H is for Hat

Happy hat day!

For hat day we read the book The Hat by Jan Brett In this book the hedgehog gets stuck wearing an unusual hat, a woolen stocking. He encounters many of the animals on the farm who ask him about his unique headwear.  After the story, the kids colored and cut out pictures of the animals and glued them in order of apperance in the book.

H is for Hide

Did you know that the letter H's favorite thing to do is to hide? We found some of those tricky hiding letter H's and sorted them.

Then in honor of their favorite activity, we played hide and seek for a few minutes. This is usually one of our favorite days. The kids have a blast and I love the excuse to make my kids clean their closets and under their beds.

Letter H Obstacle Course

During letter H week we had a blast doing a letter H themed obstacle course. They did a hopscotch, hulahoop, hopped across some bases, ran around the tree, and hit the ball.

. . . hopsotch

. . . hulahoop . . . hopping . . . hit

G is for Graph

We learned about how to make graphs during letter G week. I provided a paper with all the kid's names listed at the top and a bar graph below that. We counted the number of letters in each name and made a bar graph based on how many letters were in the name. 

Here are a few things I did to make this lesson go more smoothly:

1. When putting the names at the top of the page, I made each name a different color. Since most of my kids can't read, I could ask them to look for the blue name or red name, etc. and then we would count the letters together. 

2. I made a large graph that I displayed and filled in as the kids were filling in theirs so they could check if they were doing it right.

3. At the beginning we did the first 3 names together. The kids who were able to work more independently moved on and the kids who still needed help continued to do it with me. 

 

F is for . . .

. . . float. We found letters and created words using floating bottle caps. 

The kids would pick a letter or word from the laminated word stips. Then they would fish out the bottle caps with the correct letters on them. 

This is an engaging and easy activity to do any time. You just need plastic bottle caps (like from juice containers, milk gallons, or gatorade bottles), water, and a slotted spoon. I just used a sharpie to write the letters on the inside of the cap. Sometimes they start to fade and I just rewrite them when that happens.  . . . fly. The kids practiced identifying letters with our fly swat game. I would call out a letter and they would swat it with the fly swatter. Want to play your own fly swat game? Download our alphabet of flies here.

. . . fall. We read the book, Let It Fall. After we used tissue paper to make our own fall trees. 

D is for

. . . dump! The kids filled a bucket choosing only items that started with the letter d and when it was full, they got to dump it out. For a more detailed post on how to create your own dumping activity, see the post here.

. . . dotted diamonds! We used bingo markers to make dots on a diamond. I have seen the bingo markers in the pen or kids craft section of the dollar store.  We read the book Lots of Dots by Craig Fraizer. It shows how dots can be used to make fun pictures. . . . dinosaur feet! We used cracker boxes to create dinosaur feet. I spray painted each one green. The kids painted them and added claws using double sided tape that I put on th edge of each box. 

Then we had a lot of fun stomping around the classroom and being dinosaurs. (This is a picture I took of Brandon later in the day for our family blog. The pictures I took during class were too blurry to use.)

We even sang "We are the Dinosaurs" by the Laurie Berkner band.

Fire Station Visit

We had so much fun on our annual fire station open house fieldtrip. I was so excited that so many parents were able to join us and I hope the kids had fun, were inspired, and learned a little too. 

We tried on fireman apparrel.

We watched how they put out fires in two ways. The lit this huge tower of fire. We could feel how warm it was even though we were so far away. 

First the firemen put it out with a hand held hose. 

Next they used a mounted ladder hose on a fire truck.

We checked out an ambulance. (Don't mind our photo bomer in the front left. Haha)

The kids also learned what to do in a fire by crawling through a "smoke" filled trailer. (It was really just a fog machine.)

We watched a demonstation of how they help in car crashes. They took apart a car! It was pretty cool.

And one of the kids' favorite parts was getting high fives from the firemen.

I sure do love these kids and love my job!