Letter of the Week

I love teaching young children with a letter of the week approach. It is a lot of fun and lets us be silly and serious at the same time. It is easy to incorporate great storybooks and fun hands on activities along with other usual things like writing the letter and math skill builders.

Last week we did the Letter A. We learned about apples, went apple picking, used an abacus, painted a letter A and printed out pictures that start with the letter A. We read books that either started with A or were about subjects related to the letter A. We studied Noah's Ark and Adam and the Apple. We worked on addition and did apple painting, baked an apple pie and went to the arboretum. We learned about anatomy and did art work. We talked about being an artist and the country of America.

This week we are looking at the letter B. We have made a B box with items around the house that start with the letter B, studied bears and the bible. We have read books and talked about our brain. We went on a bear hunt and learned about Botany. We pretended to be bears and learned how to hibernate and lived in a den (under our kitchen table). We have painted the letter B and googled for images that start with the letter B to glue on it. Today we are going to be butterflies and learn about their life cycle and act it out.

We are also going to talk about badgers - including their favorite one Frances (from the books by Russell Hoban). To get them excited about badgers we watch these short cartoon clips (warning not all parents would find these suitable for their kids) found here and here.

I intended to include a bus ride to the bear rock cafe like I did when I taught this to Rhiannon but it is rainy and we are sick so we will miss out on the bus ride this year. Maybe we will make a boat inside. Another good field trip idea for B week is to go visit a barn. We were going to do that this afternoon when we went apple picking but the weather once again foils our plans! Still we can do it another time.

Peace,
Tenniel