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. 

Handprint Bird in Nest

 Spring is such a fickle time. Yesterday was 70 degrees here and today it snowed. Oh, sun we want you to come and stay. Sigh. At least we get to see the sun more often and it's fun to see the buds on the trees. We were so excited to find out that the previous owners of our house planted daffodils around our front window. It is also fun to hear birds chirping in the morning. (Except maybe not this morning because we were having a crazy storm - snow & hail & wind) 

   

Speaking of birds, here is a great bird project to do with your little ones. I must subconsciously like birds because looking back, this is the 3rd bird project we've done. 

This one is pretty simple. Make the bird's body with a painted handprint. Add an eye and beak. Give the bird a place to roost using ripped paper art. Glue on ripped brown paper pieces to add interesting depth to your picture. 

Easy Peasy!

If you are interested in a more intensive spring project, try our bobble head chicks. This link also has a great tutorial for easy 3-D bird nests.

Or, for a more whimsical bird, try our balloon birds. 

E is for Elephant

An upside down hand print makes a fun and easy elephant art project.Just make a hand print with gray paint, add googly eyes, paper ears, and draw a tail!

 

Mother's Day Card

If you are a current mom, skip this post unless you want to ruin the surprise. : )

Are they gone? Okay, good. Here are the cards we made for mother's day this year. 

The outside had this poem on it:

Sometimes you get discouraged
Because I am so small
And always leave my fingerprints
On furniture and walls.

But every day I'm growing -
I'll be grown some day
And all those tiny handprints
Will surely fade away.

So here's a little handprint
Just so you can recall
Exactly how my fingers looked
When I was very small.

The inside had this hand print cut out on it. If you fold a paper in half and trace it so that the thumb and first finger are on the fold, it will make this heart shape between the fingers.

We also made a mother's day chocolate bar wrapper cover to cover a large chocolate bar to give to our moms as well. 

Thanks to all you great moms out there. You are the best! Happy Mother's Day!

F is for Friendship

High five for good friends! We read the book Chester's Way by Kevin Henkes. It is a great book about making new friends and treating each other kindly.

After we read the book, we made a list of five things that good friends do. After we made our list, each child gave a high five to the paper with paint.

H is for. . .

. . . Helping Hands
We read the book Hands Are Not for Hitting and talked about how we can use our hands to help others. 
Here's the link to the Hands are for helping page.


. . . Healthy Hands
I posted this lesson a while ago and we didn't actually get around to doing it, so we added it in to our letter H week.

. . . Hedgehog
We read the book The Hat and made the hedgehogs found here.

. . .Hiding
We found letter Hs hidden around the room then played hide and go seek to hide like the Hs.

. . . Letter H obstacle courses
HittingHula Hoop spinningHopscotch

Q is for . . .

. . .Quadrilaterals
For math time we looked at our pattern blocks. We looked at each shape and counted how many sides it had. We sorted the blocks into blocks with 4 sides and other blocks.

After we sorted the blocks, we used our pattern blocks to make pictures on printable templates. (they came from www.kellyskindergarten.com)
. . . Quilts
We talked about what a quilt is . . . a big blanket made up of shapes that fit together. We looked at a couple of different quilts and discussed what shapes made up that quilt. We also talked about how people make friendship quilts. They make them and give them to their friends to remind them that they love them. We made our own friendship quilt.
We traced and colored our hands on our quilt block. Then we sewed our quilt blocks individually. I punched the holes for the sewing part and we used yarn with tape at the end. I taught the kids that when we sew, we go up and down and we talked about going around the edge without skipping holes.
I was very impressed that most of them got it after 1 or two tries and we didn't have to resew very many times.