Letters Ff, Tt, Rr, Ii Lessons 7 - 10 26 Lessons in 26 Days

Our days in kindergarten continue to be full of fun as we learn one new letter each day.   Our mornings begin with coloring a puppet and pictures that begin with the letter of the day.  We then come together and sing with our puppets. Each cute little song is sung to the tune of Old Mac Donald had a Farm.

On Tt day the students arrived to find Teddy Bears from Dollar Tree waiting for them along with their puppets.  I try each day to find memorable activities that connect the letters and sounds to their sweet little brains.

We made Itsy Bitsy Spider water spouts out of straws for letter Ii.  I gave each child an oversized bendable straw and a spider ring.  We moved the spiders as we sang the song.

We sorted rings, rattles and rocking horses on letter Rr day.  These little Dollar Store tweezers and lunch trays worked perfectly for small motor strengthening and practice sorting.

We made many connections with our book this week, How Do Dinosaurs Go To School by Jane Yolen.  One of the favorites was a STEM activity from my TPT Unit.  We loaded up a large vehicle with large dinosaurs and a small vehicle with small dinosaurs.  We counted how many dinosaurs each could carry from home to school.  After doing the activity whole group, it was moved to a free choice station.

We also created shape dinosaurs.

CLICK HERE FOR A LINK TO THE STEM AND LITERACY STATIONS FOR HOW DO DINOSAURS GO TO SCHOOL?

 Our daily small groups meet for 20 - 30 minutes.  The students are learning to work independently at stations doing a variety of activities.

At their seats they are practicing identifying beginning sounds as they make their character hats.

At the teacher table the children are learning many skills with the weekly and daily letters.

1. The students practice forming their letters

2.  The students practice matching and identifying the letters of the week.  They also practice matching beginning sounds for those letters and producing each letter sound in isolation.

3.  The students build words with their letters.

4. The students read books with pictures that begin with the letter of the day and sight words they need to learn.

5.  The students learn to build sentences and track print.

All of these skills are part of our daily small group:

CLICK HERE IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN THE 26 LETTERS IN 26 DAYS MATERIALS

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Letter Dd Lesson 6 26 Letters in 26 Days

Today we began our second set of letters: Dd, Ff, Tt, Rr, and Ii.  Our main book this week will be How do Dinosaurs go to School.  The children are still needing work on the roles of an author and illustrator.  Last week we highlighted the work of Laura Numeroff and Felicia Bond.  This week  our highlighted author and illustrator are Jane Yolen and Mark Teague.  We introduced the connection between the two author /  illustrator studies with the book If You Give a Dog a Donut.  And, of course we had powdered donuts.

Click here for a link to Literacy Stations and STEM activities for the book How Do Dinosaurs Go to School.

All of our literacy stations this week have activities centering on our book.  Here the children match rhyming pictures then record the matches they found.

Another station involves the children drawing pictures of how a dinosaur should and should not behave at school.  While six students work at the five literacy stations, another six are working on making their letter of the day hat and coloring their book.  

The remaining group of five students works at the table with me.  We are learning to identify the letters, match the capital and lower case letters, write the letters, identify beginning sounds, blend the sounds into words, track print, and form sentences. 

As I have stated in previous blogs, the students need many opportunities to build their small motor skills.  We are rolling playdough to form our letters of the week and picking up little dinosaurs with tweezers. We are in the path of a Tropical Storm, so school released early today.  I had planned on making shape dinosaurs during our math rotations.  We will have to do these another day, since our time ran out.

 I plan on adding a new video showing a small group lesson with our letters of the week later in the week.  Check back to view the lesson and see more fun things happening in our class.

Letter Cc Lesson 5 26 Letters in 26 Days

We finished our first week with the alphabet. Most of the children have learned that letters make sounds.  They are able to match the capital and lowercase letters for Aa, Bb, Cc, Mm and Ss.  Some are starting to blend these sounds to read words like cab, Sam, bam, and Cam. They are able to identify the front cover, back cover and title page of a book.  Many now know the role of an author and illustrator.  Our first math test showed most know the numbers 0 - 5.  Forming the letters and numbers seems to be our biggest challenge.  I need to add more fine motor strengthening activities to our stations. I am going to write the letters on clothespins and have them build their names with clothespin letters.  I already added tweezers to the sand table, so I will continue that next week.  I am going to pull out some lacing beads and lacing cards for afternoon stations.

To celebrate the end of our first set of 5 letters, we made posters to display in the hallway.  The children really enjoyed working with glue and an assortment of materials.  I was also able to see which children struggled to understand the concept of beginning sounds.  Most did an amazing job matching Apple Jacks to Aa, Butterflies and Buttons to Bb, Cotton Balls to Cc, Macaroni to Mm, and Star Sequins to Ss. I glued the capitals onto the black construction paper.  They glued the lower case letters and collage materials.  Next week we will do the letter Dd, Ff, Tt, Rr, and Ii.  Our main book will be the How Do Dinosaurs go to School by Jane Yolen and the other How Do Dinosaur books. 

Click here for my 26 Letters in 26 Days Unit

Click Here for a Free Video Showing Small Groups Time

Our book and centers next week will focus on How Do Dinosaurs go to School. Click Here for a link to my literacy centers.