Monday, July 30, 2012

now i know my a,b,c's

Alrighty, here follows the rest of our alphabet activities from this past school year.  Enjoy!

Letter V

Our animal friend for letter "V" is a vulture - not a super glamorous animal.  My favorite memory association with this animal is the scene from Disney's "The Jungle Book" where the vultures are hanging out trying to figure out "what we gonna do?".  I pulled up the video off of YouTube to show to my class - fun times : )

We also made Violet V's; mixing purple and white paint and finger painting violet construction paper.  We cut out the letters after they dried.





















 Letter "W" 
...for worms (of course!)  To decorate our "W" I gave the kiddos lengths of brown yarn to cut into "worms" - they loved using the scissors to cut up the yarn.  After they had cut their "worms" they glued them to a brown letter "W".















Letter "X" 
Such a hard letter to work with, but fun to make!

 We made smaller "X's" out of toothpicks - it was great exploration working with glue and wood - some of my kiddos got REALLY into it.


Another center area we had for "X" was an "I Spy" table.  I put various foam and cardboard letters on the table and covered them with contact paper. I challenged the students to find as many "x's" as they could (counting and recognition!).  I also added blank paper and crayons so students could do rubbings of the letters.


 

Letter Y

I have lots of yarn scraps - lots of different colors and textures.  I placed them at a center area with scissors and containers and let the kiddos have at it.  They LOVED cutting the yarn up - great fine motor fun!
At the end of the week we used our cut up yarn scraps to decorate our big "Y".












Letter Z!!!


Of course we made Zebras - these are sooooo cute!  We pre-cut stripes, tails, ears, and a mane.  The kiddos used the supplies to create their own zebra "Z".



Zoo Mural
To end our animal alphabet we created a class mural of the zoo.  The kiddos  drew their favorite animals, trees, and other things found at the zoo.  We also glued on pictures of animals.  Great teamwork project!

Sunday, July 15, 2012

The beginning of the end... R,S,T,U

The end of the school year is such a whirlwind of activity.  I had a crazy spring and am just now feeling recuperated from it all.  Blogging definitely fell off the "to do" list for awhile - I'm amazed by all those who can keep up a daily or even weekly blog - AMAZING!

Here are more alphabet activities that we did in our class...

Rainbow, Rectangle "R"


We cut out rainbow colored rectangles to glue on the letter "R" .  We had discussed rainbow color order during the spring and some of my students were keen on gluing their colors in the correct order.  Others were more creative with the process - one student make a rainbow road! 

"S"  is for Snakes


I wasn't able to get a picture of our large "S".  We glued on wiggle eyes and a forked tongue to create a snake.
We also created snakes from pipe cleaners and straws.  I copied pictures of snake heads onto card stock,  cut them out and hole punched them.  Then I threaded a pipe cleaner through to create the snake's body.  The snakes and straws (cut into 1" pieces) at a center area.  The kiddos threaded the straws onto the pipe cleaner to create their own snake.  Great fine motor work and great practice for making patterns!

 Tiger "T"


Super simple letter "T" art - use an orange "T" shape, add black stripes (made from construction paper or electrical tape)!  

"U"  is for Umbrella

The kiddos had fun with this project.  To make umbrellas to glue onto our "U", we folded decorated cupcake liners (I found princess and cars themed liners :) in half and added a toothpick for the handle.