Letter of the Week - E

This week was our examination of the letter E, the most commonly found letter in the English language. Why, already this post has featured the letter E a shocking 24 times! (now 25!)

Day One: We used leftover dyed egg shells from the mosaics to decorate our letter page.

Our alphabet book was Chicka Chicka Boom! Boom! We first discovered this book when my oldest was in kindergarten and soon we acquired our own copy. If you haven't read it before, you really ought to get it from your local library - or just go ahead and order it, since I'm sure you'll want to buy it once you've read it the first time. (Remember the fun we had with the palm trees I made to go with the book?)

Day Two: E is for Egg

*We ate fried eggs (and pancakes too, but those weren't 'on theme,' so should I even bother mentioning them?)

*We read two Dr. Suess books, Scrambled Eggs Super, and

* We recited Humpty Dumpty and used our Humpty Dumpty 'all' word family visual

*We made our Humpty Dumpty craft

Day Three: E is for Elephant

*We have an elephant costume that we pulled out to play dress up with.

*We did the action rhyme, 'The Elephant Goes Like This.' I'd not done this with my kids before, but he grabbed hold of it right away. I even videoed him doing it in his costume since it was so cute, but I cannot get it to upload and play. So here are the words and a description of the actions in case you wanted to try it at home:

The elephant goes like this, like that. (stomp one foot, then the other)

He's terribly big! (raise arms high above head)

And terribly fat! (stretch arms out to the sides)

He has no fingers, (close hands into fists to hide fingers)

He has no toes, (point at feet)

But goodness! gracious! WHAT A NOSE! (use arm like a trunk and make a trumpeting sound)

It was a fun little rhyme.

*We watched Dumbo

*We did an elephant dot-to-dot sheet and coloured the picture.

We read The Saggy Baggy Elephant, and Horton Hears A Who.

*We played our Elefun game.

Day Four: E is for Eric Carle

I quite enjoyed doing a little 'author study' as part of our letter of the week. I may include that again on future letters.

* We watched an online interview with Eric Carle talking about his art and his books. My children thought it was especially interesting to see what he actually looks like in real life.

*We read many, of Eric Carle's books. I had little activities to go with some of them, but not all. Books we read, and their accompanying activities, if any:

Little Cloud

Brown Bear, Brown Bear - played I spy

From Head To Toe - followed actions in the book, with kids repeating "I can do it!" after each.

Does a Kangaroo Have A Mother Too?

The Mixed Up Chameleon

The last book we read was The Grouchy Ladybug.

*After we read that one, I had a little craft for us to do. I had sketched out a ladybug outline and they painted it red and black. Then with a Q-tip, they dabbed the black spots onto their ladybug's back. After it was dry, we cut it out and added googly eyes. Funnily, my children didn't want to make the grouchy ladybug. They wanted their craft to be the friendly ladybug in the book, so they also added a smile, just to make things clearer.

I also had on hand 10 Little Rubber Ducks and Rooster's Off To See the World, but we just didn't have time to really get to them. Luckily, books never spoil and we can do something fun with them later.