The first week of January 2012

It was nice to have a form of "normal" back in my daycare routine.  I like routine and structure and work best when I have that... the children do too!

This week we continued our letter study with letter Ll.  Below is the letter book that went with our study.

 This is the cover of our book.  We colored the letter Ll and the log.

 On the left we put together our three piece puzzles of the letter Ll and we circled letters

that were the same in each row that are in the first box.  On the right we found the one that

was different and did a pre-writing/recognition of pictures that begin with the /l/ sound. The majority

of these activities are from "Go For the Code".

 On the left we did a letter hunt from Confessions of a Homeschooler.  On the right we

listened to clues and then followed the directions to color the picture and we found "l's"

in the assorted letters on the bottom of the page... again from "Go For the Code".

 On the left we drew lines from the letter l to pictures that began with the /l/ sound and

we traced letter Ll's.  On the right we circled the letter that each picture began with and again

traced letter Ll's.  Some of these activities were from "Go For the Code".

On the left we colored the pictures that started with the /l/ sound and printed the letter

l.  On the right we drew lines from each picture to the letter we heard in the beginning of

each picture and traced/printed letter Ll's. 

On the left we circled the letter at the corner of the triangle in which the picture began with

and we traced/printed Ll's.  On the right we said the name of the picture word, circled the letter

that the picture begins with and printed it on the line.  We also colored pictures that started with

the /l/ sound. 

For New Years we made balloons telling what we want to do in the New Year.  I got this pattern and idea from a blog that I thought I pinned... but I didn't.  Sorry.

We made New Year's Party Hat Mosaics using the punches from a hole puncher.  This I got off Pinterest (gotta love that site!!!!) here. It took them quite a while to complete... but I think they look great!  We learned patience and perseverance with this activity.

And we did this follow the line activity to the year from here.  A little challenging for some at first but when they caught on... they caught on.  I had them start at the balloon with a marker the same color as the balloon to help them figure it out... seemed to work.

This month our community helper will be Pam the Pilot... so we will be talking about airplanes and taking a plane to some of the arctic regions so we can learn about them.  So after the children were introduced to Pam and we talked about what a pilot does we made airplane mobiles.

 We sponge painted a paper plate blue and once dry we sponge painted

white clouds onto the blue sky.

 We carefully colored and cut out our airplanes.  Look at that concentration!!!

We taped our airplanes onto the strings that I placed onto

the plates.

And our planes were ready to take off.

We also role played being planes... we took off, flew high, dove down low, went in a circle, etc... we had a lot of fun doing this and because I was participating I couldn't get a picture.

We were introduced to the season of winter. 

We did a sorting activity in which they sorted things they would wear in summer vs. winter.  You can get the sort here.

We made a winter scene.  The popsicle sticks were the trees... we drew in some other things... and we used our fingers to paint some snow.

We heard the story of "The Little Snow Girl" in which I had picture cards to go along with the story.

And we made coffee filter snowflakes after we heard the story.

And started our marshmallow snowmen that I found on Pinterest here.  I will post the completed project next week.

And our last activity was a science experiment.  I put an ice cube into a Ziploc bag and asked the children where we could place it to get it to melt the fastest.  They all put it on the window sill because it was sunny outside... I put mine on the heater register.  We watched in amazement at different points in the morning to see who's melted the fastest.  We learned the warmer it was... the faster it melted.

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you enjoyed our week of activities.

Best,

Rose