interested in what Alex is doing and usually ends up taking a turn with his pages, too.

After the boys grew tired of magnet play, I pulled out their tracing cards and the gel bag I made (using hair gel and food coloring).  They used the gel bag to finger-trace the letter correctly (with my help), and then I pulled out some dry-erase crayons to trace over the cards again.  I still really want to buy these tracing mats to use because I like how it shows where to start and where to move. Hopefully that will happen this week.

Puzzle time!  Jack worked on his 6-piece elephant puzzle while Alex worked on his 3-piece egg puzzle.  

While we were still at the tables, we moved on to Jack's elephant pattern activity and Alex's sequencing activity.  Jack is finally understanding what I want from him with the patterns, but the sequencing puzzle for Alex was pretty tricky.  I helped both boys work through it.

And then it was exercise time! The boys were definitely ready to get up and move, so I turned on a Pandora toddler station and pulled out my Exercise ABC cards for us to work through. Again, if you want a copy of the ABC cards you download the whole Lapbook and just scroll down until you are around page 50 (or 60) and you should see them.

WEDNESDAY

The first activity of the day was matching! Alex worked on his egg shadow matching cards, and Jack worked on this file folder game I found. The goal is to match the eggs up to their baskets, according to the color schemes. I've decided these file folder games would also be great to bring to church for the kiddos to work on quietly.

After the boys switched games and I helped Alex put all the eggs in their baskets, we moved on to our colors. Jack worked on his 2-piece elephant color puzzles, and Alex and I colored his egg cards and used Lego bricks to match.

And of course they had to switch.

I pulled out our Bingo markers and the Do-a-Dot pages, and the boys got very excited! They love working with our "special markers." I like to give Alex the black and white tracing page from his packet for this, since they put pictures in the corners of the letters for finger/dot tracing. I DID find their own dot pages on that website, so I might print one off for next time.

I felt like the boys had been sitting at the tables for a long time, but I decided the E letter collage wouldn't take too long to do.  We used Elmer's glue and put "elbow" macaroni on our letter E.

We definitely needed a change of pace, so I put the boys on the ground for the letter matching activity. I love those little alphabet wooden nickels! Here is Erica's explanation of how to make them. I just printed the letters off, cut them out by hand, and used Modge Podge to attach them to the wooden nickels. I also put another layer of Modge Podge over the top, just to be safe.

Our last activity was math.  I had Jack do the graphing worksheets from Confessions of a Homeschooler with some Lego bricks, although looking at it now I probably should have started with the elephant number matchup. I don't know if he was just done with school for the day or if he was confused, but we only made it to the third page before he gave up.   I would love to come back to this activity, though, later on.  I will probably also add the number matchup to the schedule for tomorrow or Friday.

*Somehow I added a picture stamp onto these pictures without realizing it. At least it was only my thumb!*

Alex and I used the ABC beads on the egg counting page. I might cut them apart next time, though, because he gets distracted easily. Once I moved all the beads to the side and walked him through a few cards, he seemed to understand better. Again, this is definitely an activity I want to do next week.

*And...there's my hand picture stamp again. Why?*

 And then all the boys were interested in doing was building "tall towers" with the Lego bricks. That was fine by me.  ;)

THURSDAY

Our first activity of the day was supposed to be our Cut and Paste, but I didn't get the materials together in time so we just moved on ahead (Very important - have a schedule but BE FLEXIBLE).  We started with the E Poke Page for Jack, which he pokes through the letters using a toothpick.  Last week I just had Alex poke some random scrap paper, but I noticed Jack's leftover cutting page in our scrap paper bin and gave that to him, instead, since it has holes on it to poke through.  He definitely stuck with it longer! This is one of those activities I don't quite understand, but I think it helps them to develop fine motor skills as they are using a tiny tool to poke through small lines and dots.  We'll see what I do with it next week.  ;)

Since I somehow missed the elephant counting activity yesterday, I decided to throw it in this morning.  I pulled out my old wooden clothespins and walked Jackson through a few cards.  He worked with me for 1 or 2, then tried to do a few on his own, then gave up and was "ready for the next activity" (his words). Again, doing preschool with him gives me a better idea of things we need to focus on.  We really need to strengthen his hands and work on fine motor skills.  I just let Alex play with a few clothes pins and one of the cards the whole time and he was just fine.

The elephant lacing card was supposed to be next, and I had printed it off, but I didn't get a chance to laminate it so I just pulled out my large ABC beads and gave them each a plastic bowl of beads and a string.  They love stringing beads, and I feel like it's a good beginning activity for the lacing cards.  I just need some more packs of large beads!

Shape review was next on the schedule.  I had Alex's shape card from the Tot School printouts, so I gave that to Jack with the pompom magnets and we reviewed shapes together.  Meanwhile, I finally purchased and printed off my favorite ABC mats, so I slipped the E mat into a page protector (until I get it laminated) and let Alex trace the letters with the gel bag.

And then they switched. Preschool centers!  :)

*I also bought the traceable number mats to use, soon.  I'm looking forward to that!*

I pulled out the Bingo markers for our Letter Hunt time.  Jack did his elephant letter hunt worksheet, and I found the egg Ee letter hunt worksheet from Alex's packet that matched perfectly.  Jack did very well on his, except he did get confused and put a dot on one "a" like last week. But I helped him scan each line to find upper- and lower-case e's. Alex needed no prompting from me and dotted all his letters!

Jack's new favorite thing is read-along books from the library.  I try and get a different book each week that goes along with the letter or theme of the week (key word there is try).  This week I grabbed The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams, and it was a perfect October/Halloween book.  We listened to the cd and followed along (turning pages when we heard the special chime) twice in a row, and Jack announced we could probably read it again another time.  I don't force him to follow along with the words, because I prefer learning phonics over whole word memorization, so we just enjoy listening to the person reading and looking at the pictures.

FRIDAY

Today was a little chaotic.  I still didn't have all the supplies I needed for the letter craft, and Alex tore down our Chicka Chicka Boom Boom coconut tree (because he is a little stinker), so we had a shorter Friday school day.  We also started an hour later than usual because I decided to reorganize my closet in the morning and I didn't want to start school until it was done.  

We started off with the Ee sorting activity. Jack (and Alex) sorted the elephants into upper- and lower-case E's. 

Then we pulled out the elephant size sort.  The boys and I do this activity together, as they are still unsure of how to line them up. 

The last activity I had for this morning was the prewriting pages. I put them in page protectors and let them take turns doing the different pages.

Later in the afternoon, I pulled out some new preschool scissors I found at Target for $2 to see if they would help Jack, since they had a spring to help re-open easier.  I showed him where to put his fingers and how to hold the paper in his other hand, and he took off cutting!  He had so much fun doing this that he sat at the table and cut papers for 50 minutes straight! Yes...5-0.

SATURDAY

These should have happened on Friday, but at least I still got them in this week!  I found this cute Letter E elephant on Pinterest, so I bought some thick gray foam at Hobby Lobby and used the large E lacing card from Monday's activities as a template to cut out the foam.  I used a few extra pieces for the trunk and ear and some white scrap paper for the eyes.  The boys helped me glue it together: 

I took a bunch of stuff into a teacher supply store (Utah Idaho Supply/Map World) to laminate, since I hadn't purchased laminating sheets, yet.  I even had my construction paper coconut tree laminated, as well as the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom letters. We were able to read the book and put the letter E up on the tree.

I don't have much storage space for our school supplies, but here is what I have so far. I found this hanging closet organizer at a thrift store last year and I use that for a lot of our frequently-used supplies for easy access.  I think it is originally from IKEA.  I bought some cardboard magazine holders in the dollar section at Target to hold Quiet Box puzzles, file folder games, and tracing mats.  And I found a bunch of these interlocking plastic crates on uber-sale (like $1.75-$2.99 each) at Target, as well.  I have all our daily puzzles in one crate in our tv stand, and I have the other four holding the rest of my supplies and binders.  They stack on top of each other, but I think I can even stack them with the open ends on the side for easier access...although that makes it easier for the boys to get into them, too. :)

And I found perfect Quiet Time boxes (15-qt plastic bins with lids) on sale at Target 2 for $5. So I bought a set and filled them with our Quiet Time supplies and keep them stacked next to the tables with the basket of coloring books and scrap papers on top.  I'm using whatever space I can, and I'm grateful to have this spare room to use for school!

I also borrowed a "Horton Hears a Who" dvd (for elephants) from the library. We ended up watching this on Sunday since we spent the weekend at my in-laws house.