What? Two posts in the same day? Well, I am still playing catch-up, however, this week finally marks us as "on track." This week at the Mooresville Public Library we focused on the letter Cc. It’s amazing how many words kids can come up with when you ask them “What starts with the letter Cc?” I do this with my 4 to 6 year olds every week and I am always blown away. A few answers this week included cat, cake, cookie, corn, and my personal favorite… CEILING! That’s right, ceiling! This one word response made me realize that although I am working hard on introducing each letter of the alphabet as well as the sound it makes, a five year old always has the opportunity to outsmart me! This little girl helped me to remember that I need to focus not only on the obvious sound a letter might make, but all possible sounds.
When doing a flashcard search this week I came across an adorable caterpillar in the shape of a Cc. You can find it here. I was so thankful to find a letter that worked and that I didn’t have to draw. I am definitely not an artist, but have been putting my artistic skills to the test each week when I draw the flash card. As I have mentioned, I always like to add a little something to the card so that the kids can not only work on their coloring skills, but other fine motor skills as well. With our caterpillar, I decided to add little foam circle stickers to make it a bit more festive. The 2 and 3 year olds had a little trouble getting the back off the sticker, but the 4 to 6 year old had no problem. I am always amazed what a year can do for fine motor skills. This is what the flash card looked like this week.
Materials: Caterpillar "C" drawn on an index card, crayons, and 6-8 small foam circle stickers
Back side of the flash card.
2) Trace the capital and lowercase C.
3) Add it to the ring with Aa and Bb.
The other craft we made this week in Story Time might be one of my personal favorites. From the title I am sure you have already guessed that we made a clothesline! I really liked this idea because it gave each child the chance of being really creative. I gave each child a blank “t-shirt” and allowed them to choose one glitter sticker. Now I am not normally stingy with my craft supplies, but if given the opportunity, I have some kids who would have put 100 stickers on their shirts. I wanted this craft to be more about being creative with crayons than with stickers. After decorating their shirt, I gave each child 2 miniature clothespins and had them “hang” their shirt on the line. This is what the craft looked like from start to finish.
Materials: One white "t-shirt" printed on cardstock, crayons, glitter sticker (I forgot clothes pins in this picture)
1) Have each child decorate their t-shirt in whatever way they want. Try not to give them any ideas. I notice that whenever I mention something like "rainbows," I always get 10 pictures of rainbows. The below shirt is the one I made! :)
2) Have each child hang their shirt on a "clothesline" made of yarn This is great for fine motor skills. Your end product might look something like this!
As for books this week, I went with the obvious classic, Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
This book never fails to keep my kids interested and entertained no matter how many times they have heard it. I loved the excitement the kids generate when they are able to yell out exactly how many of each item the caterpillar is eating. And of course it is hard not to giggle when the caterpillar gets so “fat.”
To go along with my clothesline, I found a really great book about washing and hanging clothes, among other things. Mrs. McNosh Hangs Up Her Wash by Sarah Weeks is a great book to talk about rhyming words. I had my 4 to 6 year olds guess what the next rhyming word might be. Although the picture was there for them to guess what the word might be, it was funny to hear some of the things they thought Mrs. McNosh might hang on the line next.
This was the first week that I didn’t find any songs that truly went with my theme. It is really easy to do a quick iTunes search for whatever you might be looking for, but I didn’t have the time or money to actually buy any songs. So we played with the parachute to the same song as last week. No big deal, they still had fun making the caterpillar fly!
I guess that’s all for this week! Next week we begin the letter Dd. I have a couple of kids who I know are going to love what Dd is! I hope you log on next week to find out just what these kids will love!
Do you have a template for your t-shirt? Thanks!
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