For the past two weeks we have been studying the Letter T and Thanksgiving.  I had a lot of activities planned for the two weeks.  Some we got to, but a lot got missed because we had a couple of days where we were unable to have school (more on that in a later post).  I guess we will just use those for next year.  Here are some of the many activities we did in the last two weeks.

She put Thanksgiving themed stickers onto the letter T.

I made a letter dice out of some of the letters we have been studying and turned it into a letter graphing game.  She would roll the dice and then put a sticker above the letter.  She did great and caught on really quick at putting the stickers in the correct places.  The only downside was that she wanted to keep playing even when we ran out of boxes!

I wrote letters onto the bottom of an egg carton and had her "hammer" the letter down when I called it out.  Thanks Lara for the suggestion, she loved it!

She weaved string around the letter T.

This was a two part game.  Part one, she would choose a number card (number on the front and corresponding dots on the back) and then count out that many turkeys.

Part two, after a few days of the first game she was tired of it so I wrote numbers on the turkeys and had her match them up with the number cards.

Letter T turkey – thanks again Lara!

We wrote letters on the sidewalk with chalk.  I called out the letter and she would run and stand on the corresponding letter.  We did this in between drawing lots of pictures on the sidewalk!

This was one of my favorite activities from the past two weeks.  I laid out some letter cards on the ground and got back out her letter dice for this one.  When she rolled a letter she would go stand on that one and then gobble like a turkey.  The best part was instead of saying "gobble, gobble" she said "cabba cabba" and referred to turkeys as "cabblas".

We played several feather games.  For one game she rolled two dice and then counted out that many feathers.  We also color sorted the feathers.  I also hid feathers around the living room and then she would find them (again, thanks Lara).

One last feather game we played was making a Turkey counting book.  I drew out several turkeys minus the feathers and wrote numbers on their stomachs (and corresponding number of dots in the corners).  She glued on the correct number of feathers to the turkey bodies.

One of my favorite crafts from the two weeks were these turkeys we made for our Thanksgiving lunch.  We started by painting some cardstock with lots of colors.  Then I traced and cut out her hands (three per turkey).  For the body I cut toilet paper tubes in half and glued on the rest!  We stuffed napkins inside and used them as napkin rings.  They turned out really cute.

We also made some textured letters to spell THANKS and made it into a banner to help decorate the house.  We used foil, buttons, pom poms, ribbon pieces, cut up straws and glitter.  I was pretty pleased with how it turned out!

In case you missed last week’s post about the turkey name game, it is yet another idea for a letter T activity.  We also worked on a really fun Thanksgiving song that we will try to post on YouTube for you to see soon.  She sang it before we had our "feast" on Saturday for all our guests.  Precious!  Like I said we had a lot of activities we didn’t get too, but maybe next year!

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!

Mikayla had a fun week filled with Letter E.  We made some crafts, ate some eggs

We practiced tracing and identifying our numbers while singing "The Numeral Song" by Dr. Jean.  If you have never heard of Dr. Jean and work with young children at home or in a school setting you should check her out.  She has some great educational songs and even some fun songs to just sing and dance to.  One of our favorites is the "Tooty Ta" song.  I have 2 or 3 of her CD’s but would love them all!  Seriously, check her out.  It will be well worth your time!

I made a "letter puzzle" game by putting letter stickers on the back of a cereal box.  She then had to match the magnetic letters to the correct sticker letter.  Since they were Mickey stickers we had to sing the "Hot dog" song from Mickey Mouse clubhouse (not sure if this show is shown in the states or just here, but it is a cartoon version) that she loves so much. 

I made an ice cream uppercase/lowercase matching game that she wasn’t supposed to find until the letter I, but found this week.  We went ahead and played it using only the letters we had studied to this point.  The ice cream was capital letters and the cones were lowercase letters. 

Here is a closer view of the game.

This was a two part game.  Part one she took all the items from a tupperware container and sorted them.  They were three distinct sizes.

Part 2 was to put the items into the container using the correct hole – small, medium or large.  She spent a good thrity minutes playing this game over and over…I thikn she liked it!

Since she loves playing with dice I incorparted this into several of our games this week.  For this game she rolled the dice, counted the dots and then found the correct number.  Since she isn’t great at identifying the numbers yet I would sing our "Numeral Song" and then write it on her chalkboard.  She would then match it up. 

Speaking of chalkboard, we spent some time learning to make smiley faces this week.  She made this one all by herself with me only giving her verbal prompts on what to do.

Letter E elephant.  He looks a little crazy, but it works!

And of course we had to exercise with Elmo via our Elmocize video.  She loves this!

And what E week would be complete without at least one Elmo project (sorry Catherine)!  I was pleased with how this turned out.  I cut out the shape of Elmo’s face and Mikayla painted it red.  She did awesome at painting all the white spots.  Then I cut out the eyes, nose, mouth and letters to spell Elmo.  She glued them all on and did surprisingly well with placement.  I only had to help her out a bit!

Letter E egg carton

I made a large letter E out of envelopes.  Mikayla then rolled her dice and put that many E’s in her E envelope.

We dressed up like an elephant and sang "The Elephant Song" by Dr. Jean.  Here is the video – she got a little camera shy!