C is for Car

Here's a fun art project we did for letter C week that goes with the fun story Cars: Rushing! Honking! Zooming! by Patricia Hubbell

The road, cars, and even the exhaust from the cars are made out of the letter c. 

C is for Cookie (that's good enough for me!)

 Making letter c shaped sugar cookies during letter c week was a lot of fun! We started by sequencing the steps for making a cookie. We put each step in order of first, second, third, etc. 

  

The kids helped roll out the dough using soda cans as a rolling pin. 

Then added sprinkles for extra color and flavor. 

The end product was pretty tasty!

 And of course we had to sing this song:

A is for Apple

 Here are some of the apple activities we did during letter A week.

We taste tested apples to decide which color is our favorite.

They really couldn't decide, they like them all. 

We learned that apples have a secret star in the middle if you cut them in half horizontally.

We made apple smiles for snacks

 We picked numbered apples off this tree.

They rolled the dice . . .

Then picked the apple with the corresponding number.

 We practiced fine motor skills by picking apples off this tree with tongs. They flipped a number card, then picked that number of apples off their tree.
 

 We made apple hats to go with Dr. Seuss' Ten Apples Up On Top

Each child had 10 apple cut outs. Each apple was numbered 1 - 10. The kids traced the numbers . . .

. . .then glued them on word strip in the correct order. 

Letter B

 B is for . . . .

. . .bubble art (We had a fun time blowing bubbles, watching the colors mix, and talking about what you get when you mix two colors) (Click here for a more detailed post on how to create bubble art.)

Bubbles + paint= cool medium for making patterned paper

Even the mess is pretty!

. . .block towers (Click here for a detailed tutorial)

. . .balancing (Can you pick up the letter B while balancing on a board?)

. . .bowling

. . .bug snack (we made bugs using celery, peanut butter, and straight/regular pretzels)

B is for Block Towers

 Block towers were a huge hit during center time this week! 

On the table there were number cards and a bunch of blocks. Each child identified what number was on the card and then built a tower with the right number of blocks. 

We got this activity from http://fumblingthroughparenthood.blogspot.com/. Thanks for the fun idea!

Color Zoo

Color Zoo by Lois Elhert is one of our favorite books and I love how it helps kids work on their shapes and colors. The author makes fun animals using simple shapes for their various face features. As you turn the pages, it takes a large shape away to reveal a new animal. 

We made our own color zoo in class using a variety of shapes in a variety of sizes. I printed a picture of each student's favorite animal and we looked at the face to talk about what shape the ears, eyes, nose, and face were. Then the students choose the right shapes to make each animal face. 

Color Scavenger Hunt

 Here is a fun activity we did last month to practice our colors. 

Color Scavenger Hunt

We made binoculars and went on a scavenger hunt for colors. 

I gave each student a paper with a color on it and a blank square next to each color. As they find each color, you can have them draw what they found in the square or you can write what they found. 

Click here for a free printable. When you click on the link, there are a lot of ads on the page. You want to click the small grey download button right beneath the box that says view document. You will need to sign in to download the paper. You can sign up for a free 4shared account or use your social media outlet to download. Please leave a message below if you have any problems or questions. 

For detailed instructions on how to make the binoculars, click here. 

Scissors Practice

 I remember my first day as a preschool teacher. I planned the cooperative crayons activity. We were going to color and cut out the crayons and it was going to be great. The kids colored their crayons so I gave them some scissors and said, "Okay, cut it out" . . . The results weren't very pretty. 

I didn't realize that as a preschool teacher, it was my job to teach them how to use scissors and cut. I guess I thought they would just naturally know how to do it. 

Well, I've come a long way from that naive first day teacher and I know that we need to practice using scissors a lot before we move on to cutting things out. Here's a few ways we practice using scissors

Mosaics

Provide your students with scissors, white paper, glue, and strips of colorful paper of varying widths. (I do 1 inch, 1 1/2 inch and 1/2 inch)

Let them practice holding and using the scissors by cutting up the colored strips and gluing them to the white paper.

Then, the teacher can cut out their papers into a bigger shape to make a mosaic. We did butterflies, but you could do any shape that fits with what you are learning that day. 

Scissors Practice Pages

These pages are designed to help students practice cutting straight, curved and zigzag lines. The - open, move forward, close, open, move forward, close - pattern takes some practice to master. You can find a bunch of good pages at dltk-kids.com. The link is here.