Week 11 - Letter D

Last week was Letter D...for dinosaurs!

The memory verse was Philippians 2:14 - "Do everything without complaining or arguing."  It's a verse Jenna already knew because she has heard it many, many (many, many) times.  :)   So it was good review for the week!

At the beginning of each week, we sing our letter of the week song using a magnetic Leap Frog refrigerator toy I picked up at a garage sale.  The song goes, "D says duh, D says duh. Every letter makes a sound, D says duh."  It's a good introduction to the sound of the letter. 

Then we follow that up with the Starfall computer game.

Lacing card - I think she was  little scattered with this one - jumping from hole to hole instead of going in order.

Size Sort

So this week I had an epiphany...Grant enjoys matching the letter disks to the letters on the paper.  In the past I've given him either the capital or lowercase page while Jenna gets the opposite.  Then I dump out all the letters for him to find the right ones.  Then it dawned on me - that's pretty overwhelming for him to look through 26+ letters (I have duplicates of some letters).  So I just picked out the ones he needed to make the word "dinosaur".  To my amazement he was able to find and correctly place all the letters on the word without my help.  I'm not sure why it took me so long to think of this, but it makes sense to start out small and work your way up.  He was proud of himself for doing it all on his own as was I! 

Jenna's getting good at finding the letters and correctly matching them.  And she's discovering similarities about the letters.  For instance, the lowercase u and lowercase n look the same, just flipped upside down.  And the n and h are similar, except the h has a longer line.  The l and the t are also similar, but the t crosses in the middle.  So it's been neat seeing her make those connections.

Prewriting practice

Dinosaur puzzle

Letter hunt

Wikki Stix

Early in the week, we made dinosaur eggs.  I mixed together flour, dirt, sand, salt, and water.  Then we stuck little plastic dinosaurs in the "mud" and rolled the mud around to completely hide the dinosaurs.

We let the "eggs" sit in the cold garage for a few days to harden.

Then we went outside and broke open the eggs.  Thankfully the eggs weren't rock solid and really just required a little squeezing to break away the dirt from the dinosaurs.

Jenna LOVED it!  It's funny how surprised she acted each time she "cracked" one open.

And of course Grant enjoyed cracking them open too!

I pulled out the play dough we made a few weeks back and Jenna rolled it out to look like mud.  Then she took some extra little dinosaurs and had them "stomp" around in the dough.  She enjoyed making tracks, and we looked at the different footprints of the dinosaurs.  Then I also showed her how to make a fossil imprint of their bodies by pressing them in the dough.  Lots of fun!

Body Movement - making the letter D with their bodies.  Grant's face cracks me up!  Looking at the picture you'd think he was mad, but he loves doing these each week. 

Do-a-dot markers

He's so proud of his creation!

Coloring page

Patterns - She was able to do the bottom pattern on her own, but the top one threw her a little.  The ABC pattern made it a little tricky, but it was good practice.

Poke page

Color puzzles

Since it was D week, we decided we just had to make some homemade DONUTS!  We've never made homemade donuts before, but I recently saw a super easy recipe on Pinterest and thought we'd give it a try.  You just take Pillsbury canned biscuits, cut out a hole in the center...

...fry them in about 1/2 inch of oil on the stovetop, flipping them over when one side browns...

(looking YUMMY!!)

...then dip one side in butter and coat with a cinnamon/sugar mixture.  Repeat for the other side.

My helpers!

I wasn't sure how this would go - surprisingly enough, neither Jenna nor Grant are big donut fans.  We've gotten them donuts a few times thinking it's a special treat and then they'll take one bite and not like it.  :(  So I figured that might be the case this time too, but they both surprised me.  They each devoured their donuts and wanted more (although we just stuck with one - two donuts might have been a bit of a sugar overload!)

The finished product!  Drew loved them so much, we actually just made another batch last night. 

Dinosaur alphabet lacing

Pattern Blocks

Letter Writing

Cutting Practice page

Capital/Lowercase letter sort

Clip cards

For her ABC book, I thought she could punch out a bunch of little dots from construction paper to then glue to the letter D.  However, I didn't realize how difficult the hole punching part actually is - plus, to get enough dots to fill the D took a lot of punching.  So I did the hole punching and then she sprinkled them on top of the glue on her paper.

I always try to find foods that start with our letter of the week to eat during that week.  So for lunch one day we had dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets, a few Doritos, and Danimals yogurt.  I also found some dinosaur-shaped cookie/crackers that the kids ate for snack. 

Letter D maze

Adding the letter D to our coconut tree

When Jenna was a year old, I signed her up for a Music and Movement class at the YMCA.  The teacher gave us a CD of all the songs we sang in the class, and one of the songs just happened to be, "Dinosaur March."  So I pulled out the CD this week and we marched around the house while singing, "We are the dinosaurs, marching, marching.  We are the dinosaurs, now what do you think of that?  We are the dinosaurs, marching, marching.  We are the dinosaurs, we make the earth flat."  Then in between the chorus they have the "dinosaurs" do different things like pretend to eat and lay down on the ground for a nap.  Jenna loved it! 

We also watched an episode of "Dinosaur Train," which is a show on PBS. 

Overall it was a fun letter D week!

Week 10 - Letter C

This past week was Letter C.  Our memory verse was Colossians 3:20 - "Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord."

Introduction to letter C - sang our C song and then Jenna played the Starfall computer game for letter C.

Letter C puzzle - she got this one all on her own.

Magnet page

Letter C Pattern Blocks - she really enjoys these pages!  I remember always enjoying pattern blocks when I was younger. 

Caterpillar number game - I would call out a number and she had to jump on it.  Then we switched and she called out numbers while I jumped to them, although I believe she called hers out in numerical order, which thankfully made it easy on me.  :)

Grant played with the Wikki Stix while we worked on other school activities.  Funny how he always wants his picture taken when he's done.  :)

She used her alphabet lacing pieces to spell the word "cake."

Caterpillar capital/lower case C (and color) puzzles

Do-a-dot markers - don't you love Grant's face?  He's been acting goofy lately for pictures and will "scowl" in the picture and then give a big smile.

Clip Cards - I pulled out my colorful clips from my teaching days.

Letter Hunt worksheet

Body Movement - She made the letter C with her body.

We played this dice game together.  Each person would roll the dice and then move their piece to that number on the caterpillar.  The one to reach the head first, won. 

Caterpillar lacing card

I've noticed her coloring is improving quite a bit.  She's not staying in the lines, but at least it's not a bunch of scribbles all over the paper. 

Caterpillar size sort

How many caterpillars?  I put the number card on the paper and she filled it with the correct number of caterpillars.  She did really well with this activity!

Cutting practice - I have to say, I was very impressed with her cutting skills this week!  I was out of the room when she did this page and came back to find she had already completed it...and done it really well!

With it being C week, we had to bake Daddy's favorite Cake - yellow cake with chocolate icing!  The kids enjoyed helping put the different ingredients in the bowl and then hold the mixer.  I absolutely LOVE this picture of them!

The best part of baking a cake...licking the spoons afterward!!

I just had to include this picture - this was about picture #6 of me trying to get them to hold their "spoons" while looking at the camera.  Hmm...do you think those smiles are somewhat forced?  :) 

Jenna put the caterpillar in numerical order 1-10 by herself, then I helped her with 11-20.  She's pretty good with recognizing numbers 1-10, so it might be time to start branching out to 20.  We'll see.  My goal by the end of the year was that she would be able to recognize numbers 0-20, so no rush to start the 2nd half quite yet unless I find she's starting to get bored with 0-10.

Grant pulled down our color sorting bears while Jenna was working on something else.  He was doing a really good job sorting them into the correct colored bowls.

Letter C poke page

After Jenna poked all the holes in her page, she held it up to the light to see the light shining through the holes.

Letter C writing page - I tried to get her to write a "c" on her own to the right of the page at the bottom.  Not bad.

Cutting her caterpillar circles out.

Finished product after she cut out the caterpillar circles and glued them on her paper.

Of course with it being letter C week, we had to read Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  I found this adorable lacing activity that goes along with the book.  As I read the story, Jenna found the pieces and laced them onto a string attached to the caterpillar.  Then at the end when the caterpillar makes a cocoon around himself, I had her put all the pieces into a bag, I put the bag behind my back, took out the pieces, put in the butterfly, and then had her pull out what was left in the bag.  She thought that was cute.

Jenna lacing the pieces on the string.

I actually read the story to her twice.  The first time I read it, I had her color in the food graph. 

Wikki Stix letter C

This week with the graphing pages, I had her color in the boxes with her dry-erase marker.

Whenever Jenna gets to use a marker, Grant must use one too!  So he drew on his whiteboard...and then wanted me to take his picture.  (Apparently it's hard to look at the camera, when there are other things in the room he needs to focus on.  Haha!)

For Jenna's ABC book, she glued cotton balls onto the letter C.

I was SOO proud of Jenna with her patterns this week!  She did them COMPLETELY on her own and got them right!  I thought for sure the ABB pattern in the middle would mess her up, but she got it.  So proud!  :)

Caterpillar Letter Search

We used stickers for the letter maze this week.

As usual, we finished out the week reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and putting the letter C on our coconut tree.

We also Skyped with Aunt Cathy this week (which we ALL enjoyed!!) and watched some Care Bear shows that we rented from the library (Jenna kept calling it "Bear Care") - boy, that takes me back to my childhood!  Lots of fun!