This week has been all about letters, and lots of silliness....inspired by this very fun book:
The kids love Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, and it was read a lot over the course of this week.
The kids love Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, and it was read a lot over the course of this week.
They read it by themselves, with Mommy, and with Daddy.
They even got to watch a "live" version of the story on youtube. They really love this little video....click here to watch it. It's been played many many many times this week. Warning: it's catchy, and it may get stuck in your head. =) Even Shane loves to go around saying "Chi-BOOM-BOOM!" Then, he laughs and says "letters fall!" referring to the part in the story when the letters all fall out of the tree.
C & M made these cute coconut trees by cutting out scraps of paper (a favorite activity around here!) and gluing them on to a palm tree template. They added coconuts and the letters for their name (foam stickers).
Caleb is really into the coconut tree thing and has enjoyed doing some additional artwork on his own:
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On another day, they searched
through our rice & beans bin for magnet letters. They loved
doing this....they are both really into "treasure hunting" and they
always enjoy this type of sensory activity.
As
they discovered the letters, they first checked them off on their ABC
sheet. Then, they added them to the coconut tree magnet board (I saw
the tree magnet board idea on Pinterest - just cut out the tree from
construction paper and tape it to a cookie sheet). After all 26 letters
were found, they had to put them in alphabetical order.
After
they got all of the magnets in alphabetical order, Meredith worked on
putting our felt letters in ABC order, and Caleb made words out of the
magnet letters.
One day, I read this story to them...
It's a silly alphabet story about all of the letters mixing up their order, with Z going first, instead of last!
We did some more letter hunting (they seriously LOVE this) and they had to think backwards in order to put the letters in reverse ABC order. Tricky!
The rice & beans bin kept Shane busy for a good hour one morning. I'm pretty sure there were more rice/beans on the sheet than actually in the bins, but it's a fairly easy clean-up, and he loved it!
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Another fun ABC book that we read was this one...
For some more alphabetical order practice, the kids put foam
sticky letters in ABC order "sitting" on construction paper pencils (in the book mentioned above, the
letters fly through the sky on pencils). Meredith did the first half of the alphabet, and Caleb did the last half.
I came across some nice (and free!) printables over at Wild About Teaching. I didn't use them all, but did make use of some of them for some more uppercase/lowercase matching as well as practice with beginning sounds.
Some more fun ABC books that we read...
And more letter/word activities:
Uppercase/Lowercase matching with spoons (an idea I came across on Pinterest - original post for this activity here)...
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| So proud that she did them all! |
I just couldn't pass this one up....a fun Chicka Chicka Boom Boom snack one day. I found this idea on Pinterest (once again!)...
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| Graham crackers for trunk, apple slices for palms, grapes for coconuts and Alphabits cereal. |
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This week's theme Bible verse was Proverbs 30:5 - Every Word of God proves true. We talked about how God's Words (the ones in the Bible) are more important than any other words we could ever learn to read!
I wasn't originally planning to do a blog post for every unit. But, I really enjoy using this as a way to personally reflect on our weeks, and to document what we do! I have all but given up on traditional scrapbooking, and this is a much quicker and simpler (and less expensive) way to keep a record of things. So, stay tuned...our next unit is Apples!
