ivey league preschool: w is for weather!

Hopefully once we start kindergarten I will be more faithful with posting about it...for now, here's what we did a few weeks ago!

Again, we nixed the play-doh mats, pattern block mats, and do-a-dot pages from now on since Caleb was getting bored with them.  However, I went ahead and printed out the rest of the letters for the play-doh mats and pattern blocks and put them in their respective binders so we could have them for later.  About once a week, Caleb will get out his pattern block puzzle binder and do those for fun, so I'm glad I finished out the alphabet for him.

We worked on tracing with a couple of snow-themed worksheets:

We also worked on scissor skills by cutting out a row of icicles.

We put together a raindrop counting book:

He also worked on counting skills by completing a couple of mazes:

We also took turns coloring in a rainbow!

We played a "Winter Wear" memory game from one of Caleb's High Five magazines.

And finally, we did our magazine scavenger hunt and collage for the letter W:

Our weather-themed books:
Snow by P.D. Eastman
Sally's Snow Adventure by Stephen Huneck
Katy and the Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton

Links:
Trace the Snowflake/Shape Tracing Worksheets (3 Dinosaurs)
Icicle Scissor Skills Inspiration (Sugar Aunts)
Raindrop Counting Book (A Teaching Mommy)
Rainy Day Mazes/Rainbow Coloring Page (This Reading Mama)

ivey league preschool: v is for valentine!

How cool is it that our V Week happened right around Valentine's Day?  Though you wouldn't know it by the date of this post.  Trust me, it did.  :)

I could tell Caleb was getting bored with some of the activities we've been doing for all the previous letters, like the do-a-dot and play-doh mat pages, so we skipped those.  I still printed out the play-doh mat and pattern block puzzle mats for V and put them in his binder so he could do them later on if he wants.

Instead, we did a few Valentine-themed activities.  First, we worked on filling in the missing letters on hearts:

Then, we counted hearts and wrote in the corresponding number.  He needed more help with writing numbers, which makes sense because it turns out he's had more practice with letters.  Just something to focus on once we hit kindergarten!  His counting skills are great, however.

We also did a cut-and-glue activity where we matched up pictures of objects according to their beginning sounds.  Caleb did a great job cutting out the items, and pretty much did this one on his own.  He just needed a little help with "kettle" (we don't use a kettle in our kitchen so no wonder he didn't know what it was!).

Finally, we did our magazine scavenger hunt and collage for the letter V:

We looked for Valentine-themed books at the library, but they were pretty much cleaned out by other people.  So we found some other ones having to do with hearts and love!

Our V Books:
My Heart is Like a Zoo by Michael Hall
Louise Loves Art by Kelly Light
Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin

Links:
Heart Missing Letters and Beginning Sounds Worksheets (Teachers Pay Teachers)
I Heart Counting Worksheet (Mess for Less)

ivey league preschool: groundhogs and the letter u!

U Week was...shall we say...a little slow.  I think Caleb is started to get bored with some of the preschool stuff.  Luckily Groundhog Day fell right at the beginning of the week, so we did a few activities for that!

We connected the dots to make a groundhog, and then colored in another groundhog.  Caleb said his was blue because it was cold!

We read a few books about groundhogs from the library, and watched an episode of Wild Kratts where they explain why groundhogs really venture out of their burrows (the male groundhogs come out after hibernating to check out if there are any females nearby!  They couldn't care less about seeing their shadows!).  We also had fun with shadows using a flashlight on the wall.  Just wish we had picked a darker place!

As for our U-themed activities, like I said, it was a slow week.  Caleb did his pattern block mat but said he didn't feel like doing the other ones.  I figured he was getting too advanced for the do-a-dot pages, and since he's tracing and/or writing a lot of the uppercase letters now, he doesn't always want to go back and roll them out of play-doh.  Just another sign that he might be ready for kindergarten soon!

To keep things fun, we also designed our own pairs of underwear.  Give a five-year-old something that has to do with underwear, and he just might be into it!

Again, we did our magazine scavenger hunt and collage for the letter U, but again, I didn't take a picture of it. :(

U Books:
Aliens Love Underpants by Claire Freedman
Arthur's Underwear by Marc Brown

Groundhog Books:
Gretchen Groundhog, It's Your Day! by Abby Levine
Gregory's Shadow by Don Freeman
Geoffrey Groundhog Predicts the Weather by Bruce Koscielniak

Links:

Do-A-Dot Alphabet Pages (Home School Creations)
Play-Doh Letter Mats (Home School Creations)
Pattern Block Printable Templates (Jessica's Corner of Cyberspace)

Connect-the-Dots Groundhog (BigActivities.com)

Groundhog Coloring Page (In All You Do)

Inspiration for Underwear Coloring (Kindergarten and Mooneyisms)

ivey league preschool: t is for trucks!

Here's what we did for T Week a few weeks ago!

We did our play-doh mat, do-a-dot, and pattern block mat for the letter T:

Then we did a couple of truck-themed activities, including a connect-the-dots truck, and a coloring page based on the book Little Blue Truck.

We also played a transportation-themed matching game from one of Caleb's High Five magazines.  He really enjoys hands-on games like this one!

We also did several pages in a pre-K math workbook that was also transportation themed!  We had given this to Caleb when he turned four, but hadn't really busted it out yet.  He likes the Richard Scarry books we have so he enjoyed working with this.

 

As usual, we did a magazine scavenger hunt and collage for the letter T, but I forgot to take a picture of it!  One way I organize and keep on top of all our paper clutter is to use our collages as kind of a book cover at the end of the week.  Any worksheets or coloring pages from that week get stacked together, and then I fold the collage in half and staple it all together (I save the play-doh and pattern block mats though...we have separate binders for each of those so I put them in plastic protector sheets and that way Caleb can work on them again if he wants).  So the T collage is now serving as the cover for a little book of all we did that week!  Caleb has a nice stack of them on one of his shelves...we don't have one for A since it didn't occur to me at the time that there was a way to consolidate everything, but I started doing this for B and we've done it that way since.

Thanks to the library and our own collection at home, we had lots of truck books to choose from!

T Books:

Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle

Curious George and the Dump Truck (inspired by Margret and H.A. Rey)

Job Site by Nathan Clement

Digger Man by Andrea Zimmerman

Road Builders by B.G. Hennessey

Busy, Busy Town by Richard Scarry

Cars and Trucks and Things That Go by Richard Scarry

When Daddy's Truck Picks Me Up by Jana Novotny Hunter

The Grumpy Dump Truck by Brie Spangler

Chuck's Truck by Peggy Perry Anderson

Links:

Do-A-Dot Alphabet Pages (Home School Creations)
Play-Doh Letter Mats (Home School Creations)
Pattern Block Printable Templates (Jessica's Corner of Cyberspace)

Similar Connect-the-Dots Truck Worksheet (Education.com)

Truck Coloring Page (Twisty Noodle)