We did Letter A & B week as trial and I couldn’t capture much of the activities. If time permits I’m planning to do those weeks in detail later. For now here’s a summary of our first official letter of the week program with peaceful preschool.
Day 1
We started our new unit by reading the book ‘Caps for sale’ . Can you imagine a book making them giggle and laugh! This book does the trick. After reading the book around 2-3 times ( phew!!) we gathered all of our caps around the house and did a peddler and monkeys role play. We took turns being the peddler and monkeys. They’re simple dialogues and actions that even a toddler can act it out.
We also counted the hats and tried to balance all of them on our head while walking straight like a peddler.
After an hour of fun reading and role play we set out to water paint a scene from the book. I showed them how to paint the tree white by drawing the outline using a color and filling the outside. But R couldn’t quite grab the concept instead drew a brown tree trunk.
M as always started drawing her rainbows as copying a picture is something she have never tried before. But at the end seeing me and her brother drawing the scene from book she used her pink paint to draw a figure and said it’s the peddler. I consider that itself a big win. After drawing I asked the kids to do a show and tell using their drawings.
M did the glitter glue with much love and she looks forward to this activity every week. She needed help tapping the glitter down and oh boy what a pretty tactile letter activity it is! She also colored in the block letter C printable.
I have done this cutting activity in the past and it was a hit. So I did a mini version of it. Gather some foam sheet/pipe cleaners/straw/Index cards/ Playdough and let them have fun cutting out these multi textured elements.
Day 2
We read the poem The Cow by Robert Louis and they loved to sing along with me.
She practiced Letter C in the salt tray using top of a pencil. We used glitter glue letter as the visual clue and she could do a lowercase letter ‘c’ easily.
Next we headed onto our garden and cut some fresh flowers using scissors. They enjoyed cutting the sunflowers and collecting into tray. They pretended to feed the cow the flowers as read in the last line of poem.
Next I lined up all the sunflowers on the floor and we practiced some math facts. We counted all of them and then counted in sets of five. We also touch based the concept of more or less by dividing them in two sets.
After some fun nature math activities I brought out a glass jar filled with water and let her arrange those flowers into it as she please. I encouraged her to add some greens to pop out the colors.
Having all those sunflowers left after counting I thought of a fun nature collage using cardboard. I drew a girl face and poked out holes on hair for her to thread in the flower stems. She also helped me to poke out holes using a dowel.
Once all the flowers were arranged it turned out to be a beautiful art which she proudly displayed.
Day 3
We started the day by making Letter C using Playdough. I gave her the kumon uppercase alphabet flashcards to use as a base. The dry erase surface makes it easy to stick the Playdough on. She rolled some Playdough snakes, cut them out and outlined the letter using those bits and pieces.
Next up we read book for the day Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. Both of my kids enjoyed listening to this fun alphabet book. I created a simple coconut tree out of construction paper and stuck it on a cookie sheet. Then I gave them our magnetic alphabets to place randomly on the coconut tree.
Rather using a toy and bandage I changed up the activity by taping the letters using bandaid to the cookie sheet. She had so much fun peeling off and freeing the letters. A great fine motor play for the littles!!
Again I used our colorful magnetic letters to match the pairs. Originally it’s supposed to use the glitter glue flashcards to match up the pairs. I presented her all the letters jumbled and let her find out the uppercase and lowercase for each letter.
In the art skills section I encouraged her to draw a coconut tree on her own with watercolors. I believe she did a wonderful job with that. I also drew a coconut tree on another paper and let her stick some alphabet stickers around it.
Day 4
Corduroys’ story was so interesting and they loved how he found his own home at the end. We gathered some of our soft toys and counted them. I arranged them on a cardboard to resemble a toy store like in Corduroy book. We used bingo counter chips as pretend money and played shop. She thoroughly enjoyed being the shopkeeper and pricing her toys.
After dismantling the toy store we set up a tea party with some of them. Tea party with dolls is one of her favorite play during free time. How delightful it is to do the same as part of a lesson plan! We poured tea , had cookies and cake and shared with each other.
Instead of sewing activity we tried this simple button sorting using big colorful buttons. I got this divided tray from Dollar tree and let her sort the buttons by color.
Phonics activity was one of her favorite this week. I gathered some small objects that start with C around house and put them in a drawstring bag. We took turns to take out each object from the mystery bag and named them. I also stressed on sounding out the beginning letter of each word.
As per the plan for this week the recipe was to make whipping cream. But I didn’t have all the ingredients so I thought why not try some cupcakes. ‘C for Cupcakes ‘ so it’s not a bad idea though. We used the cake mix and I prepped all the supplies for her to stir in together.
We also added some frosting on top along with sprinkles. Adding sprinkles are always her favorite part while making cupcakes. We also shared the cupcakes with her friends in the community.
Field Trip
We visited our local Goodwill store for field visit this week. I gave each of them $5 to spend on anything they wish. They were feeling so proud of counting their own money. Even if they couldn’t find any great item at the store they were happy about doing some grown up stuffs.