F is for...

F is for Feet!

We focused on the 'leapfrog letter' F today.  I really wanted to share K's journal page today.  We read The Foot Book by Dr. Seuss and the sentence on the page read, "There are _____ feet in my family."  Couple things to note in the picture.  1) She drew them like Mat Man.  See how she started out with a rectangle body on mom?  And the feet on all but her sister are sticks.  Interesting!  She never used to draw ears but note the curves on either side of the head on mom and dad.  2) They are holding hands.  First it was mom/dad because they were married.  Then brother L. because he was part of the family.  And then she was holding hands with her last drawing of a person who has "really long legs because she's my BIG sister.  She stated that she was holding hands with her sister because she loved her.  I love it when they are drawing and talking at the same time!  I also observed that only her self portrait has hair.  She made a point to say it was short hair also.  FYI:  She got her hair cut just before school started.  Guess it made a big impression on her!  :-) 

Sensory today was a little different.  We first started out by reviewing that F is made out of 1 long stick and 2 short sticks and that this was a leapfrog letter where we do a line down and jump back up to the top to draw the short sticks.  So I helped them create a foot print F by having them do a heel to toe walk and then helping them "jump" back up to do the sticks.  Then, of course, we got a fresh paper to explore with!  This is always a favorite.  I suggest 1:1 or 1:2 children only at a time as it does get slippery!  Having a tub of soapy water and a towel nearby helps with quick cleanup and having a chair near where they are getting fresh paint is very helpful with their balance.  This time I just put the paint on paper plates and let them paint. 

Our scissors today came from the Kumon scissors work book.  Added a little literacy by having them come up with a name that starts with F (which is really hard for them so I started naming a few and let them choose) and I wrote the sentence "Francis Fox has four fine feet!" and encouraged F finding.  I do not use the Kumon Cutting work book in order as it's meant to be but if you are looking for a simple work book that is progressive...this is a nice book.  You can get it at Meijer, Target, Wal-Mart, Barnes and Noble and others similar places.  http://www.amazon.com/First-Book-Cutting-Kumon-Workbooks/dp/4774307084/ref=cm_cmu_pg__header#_

I'm not sure about you all, but I find that most of my students will not choose puzzles on their own and there are quite a few benefits to puzzles so I try to slip them in when I can.  I chose this puzzle today, obviously it was theme related, but also to reinforce number recognition and numerical order.

We also did a Jumping Graph.  I placed a piece of felt in the middle of the room and she decided what she was going to jump to and we counted the jumps.  Then together we transferred the information to a graph and talked about which took more jumps and which were equal and so on.

Oh, and last week we marble painted leaves and I said I'd show a picture of the completed mobile.  Sorry, the picture isn't all that great but here is the one I snapped.

A little different approach then just cutting and gluing to paper.

Have a great week!