We’re successfully into Letter D week. The best part of this curriculum for me is the easiness of setting up and carrying out an activity. There’s no hundred other things you need and the flexibility of doing it at any time of the day. As I have mentioned before I collect all the things necessary into a basket and keep it on our dining table. So it’s always a read and go for us.
Just so you know I’m not following peaceful preschool curriculum word to word but 80% of our activities comes from it. Generally we skip gross motor activities as I believe most of them are covered in their daily outside playtime. I like to twist up things to add a touch of novelty to each week. So I edit/replace some activities that I feel more aligned to my kids interests.
Day 1
We started the day by reading the book ‘If you give a dog a donut’. Laura Numeroff ‘ If you give..’ book series is an all time favorite here. I got a half dozen donuts from Dunkin Donuts and they counted them. We also discussed the flavors and texture of donuts before enjoying those yummy donuts.
Next we made the customary glitter glue letters. I let her use the school glue first to trace and then tap the glitter on top of it ( I get the dollar tree glitters). I usually work on one card next to her so that she can copy me. While adding glitter I give her a tray to contain the mess and we can resuse the rest if you tap it out. Believe me it’s messy and stressful but I let her do it anyhow because there’s lot of learning such as fine Motor practice , impulse control, asking for help etc.
She tried the Letter D Trace & Color page just for fun. She wanted to use her small paint pots on this sheet.
This is a simple name recognition activity using duplo. I just picked some rainbow legos and wrote her name on each lego using sharpie. The goal is to arrange the legos on the base block to spell her name.
We decided to do the DIY paper plate kite as it’s very easy and we didn’t have supplies for the other kite. First I cut out the middle part of a paper plate and then let them use the dot markers to decorate around it. They rather chose to paint with dot markers on the rim.
Once done I added some colorful cut streamers stapled at one end. They needed a handle for that so I taped on a paint stir stick behind the paper plate.
Day 2
On the second day there’s nothing much table work. Most of them revolved around learning about good deeds starting with reading the golden rule – ‘ Whatever you wish others to do to you do also to them.
We brainstormed some practical good deeds they both could do. I keep these writings in our journal book which is just a simple spiral notebook. At times I ask them random questions or would you rather questions to think about and write down their responses in this book. Some examples you could do are :
- What’s your favorite game/ activity/ food?
- What are things you’re grateful for?
- Think about one person who makes you feel loved. How do they show you that they care?
- What’s your favorite holiday.?Why is it your favorite? What’s your happiest memory associated with it?
- Would you rather it always be summer, spring, fall, or winter? Why?
- What’s one thing that always makes you laugh?
She also practiced letter D in the writing tray. The tray is a recycled Melissa & Doug lacing toy tray filled with colorful sand instead of salt.
I think helping others/ good deeds is not something to be done just on a day as part of a lesson plan. It’s a character that need to be developed overtime. But still just for record sake- In the evening we watered our plants together and I taught her how to identify weeds in the garden and to get rid of it.
Day 3
We started our day by reading this abc book which I found from a local thrift store. The textured alphabets make it a tactile learning experience for the kids. You can check out the Alphaprints ABC in amazon.
She made the letter C all by herself by rolling a Playdough snake and then sticking on top of our dry erase letter flashcards. She’s still learning to fine tune the placement of Playdough. So I helped her a lot and we reviewed the letters we learned so far.
This is a DIY moveable alphabet that I made using plastic storage box and magnetic letters. It works for us now and I plan to create something similar to this in future DIY moveable alphabet.
I gave her some flashcards and let her match the uppercase and lowercase letters. But since she struggled with lot of letters at once I took out the selected ones from our box and laid out on the table for her to choose. And she did well with that.
We used a pencil zipper bag instead of paper bag for collecting the magnetic letters. There’s an added fine motor work of opening the zipper so it felt like a good replacement.
She wanted to paint her letter D with pink paint. So I gave her some lego duplo to stamp but she decided to paint with that. Once dried she stuck some of her favorite round dot stickers (from Dollar tree) on the letter.
Day 4
It was for the first time we read the book ‘Make way for ducklings’. I found it a bit lengthy for a 3 year old but she found it interesting and stayed put till the end. The beautiful pencil like drawings are the real catch and if you’ve been to Boston it makes the story more interesting.
To complement the book I prepped a simple duck art using Kitchen tissue paper and food coloring. First cut the paper in the shape of ducklings( you may need to use two of them stacked up for each duck). Then add 2-3 drop of desired food coloring in a glass of water. Using a dropper let them paint the ducks. My rainbow loving girl used all the colors to create this beautiful rainbow duck.
In phonics we tried another simple activity using chalkboard and plain water. It was a super hit and she wanted to do it multiple times. I wrote some alphabets on the chalkboard using sidewalk chalk and hung it on the wall. I kept a glass of water and brush nearby. The idea is to erase the alphabets that I call out by using the water brush. It helps with letter recognition and tracing.
Unfortunately I did not have all ingredients to make lunch strata. So we chose to do a bread pudding instead. I followed this bread pudding recipe over you tube. It’s easy to follow and our pudding turned out to be good.
First we cut the bread slices together in small pieces and we discussed the concept of fractions. The crumbs and extra pieces were packed away in ziploc bags for them to feed the ducks during our field trip.
They helped me to mix the ingredients and pour over the shredded bread pieces. They had to wait for almost 45 minutes which made them whiny but learning to wait and virtue of patience is an important lesson too.
While waiting for the pudding to be cooked she tried out one of the drawings in the book using a brown twistable crayon. I also tried it on another paper beside her to give her some cues ( please excuse me I’m awful at drawing) She couldn’t produce anything great per se but the fact that she attempted to draw some lines and curves was appreciable.
Field Trip
We visited our nearby park and we spotted a goose in the pond. So my kids decided to feed her with all the packed crumbs and pieces. It was such a joyful moment and they took so much pride in feeding the bird with their own hands.