Due to some unexpected travel time last week, we decided to extend our Letter F week into a second one. Mikayla had a blast using fish, flowers, frogs and families/friends to learn all about the letter F and practice basic math skills. Stay tuned next week for the Letter T (we are skipping ahead because of Thanksgiving and Turkey)!
This game is a two part game. I cut out different colored fish shapes and wrote the numbers 1-5 on them (these are the numbers we are heavily focusing on right now for recognition). The first game is a colored paper clip matching game. It is as simple as its name, match the clothespins to the correct colored fish. She actually pretended that the paper clips were the fishing pole and when she "caught" the fish she proceeded to give it a big kiss! I made these from thin construction paper, but I would recommend thick paper or cardstock because they were very flimsy for her to attach the paper clips. The second game is a counting game. For this game she would only match up the number of paper clips that are written on the fish.
Of course we did lots of finger painting! She loved this.
More finger painting – like I said we did this a lot! Side note – round plastic lids work great for paint trays (this one came from a can of cocoa).
We sorted big and small flowers from my hair clip supply. I had her use tongs from her kitchen to pick the flowers up with to work on her motor skills a bit. This also turned into an impromptu game where she made a flower soup for us to eat. Her sense of imagination never ceases to amaze me!
She glued flowers onto the letter F. At first she had a hard time with squeezing the glue, but after she got the hang of it she did great. She even had me get more flowers out because she was having so much fun with the glue.
She sorted straws into a color coded egg carton. I flipped one upside down and colored them different colors. Then I cut a small hole in the top, big enough to stick the straws in.
Flower/letter match. The petals had capital letters and the centers had lowercase letters.
I made flower petals with the letters in her name and then wrote her name on a strip. She matched the flowers up with the correct letter. We even took away the name strip to see if she could make her name without seeing it. She got the first few letters, but then needed some help.
I put spaghetti noodles in an empty pepper shaker and let her empty and fill it up. Great fine motor practice.
I made some fish with numbers on them and then worms with dots. She counted the dots and matched them up to the correct number. She is starting to recognize her numbers and can almost always find the number 1 and the number 5.
In the middle of one of our letter games she thought it would be fun to put letters on her fingers. Since she was having fun I rolled with it and had her tell me what letters she was putting on them.
We made French toast Have I mentioned how much this kid loves helping out in the kitchen? She even loves to do dishes…not sure where that comes from!
We had lots of fun with these little froggies from my craft selection. We rolled the dice and made that many froggies jump. We got out our foam numbers and set that many froggies on top. And we just played with them – they took baths, went to the park, ate a big dinner and had lots of fun.
She put fish stickers on the letter F. She is trying to make a fish face here.
And what Letter F study would be complete without a paper plate frog??
We also made a flower out of her hand and foot prints, made a Letter F with feathers and a few other side activities! We also made a couple of forts throughout the weeks for her to play in. We spent a lot of time talking about family and friends, reading through our family/friends picture book I made before we left and worked on a special project for some of our family and friends in the states.
As I mentioned previously, in honor of Thanksgiving we will skip forward to the Letter T for Thanksgiving and turkeys! Stay tuned for lots of T fun!
Tags: Mikayla, Toddler School