Letter Walk

 

Good readers notice letters and words everywhere. Here is a great activity for using at school, at home, or even in the car. The activity is simple, but is great for raising letter awareness and working on letter recognition. Simply write letters around the edge of a styrofoam plate. Cut slits between each letter. When they find a letter, they rip that letter off of their plate until they have found the whole alphabet. 

The kids had so much fun looking for letters all around the classroom. 

They even found letters on someone's shirt and thought that was a lot of fun.  

 

L is for Listen

 We had two different listening centers during letter L week that got a lot of traffic from all the kids. 

Loud/Quiet Center

The kids were given various materials and empty easter eggs. 

They filled the eggs with one material and guessed if it would make a loud or soft sound.

Then they shook the egg to test their guess.

After everyone had a chance, we sorted the materials between loud and quiet on a T chart. 

Identify That Sound Center - Click here for more details.

L is for Ladybug

Aren't these the cutest little ladybugs you have ever seen?! 

We made these during letter L week using a tutorial from One Little Project. 

After we made our ladybugs, we sang some ladybug songs:

See the Ladybug - sung to "Frere Jacques"

See the ladybug, see the ladybug.
Watch it crawl, watch it crawl.
See it crawling higher,
See it crawling higher.
Watch it crawl, up the wall.

See the ladybug, see the ladybug.
Watch it crawl, watch it crawl.
See it crawling lower,
See it crawling lower.
Way down low, to my toe.

~Jean Warren

I'm a Little Ladybug - sung to "I'm a Little Teapot"

I'm a little ladybug on the go,
Landing on an arm, now an elbow.
See me fly around and around your hand,
Now watch as on your thumb I land.

I'm a little ladybug searching for some toes,
But watch me quickly land on your nose.
Now I look around and head for your hair,
I muss it up a bit, then pat it down with care.

I'm a little ladybug looking for a knee,
I'm just so happy you're not bugged by me.
Now you see me heading for your chest,
This little ladybug needs some rest.

~Susan M. Paprocki of IL

Ladybugs Fly - sung to "Three Blind Mice"

Fly, fly, fly.
Ladybugs fly..
Fly over here.
Fly over there.
They fly up high and they fly down low.
Around and around and around they go.
They fly fast, and they fly-fly slow.
Oh, ladybugs fly.

~Cheryl's Sweethearts ChildCare

L is for Lamb

Mary Had a Little Lamb is a poem that has a lot of letter l's in it. So, we used it to do letter identification during letter L week. We started by looking at the poem as a class and taking turns finding the letter l in the poem and highlighting them.

The kids then got their own copy of the poem and found the letters on their own. 

After they found all the letters, they made a hand print lamb at the bottom of their poem using their hand, googly eyes, and cotton balls. 

L is for Lion

Pictures are an important part of helping kids figure out how to "read" a story. Using wordless picture books can be a great way to help kids learn to use the pictures to tell that story. We read this beautiful Caldecott Medal award winner by Jerry Pinkney. It is the story of the Lion and the Mouse that doesn't use any words.

The first time we read it, we didn't talk, we just looked at the pictures. 

The second time we read the story, the kids told me the story in their own words as we looked through the pictures. 

Then we made our own lion pictures using our faces and construction paper strips. 

Check out more detailed instructions here.

L is for Listen

  

Here's a great kid favorite that is also a great learning tool to help explore the sense of hearing. 

Here's What You Do:

1. Choose 7-8 things that make noise. Some can be traditional noise makers like musical instruments, but also include some things that think outside the box. For example, a jar full of water or a stapler.  I have even saved a few baby toys to use for this center even though my babies aren't quite babies anymore. :( 

2. Take pictures of each thing individually. Print and cut out each picture. 

3. Put up a partition between two students. We like to use our "offices." They are two file folders taped together and stood up on end. 

4. Have one student make noise with one of the items and have the other student try to identify which picture is making the noise. Then have the kids trade places. 

It seems simple, but I have to say from experience that this is a favorite year after year.

L is for Letter

We did a letter walk for letter L week. I wrote the alphabet around the edges of a plate and we walked around trying to find all the letters. When we found a letter, we folded it down and tore it off. (It was a styrofoam plate.)

Thank you to Whatdidudo2day for the fun idea!

L is for Library

The library is a great place to encourage a love of reading. Libraries usually let kids get their own library card at age 4 or 5. Plus, many have great story times and activities for preschoolers. For letter L week, Anya was really excited to go and get her first library card!

We read this fun book - Library Lion by Michelle Knudsen - before we went. 

 

It is about a lion who wants to go to the library. It discusses rules of the library in a fun story with great pictures. This book is really great for making inferences. Inferences are when you figure something out without the story telling you. For example, the lion walks away slowly with his head down. You figure out that the lion is sad.

We hope you'll have as much fun exploring your library as we do!

L is for Lion

 Who needs to wait for Halloween to dress up like a lion? Here's a fun deviation from the paper plate lion heads we did last year. Instead of using a paper plate, use a picture of the child. 

Now that's one cute lion!

Here's What You Need:

• 1 X 6 orange strips
• large photo of the child's face
• glue
• scissors
• markers
• construction paper

Here's What You Do:

1. Cut out the child's face and glue it onto the construction paper. For younger lions, draw a circle around the face to give them a guide where to glue the paper strips.
2. Glue the orange paper strips around the face by only putting glue at one end of the strip.
3. Draw a lion nose a whiskers. 
4. Use scissors to carefully curl the strips like you would curling ribbon. 

** Update: If you curl the paper around a pencil instead of with scissors, it gives a more coiffed look like the cowardly lion in the Wizard of Oz. I like it much better. 

King of the Jungle & Kites

K is for King of the Jungle! We used bulletin board borders to make these jungle themed crowns for letter K day! 

 

The kids colored and cut out the K shaped King then glued them onto the border. Then we stapled it together to make a crown. 

Feel free to use the lion picture for your King of the Jungle project.  

We made our homemade kites again this year and the kids had a lot of fun. To check out the step by step instructions, see our original kite post here

L is for . . .

 . . . listen. 

 

We listened to how different objects sound inside a plastic egg. We predicted whether it would make a loud or soft sound and then tested our prediction. We put the information we gathered onto a T chart. 

. . . lamb. 

 

Mary's lamb to be exact. We sang Mary Had a Little Lamb and then highlighted all the letter l's in the first two verses. 

. . . lovebug.

 

We made lovebugs to hold our Valentine's in. The original instructions can be found here. (This picture isn't the greatest, you really should check out the other post. : ) We also made the ladybug snacks mentioned in the same post.

. . . love. 

 

The kids matched heart halves for Valentine's Day. I laminated card stock hearts and then cut them in half using my silly scissors mentioned here. One side had upper and lowercase letters for them to match up. Then, they flipped it over and the back was blank. Then, they matched up the hearts based on the pattern of the cut that the scissors made.

L is for Lion!

When studying the jungle, you can't leave out the king! We made lion faces this week and read an amazingly beautiful and fresh take on The Lion and the Mouse. We read the version by Jerry Pinkney. 

 

The art is amazing and the fun part about this book is that there are no words. We talked as a class about how using the pictures in a book can help us understand and know what's going on in the story. It's a important comprehension strategy for young readers. The first time we read the story, we read it silently and I had the kids make up what was happening in the story in their head. Then we read it again and talked about what was happening in the pictures.

After, we made our own lion faces complete with a crazy mane of hair. 

Here's What You Need:

• Paper plate
• Brown, white, orange, and black construction paper
• Glue sticks
• Crayons

Here's What You Do:

1. Cut a lot of strips of the orange paper. Ours were 1 X 4.5 inches. 
2. Cut out eyes using the white and black. Cut out a nose using the brown.
3. Color the inside circle of the plate yellow.
4. Color the outside circle of the plate orange.
5. Glue on the face and draw a mouth and wiskers.
6. Flip the plate upside down and glue the orange strips around the edge of the plate.
7. Curl the orange strips with an open pair of scissors like you would curling ribbon.