-at family

So today was our first day of our Kindergarten Summer Readiness program.  I didn't do a whole lot of advertising because I preferred to explore with this idea with children who I know and who know me.  So, if it goes as well as today :-) I most likely will be entertaining this summer program idea again for next year.  We had so much fun today...I saw so many smiles!  The 3 hours flew past!  We moved in a relatively quick manner so I didn't stop to take high quality pictures.  I did take a few snap shots and most are off center and so on but it'll give you an idea of the activity.  Here are the following areas I hope to cover each session. I plan about 15 minutes for each category.  Today we had about 15 min. left at the end (because we didn't do the coloring parts of the activities---that's good to send home and do) so we went outside.

High Frequency Word Booklet
Calendar
Journal
Story/Activity
Moveable Letters
Large Motor + educational concept (I can see this being math but not putting that in stone!)
Number Formation
Art
Letter Formation
Listen and Do
Phonological Awareness
Scissors (related to the activities we did)
Fine Motor (extra, beyond writing).

So today I allowed Aaron to continue on his art as he's the oldest and well past what we were doing.  But he couldn't stay away, the other kids were squealing and laughing...all because Ms. Amber/mom was making a mistake.  They love it when adults make "mistakes".  :-P 

So obviously this was one of those wacky snap shots.  But you get the idea.  I was asking them what animal we talked about a lot today that had the -at sound.  Of course they hollered "cat!"  Then they helped me draw the rest of the cat's details.  I made extra long whiskers.  Then I said, okay, cat- c-a-t.  I'm going to write the word cat right here on this whisker.  I wrote fat.  They squealed and told me no!  That was fat.  So I went to the next whisker and the next all writing an -at family word but not cat.  On the last whisker I just said..."I guess I don't know how to spell it.  Maybe one of you can."  So one child wrote cat at the top.  We then marked the -at section of the word in black marker and I led them to telling me that all these words rhyme.  We also came up with other words that rhymed with at. 

One of the other activities we did today was cutting out hat/cat pictures.  This was a Mailbox publication activity.  The cats all had an -at family picture and the hats had the corresponding word.  You can easily make something like this on your own and theme related!

Will add more of what we did tomorrow.  Hope you all had a lovely morning/day!