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!

Last week we had some interrupted learning time so I opted to continue on with the Letter D this week.  We also had some interrupted learning time this week so all in all we got about 4-5 days of D in over two weeks!  On Monday we were in Mbabane to get our TRP’s taken care of and then on Thursday we went on some home visits with childcare staff.  In addition to D activities we also reviewed some of our letters from previous weeks.  Here are some of the D activities we completed this week.

We painted dots on the letter D.

This isn’t letter D, but Mikayla has gotten to wear she will choose school activities to play with instead of her toys.  Here she is playing with a patterning game at the desk while I was making dinner.  I thought she was playing with toys until I turned around!

I took our disc golf discs and scattered them around the floor.  Then I placed letter cards inside.  She dropped the ball onto the disc and identified the letter.  As she gets bigger she can identify things that start with this letter.  We had an extra disc with no letter so that was the dancing disc.  Anytime her ball landed on that disc we both had to start dancing!  And when she got bored with this game we went outside and through them around the yard.

We found this book in town on Monday.  It teachers her basic line movements.  She loves writing in it and then erasing it off!

For our final D project we made donuts.  I found a great recipe that Mikayla could help me with all the way through.  When it came time to rolling out the dough she grabbed her IKEA rolling pin and went to town.  Then she took cookie cutters and cut out her own donuts.  Here she is enjoying them fresh from the oven.

Next week we will move onto the Letter E – elephants, eggs and Elmo.  I know my friend Catherine is cringing right now, but rest assured we will throw in Grover when it come to the Letter G!

Donut Recipe:

1 1/3 cups warm milk, 95 to 105 degrees (divided)
1 packet active dry yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)
2 tablespoons butter
2/3 cup sugar
2 eggs
5 cups all-purpose flour
A pinch or two of nutmeg, freshly grated
1 teaspoon fine grain sea salt

1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon cinnamon

Place 1/3 cup of the warm milk in the bowl of an electric mixer. Stir in the yeast and set aside for five minutes or so. Be sure your milk isn’t too hot or it will kill the yeast. Stir the butter and sugar into the remaining cup of warm milk and add it to the yeast mixture. With a fork, stir in the eggs, flour, nutmeg, and salt – just until the flour is incorporated. With the dough hook attachment of your mixer beat the dough for a few minutes at medium speed. This is where you are going to need to make adjustments – if your dough is overly sticky, add flour a few tablespoons at a time. Too dry? Add more milk a bit at a time. You want the dough to pull away from the sides of the mixing bowl and eventually become supple and smooth. Turn it out onto a floured counter-top, knead a few times (the dough should be barely sticky), and shape into a ball.

Transfer the dough to a buttered (or oiled) bowl, cover, put in a warm place (I turn on the oven at this point and set the bowl on top), and let rise for an hour or until the dough has roughly doubled in size.

Punch down the dough and roll it out 1/2-inch thick on your floured countertop. Most people (like myself) don’t have a doughnut cutter, instead I use a 2-3 inch cookie cutter to stamp out circles. Transfer the circles to a parchment-lined baking sheet and stamp out the smaller inner circles using a smaller cutter. If you cut the inner holes out any earlier, they become distorted when you attempt to move them. Cover with a clean cloth and let rise for another 45 minutes.

Bake in a 375 degree oven until the bottoms are just golden, 8 to 10 minutes – start checking around 8. While the doughnuts are baking, place the butter in a medium bowl. Place the sugar and cinnamon in a separate bowl.

We had a short week at school this week due to a meeting I had on Monday and the abundance of ripe bananas I came across on Friday.  So we really only had three days of school this week.  Next week we will continue on with D and review old letters and activities.  Next week will also be a short week because we head into town on Monday to take care of our TRP’s.  Here are some of our activities from this past week.

We made a letter D duck with paint, feathers and construction paper.

We worked on patterning using pom poms.  She did really well with this so next time I will extend the patterns and maybe leave a blank spot to see if she can figure out what would come next.

We clipped letter clips to spell her name.

We practiced counting by choosing a magnetic number and placing it on the card with the correct number of stars.

We made a D dinosaur.  I had hoped to do some more dinosaur activities but she didn’t act too excited about it so we didn’t!

We had a quick review of B and C by placing B’s in a bowl an C’s in her cookie jar.

We rolled a dice and put stickers on the number that was rolled.

We stacked dice on top of each other like blocks.

We played with an alphabet uppercase and lowercase puzzle (only the letters we had studied so far though, I didn’t want to overwhelm her).

And of course we made deviled eggs.  She was very meticulous with peeling the eggs (an added bonus is it worked on he fine motor some).  She of course loved helping in the kitchen and as you can see below enjoyed eating the deviled eggs even better!

Like I mentioned earlier, next week will be a review of letters and continuation of our letter D study.  We will move on to E the following week!

We had a great week learning about the letter C.  here are some of our favorite activities from the week.

We made a letter C with coffee and then tasted it.  She loves coffee, must take after her parents!

She sorted candies by color.  I started her by showing her how to group all the orange ones and then she did the rest on her own. 

She made a cat mask from a paper plate.

We clipped colored clothespins onto colored cookies and sang this fun song: 

Five little cookies with frosting galore. (Child’s name) ate the red one, then there were four. Four little cookies, two and two you see. (Child’s name) ate the green one, then there were three. Three little cookies, but before I knew (Child’s name) ate the white one, then there were two. Two little cookies, oh what fun. (Child’s name) ate the blue one and then there was one. One little cookie all alone, (Child’s name) ate the yellow one and now there are none!

We made a letter C carrot from a paper plate.  We painted it with orange water colors and then used green pipe cleaners for the stem.  She looks funny here because she is screaming "C is for carrot!".

She helped to make Letter C chocolate chip cookies.  We also made carrot cake at the end of the week!

I put her letter pieces from her alphabet puzzle into a tub with beans and let her fish them out with tongs and put in the right place.  She wanted to do this almost everyday.

We glued C’s onto a cake. 

We made a lot of caterpillar crafts, but this was probably my favorite.  This is the Very Hungry Caterpillar (one of her favorite books) made from torn paper. 

Another caterpillar project made from toilet paper tubes.

She made a color book by placing colored stickers onto the correct colored page.  This book has found a permanent spot in her bookshelf!

I made some cookies with pictures of C objects on the backs.  She placed the ones that started with a C into her cookie jar (which was all of them, but she didn’t know that)!

Another caterpillar, this one made form egg cartons.  She took this one outside to play with us and made him a whole house with a broom, bed, pillow and more!

She counted candies out onto her felt caterpillar.  She did really great with 1-3, but 4 and 5 were not so good.  She got too distracted wanting to eat the candy…imagine that!

She got some scissors from Mimi and Poppy this week so we made her a cutting box to practice cutting.  Basically it is a large box filled with paper scraps.  She can climb in and cut until her hearts content.  She loves it, and it doesn’t make a huge mess on the floor!

Life cycle of a caterpillar project.  The egg is a bean, the caterpillar a spiral noodle, the cocoon a macaroni noodle and the butterfly is made from a coffee filter colored with markers and then sprayed with water.  Once dry, you attach a clothespin to it to make the butterfly.

One final caterpillar made from the letter C’s glued side by side.  You can also see our letter C crab in the background. 

We did some more counting activities with candy and what not this week, but mostly stuck to phonics stuff this week.  Next week we move onto the Letter D – ducks, dogs and dots!

We have had a very fun week learning all about the letter B!  We did some arts and crafts, lots of fine motor and a little math.  Next week we have a fun science experiment on the agenda.  Here are some of the things we did this week. 

We found a chalkboard on our outing last weekend and Mikayla has been loving it!  It is no IKEA art easel, but it has been pretty fantastic this week!  We also found some stringing beads that she has enjoyed this week.

Color matching.  I just wrapped some construction paper around empty toilet paper tubes and she placed the corresponding pipe cleaner in them.  They kept falling down though, so I need to find something to hold them up.

We had lots of fun with balloons.  We played with them, and  we blew air into them and let them go.  We even had a balloon relay where she had to pick up balloons out of a container with tongs and run across the room to another container and place them there.  She ha a lot of fun chasing around the balloons.

• Letter B bumble bee.  We also made a handprint bumble bee I forgot to take a picture of.

Sorting big and small buttons.

Matching the colored butterflies.

We scooped beans  into various containers using cups and spoons.  I think she had the most fun with this activity.

We played with our new activity from Lylah and Lara, stringing felt through a button (practicing how to push a button through a hole).

We sorted colored buttons into balloons.  She had a difficult time with this at first, but eventually got the hang of it. 

We glued beans on the letter B.  Side note – it cracks me up how serious she gets with some of her school activities.  She is really concentrating on putting the beans in the perfect spot.

We screwed nuts onto a bolt to work on fine motor.

We went on lots of bird hunts in our boots with binoculars.  She really got into looking for birds through her binoculars.

We also spent a lot of time playing with her babies and blankets and looking for B items around the house.  Some other activities we did include playing B hide and seek (I hid letter cards around the room with B on them and she had to find them), painting a bear with watercolors, drawing numbers from a stack and bouncing that many times, showing different letters and bowing when she saw a B and freezing for the others, making a letter B butterfly (wish I had gotten a picture because it turned out cute) and sang lots of songs (including Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee and a few others I made up on the spot).  She definitely grasped onto the concept of B better than she did A for some reason.  All in all we had a good week – learned a lot and played even more!

She just started this week picking up different objects and asking what they started with which is fun for me as a teacher to see her wanting to learn so much.  She was even able to identify letters I didn’t know she knew at the hostel the other day.

Next week we move onto C.  Think Cars, Caterpillars, and Candy.  I have a lot of ideas, but feel free to keep sending them my way.  I am always up for something knew!