Starting with E... Today we began our letter E week and we actually accomplished quite a bit this morning. We started off with a new bible verse for memorization (we are on our third now) Proverbs 20:11. We are working through My ABC Bible Verses by Susan Hunt with the verse corresponding to our letter week. Then we read the story of Creation from Karen Henley's Before I Dream Bible Storybook, a beautiful and fun bible story book. As we read it each day we repeated what God created for each of the days until they knew the story of all seven days by heart. Throughout the rest of the week we will play a variety of games to remind them of the story and they will need to know what was created when.

After bible study we read "My 'e' soundbox" book and created our own 'e' soundbox. Some things currently in our box are several elephants, an egg (no not a real one), a picture of an easel, the letter E from our puzzle mat, the letter E from a big wooden puzzle, an emergency worker, a wooden eggplant and an empty cup. This will only continue to grow as we go along. Then Ciaran played with some toys while Rhiannon and I worked on her phonics e sound and she practiced writing her upper and lower case E. We read two books that emphasized the letter e sound and started our e word list (which I have decided to post at the end of each week for ease of updating) and came up with about 30 words or so.

Then we did some physical education and had exercise time. I had rented a video from the library on kids exercise and they had a blast. I only let them do the warm up and about half the video as they were pretty tired. I was impressed at how much they were actually able to do (sometimes I don't give my kids enough credit). Then it was snack time and a water break.

Next we did math. We worked on number recognition from 1-11 and matching manipulatives with the numeral that represents the grouping. We did this with wooden blocks and number flash cards. Then Ciaran played with the blocks and Rhia worked on location worksheets: inside, outside, top, bottom, middle, etc. After the worksheets I asked her questions about various items around the room (Is this book inside or outside, what toy is on the middle shelf, where is the olivia book, etc) and she needed to answer the questions and use the location words to help me find things. It was a lot of fun. Much of it was review for her and was helping Ciaran as he begins to learn these concepts.

Then it was story time and we read several books related to E:

Ee by Kelly Doudna
What a Week: The sound of long e by Cynthia Klingel
The Elves and the Shoemaker by Paul Galdone
Emma's Elephant by David Ellwand
Eggday by Joyce Dunbar
My "e" soundbox by Jane Belk Moncure

We also read:
Hard Scrabble Harvest by Dahlov Ipcar
The Mouse, the Very Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear by Audrey Wood (can you tell we are fans of hers)
Anna Needs a New Coat by Harriet Ziefert
Jimmy Jonny Brownie Stays Up All Night by Bing Puddlepot

Now it is lunchtime and they are eating edamame and leftovers from their lunch at perkins yesterday. They had some sorbet as a treat and now it is off for naptime. It has been a good morning and they have had a lot of fun.

Peace,
Tenn