Letter Of The Week - Z

The last Letter of the Week! Wow!

Day One:

Our last letter-of-the-week alphabet book was one that I had been looking forward to: The Z was Zapped by Chris Van Allsburg. This is an illustrator that I have long since loved, and to find out that he had an alphabet book was so exciting. And well worth the wait to get to the end of the alphabet, I might add. Each page shows a letter that is somehow being acted upon, and on the back of the page, it has the text. I liked this format because it let us guess what the word might be that is happening to the letter.

For our final page in our own alphabet book, we decorated our Z with zippers.

Day Two: Z is for Zebra

*We made a zebra puzzle

*We did marble painting, where I cut out a white horse and we rolled black paint to create the stripes

*We made a zebra footprint craft. (How did I not photograph this???? Arg!)

*We read To Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street. (Granted there is only a zebra in there for a second - but he is there!

Day Three: Z is for Zig Zag

Note: I seem to have not taken any pictures at all of this day. That or my memory card is acting up. Either way, sorry to disappoint. It was a pretty low-key day though, so maybe I just didn't find anything 'picture worthy.'

*We sang the Sharon, Lois and Bram song, "Rags" where their pet dog walks 'zig-zag.'

*We cut paper with my scrapbooking scissors to make zig-zags

*We read the poem, 'There Was a Crooked Man'

Day Four: Z is for Zoo

Obviously, this was the best day. And a great way to have a celebration of finishing our Letter of the Week project.

We happened to show up on a day when they were getting a new bear, and there were bear activities and stations all over the zoo celebrating their new animal. So great to just happen upon that!

* We listened to zoo music on the way there

*We read If I ran the Zoo, and Never Ever Shout in a Zoo

And just like that, our Letter of the Week project was over. I'm so glad we did it!

Letter Of The Week - Y

Day One:

(again, sorry about the sideways photo!)

We made our letter Y and decorated it with Yellow Yarn! I thought it was funny how my guy decided to cut little strips of it and glue them on individually, rather than just one long piece. Funny kid.

We read a book called ABC Do You Ever Feel Like Me, (which I can't seem to find a link for on Amazon. Check your local library, since that is where we found ours). It had pictures of children with different expressions. Excited, Scared, Happy, etc. It was a good way to open up a conversation about feelings and what can make us feel one way or another.

Day Two: Y is for Yellow

*I gave him a yellow bath

*We wore yellow clothes

*We made homemade Playdoh and added yellow food colouring

*We ate yellow Jello

*We listened to the Beatles, "Yellow Submarine" which he thought was a hilarious song, by the way

*We read Kitten Red, Yellow, Blue

Day Three: Y is for Yucky

This was a fun day!

* We made slime - ewww!

*Ate Sloppy Joes for supper

*We read Junie B. Jones and the Yucky Blucky Fruitcake

*We made Magic Mud

*We dug in our garden looking for worms

Day Four: Y is for Yo-Yo

This seems to be another inevitable alphabet day...much like 'x is for x-ray.' But we had fun with it.

*We found a Yo-you worksheet and coloured it.

*We listened to a selection of Yo-Yo Ma's music

*We played with a yo-yo

*Watched a sesame street yo-yo clip

*We read Yo Yo Man

Letter Of The Week - X

X is a difficult letter to work with! I kind of felt like a slacker because I could only come up with a three-day, instead of a four-day week for it.

Day One:

We made our X page and decorated it with white Popsicle sticks. Like our Letter-O week, this wasn't something that started with X, but was designed to look like something - and x-ray.

We made our X page and decorated it with white Popsicle sticks. Like our Letter-O week, this wasn't something that started with X, but was designed to look like something - and x-ray. (sorry - don't know why this picture loaded sideways!)

Our alphabet book was called Eating the Alphabet and had foods for every letter from A-Z.

Day Two: X is for X-ray

*We looked at lots of pictures of x-rays on line and did our best to figure out what we were looking at. Was it a hand? A foot? An arm?

*Then we looked at x-rays of animals and figured those out. A dog? A horse? A bird? Very fun, actually.

*We drew pictures of skeletons on black paper with white chalk to create our own 'x-rays.' (I love that his skeleton has a smile!)

*We read The X-ray Picture Book of Big Buildings of the Ancient World, and talked about how x-rays aren't only for our bodies, but can be used to learn other things too.

*We made 'x-ray' jello. (Just regular jello, but you can see the fruit inside, just like an x-ray lets you see the inside of a person)

*We played a version of our Mystery Bag Game, but we pretended that we using our hands like an x-ray machine to figure out what was inside the bag, even though we couldn't see it.

Day Three: X is for Xylophone

*We worked on a xylophone worksheet

*We made a water-glass xylophone and filled each cup with a different level of water. We added food colouring to make it pretty, and then we tested out the sounds and arranged them from lowest to highest.

*We made a paper xylophone craft. We coloured then cut out, then glued the bars from smallest to biggest.

*We listened to xylophones on YouTube.

*One disappointment we had was that we weren't able to find a book about xylophones at our library. So rather than have a true xylophone book, we just read some of our alphabet books we had on hand, which uniformly featured a xylophone at X.

Letter Of The Week - W

Getting near the end of the Letter Of The Day Project!

Day One:

*We made our W page and decorated the letter with some crafting wire I had. Our alphabet book was Wildlife ABC, 123. It was beautifully illustrated with endangered animals. After the ABC part, it had a numbers section that went up by ones until 20, then by tens until 100.

Day Two: W is for Wolf

My picture taking frequency has gone down. I'm afraid the only picture of our wolf day is this one of us playing with our wolf puppet. We also:

* read Little Red Riding Hood, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, and Peter and the Wolf (I wasn't able to find a link to the edition we read, but this one looks like a good beginner level)

* played What Time Is It, Mr. Wolf?

Day Three: W is for Weather

*We read Snow Day

*Sang some Kindermusik weather songs: Micheal Finnegan, and Sally Goes Round the Sun

*We made a wind chime from a hanger and some kitchen utensils and hung it outside

*We played a Sesame Street game where you get Elmo ready to play outside in different kinds of weather

*We put drops of water on one side of a sheet of waxed paper and used our own 'wind' to blow the drops to the other side. Then we put some drops in the middle and made a game of who could blow the drops to the other person's side first. (I won!)

Day Four: W is for Whales

*We did a whale number sheet

*Sang Baby Beluga by Raffi

*Read Pinocchio and The Grouchy Ladybug

*Watched 'Shallow Seas' of Planet Earth about the baby humpback whale. (very interesting!)

Letter Of The Week - V

Time to catch up on a letter of the week post.

Day One:

*We made our letter for our binder. We decorated the V with Velcro sticky-tabs.
*We read A Cow's Alfalfabet for our book.

Day Two: V is for Vacation

*We were happy to be home and on summer vacation with all the kids and so we celebrated that for our letter of the week.

*We put on swimming suits and played in the back yard
*We ate freezies and watermelon
*We read The Happy Lion's Vacation and The Sandcastle Contest

Day Three: V is for Video Games

Oh the guilt that followed this letter day! My boy loved it, absolutely, but it wasn't the type of thing I would have initiated. But when your four year old says, "Hey! V could be for Video Game!" What else can you do?

*We played Super Mario Bros together, and wore the Mario hats he got from a birthday party he attended

*We played preschool computer games on sesamestreet.org

*We read Too Many Toys.

Day Four: V is for Vegetables

Perhaps in an attempt to make up for the day before, we did lots of activities with veggies.

*We read The Ugly Vegetables, and How Are You Peeling

*We did a worksheet with pictures of vegetables on one side and their names written down the other. Then he had to sound out the words and match it with the picture. He did VERY well. I was so impressed!

*We ate veggies and dip for a snack

*We did potato stamping

*We played Mr. Potato Head

*We went out into the yard and weeded our vegetable patch.

It was a good week, even if I was a slacker mom on day three!

Letter Of The Week - U

The letter U is Unbelievable! Another great week.

Day One:

* We made our letter page, this time decorating the U with stickers of umbrellas.
*We read Alphabet Adventure for our book. I really liked this book since it wasn't a "A is for Apple" type. It was actually a story about some lowercase letters who wanted to go to school to teach the kids, but the letter i had lost it's dot and they had to search far and wide.

*We also watched a Sesame street video of a song called, "U Really Got a Hold on Me."

Day Two: U is for Up

*We grabbed our stuffies and sang The Grand Old Duke of York, and raised and lowered our stuffies as the song progresses.
*We watched the Disney movie, "Up."
*We watched another Sesame Street song about Up and Down
*We read Robert Munsch's Up, Up Down, and Up and Down by Oliver Jeffers

Day Three: U is for Unicorn

*We taped Popsicle sticks on our foreheads to be 'horns' and we played Unicorn Family. This is exactly like playing house, except you are all unicorns.
*We read Goldilicious and Alphabeasts

*We did a unicorn dot to dot page
*We did an online puzzle

Day Four: U is for Umbrella

I found a few great printables that we turned into memory games.

*Umbrellas and Raindrops
*We turned them all over and had to find the matches of the number on the umbrella and the number of raindrops. It was a good exercise to review counting and sight recognition for numbers.

*We used pillows for puddles, and opened up umbrellas in our living room and sang, "Walking 'Round the Puddle." Very fun.

*We made a fun craft from cupcake wrappers and pipe-cleaners.

*Here is the other printable I found. It was a shape/colour matching one.

*Winning feels good!

*We read The Umbrella, and The Umbrella Party

*We found another online puzzle

Letter Of The Week - T

Terrific letter T!

Day One: We made our letter T with Toothpicks this week, which was very easy and quick indeed. And for our alphabet story book we read Teddy Bear's ABC, which was cute, though I didn't LOVE it.

Day Two: T is for Turtle

*We read Yertle the Turtle, and several Franklin stories

*We sang, "I had a little turtle"

*We played a game based off Yertle, where we put a toy frog on a tower of blocks and threw a bean bag to knock him down.

*We watched The Tortoise and the Hare. (Turtle and Tortoise is close enough, right?)

Day Three: T is for Teddy Bear

*We had a teddy bear picnic in our living room

*We sang Teddy Bear Picnic

*We did a teddy bear colouring page

*We did the action verse, 'Teddy bear, Teddy Bear':

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear,

Turn Around.

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear,

Touch the ground.

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear,

Show your shoe.

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear,

I love you.

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear,

Go upstairs.

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear,

Say your prayers.

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear,

Turn out the light.

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear,

Say, "Goodnight."

*We read Winnie the Pooh, Corduroy, and Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

Day Four: T is for Train

*I borrowed a train-shaped cupcake pan from a friend and we made and decorated a very tasty train.

*We watched a Thomas the Train video from the library

*We build a new train track on our table and played trains together

*We read The Little Engine that Could, and The Little Red Caboose

Letter Of The Week - S

Had another great week with our letter. This week was S. Stupendous!
Day One: This week came around the time we were trying to plant our garden. But we had such a wet and rainy spring, we hadn't made it outside yet. On the upside, this gave me plenty of materials with which to decorate....Seeds!

The Turn-Around, Upside-Down Alphabet Book was this week's selection. It was adorable! Each page had a large letter on it, and you physically turned the book to all four directions to see what the letter would make. An arrow? An alligator's mouth? So fun.

Day Two: S is for Shapes

This is the first time I'd done a sound that uses a combination of letters. Yes, S is the first letter of 'shapes' but shapes doesn't start with an Ssss sound. I was okay with this little blip, since my son is really very strong on his sounds, and combinations are probably more appropriate for his level.

*We pulled out this classic Tupperware toy. Doesn't everyone have this? Didn't you all grow up with them?
*For a snack, I cut food into different shapes and we ate them. Cheese was a square, orange slices were circles, pretzel sticks were rectangles... it was fun

* We used our unit blocks. I love unit blocks. Seriously, if you don't have any, you've got to go out and get some for your child's next birthday. It is a classic for a reason. So, before we started to build with them, we looked at how we could combine some shapes to make others. Ie: Two triangles can make a square, etc.

* Then we played around and built some fun things together.

*We played our Cookie Monster Wii game. (There are some shape activities)

*We read Square Cat, Circle Dogs and Shapes, Shapes, Shapes

Day Three: S is for Sports

Back to a simple Ssss sound this time.

*We read Clifford's Sports Day and Just One Goal

*We played catch with our scoops toy (you can get this for $1)

*We played floor hockey

*We played with our little basketball hoop

Day Four: S is for Snakes

*We pulled out our Playdoh and made some slithery snakes!

*This was my rattlesnake.

*We played Snakes and Ladders

*We read Shel Silverstein's poem, "Boa Constrictor" as well as the story, Little Green Snake

*We played with our snake sock puppets

*We played Snake-and-mouse hide and seek.(The person who is it, is a snake. All the hiders are mice)

And that was it! Another fun week!