P is for...

P is for Pooh!

Winnie the Pooh's A-Z by Don Ferguson

I love this book (and most children do also)! I decided that today we were going to go through each letter in the book and do a related activity.  Because of time, we put a couple letters together and did some during free play and outdoor time. 

24 piece puzzle done all by herself!

 FYI:  I would not plan a morning like this for a large group of preschoolers, actually I wouldn't plan all these activities for a morning session for a small group of preschoolers! :-P  Today I knew I would only have 1 preschool aged child here this morning (almost more like homeschooling-except not my own child!) and I know this gal well, and knew we could get through it with very few issues and so we started with the thought in mind that if it gets too much we'll stop and do the other activities in the afternoon or another day.  But, we got through all but one "extra" task.  Busy morning!

A is for Acorn.

We used acorns to practice the concept of odd and even.  I liked this little sheet as the numbers on the acorns were out of order so it helped with number recognition.  She counted out the corresponding number of acorns and buddied them up to see if there was an "odd one out".  We also formed the letter P for Pooh out of the acorns.

B is for Bears.   After looking at several pictures of various types of bears and talking about how they sound we came back to "Pooh bear being the humming sort" and did a simple listening activity where I hummed a specific pattern and they repeated it back to me.  At first she was saying "I can't" laughing every time I hummed something.  She eventually got it and then did some humming patterns for me to copy.  We ended with humming the Winnie the Pooh song. 

C is for Carrots and R is for Rabbits.

We hopped a rabbit (sticker) down the number line counting by 1s and 2s and put the rabbit cups in count by 2s order.  Then tweezers (fine motor) were used to put the corresponding number of carrots in the first, middle, and last cups.

D is for Door and P is for Piglet and T is for Tigger.

We did a simple patterning activity where she created a pattern using Tigger and Piglet stamps behind the doors.  She also, on her own, stamped a pooh on each door (1:1 correspondence), counted how many doors there were and told me 6 was even.  :-)  The different colored pom pom door knobs were intentional.  I used colors that she doesn't always state the name correctly and I also added a light and dark blue pom pom since we have talked about shades. 

E is for Eeyore:  I found it difficult to come up with a specific activity for Eeyore.  We talked a bit about the personalities of each of the characters and I provided some bookmarks to be cut out and written on to give to friends/family.

  You can get the bookmarks from http://www.familyshoppingbag.com/.

F is for Footprints.

I've had a book called Who Made These Tracks that I got at a Scholastic fair awhile back that we've never used.  So I pulled it out for today. First we looked at bear tracks and then we went through some of the other pictures.  Something that is neat about this book is that it shows the tracks in "raised print" and picture clues to go with the written clues about what the animal is.  Then the back side of that page is a real life picture of the animal.

G is for Gopher.

Our friend gopher came to tell Pooh Hello!  A bit of pencil control practice.  Clip art came from http://www.disneyclipart.com/.  So many cute pictures of Pooh Bear!  In any of our projects today that included Winnie the Pooh clipart, it came from the site, www.disneyclipart.com.

H is for Honey and N is for Nose.

Decided to do a Five Senses Study of honey.  These simple studies are always a great way to review our five senses, practice verbal language/description vocabulary, and reinforce literacy concepts.

This is the little song we often sing when our 5 senses come up.  Easy to memorize!

I is for Ice.

Normally I would make "ice pops" for an activity like this but ran out of time so we just used normal icecubes and a pair of gloves to skate across the paper that was previously sprinkled with powdered tempera paint.  She definitely enjoyed this!  She knew that red and yellow makes orange but she kept getting a red paint (because she put a bunch more red than yellow on the paper).  I loved hearing her talk it out!  She experimented with the powdered paint and eventually got a nice orange color.  We'll probably turn it into a pumpkin this week. 

J is for Jump.  Well, we did plan to jump rope outside like Kanga and Roo but...we got sidetracked with some sandbox play (a toad appeared) so we just did some jumping back into the house.  :-)

K is for Kite.

Our regular kite just doesn't work out well with children under school-age so we did the ol' plastic bag kites.  :-)  They always like these.  Just a reminder to make sure you supervise and put the bags/string up out of reach when no longer using.

L is for Ladder.

Had the child cut out tree trunk and top and create a ladder.  Then we reviewed short vowel sound /p/ cvc words---pup, pan, pig, pen, pot.  Love how she turned it into an apple tree!

M is for Mirror, V is for Vest, and Y is Yawn.

Always am looking for a good idea to pull out our tabletop mirror.  :-)  We made many faces and talked about different feelings and the idea of nonverbal communication.  We also did a very simple drawing/dictation page.  On the Y page in our book it stated "Y is for yawn...A yawn is what your face does to say it's time for bed."  So our dictation fill in the blank sentences read, "A smile is what your face does to say (I love you)."  "A frown is what your face does to say (I'm sad)."  Note:  V is for vest...we have had a dress up station out these past couple of weeks and lo and behold there are 4 vests to choose from.  :-)  So she chose a vest and wore it like "an all day hug" for most of the activities.

O is for Owl.

This paper carft came from http://www.spartypantsfun.com/.  I used it to incorporate a bit more dictation.  We talked about how Pooh Bear's friend Owl is sometimes called the "wise old owl" and we talked about what wise meant.  So in the tree tops are dictation of what wise things the owl may be saying.

Q is for Quilt and Z is for Zzzzz

Made a simple felt quilt to go over Pooh bear who was getting some Zzzzz's!

S is for See Saw:  This was a new vocab for her...that a see saw is like a teeter totter.  So we made sure that we got some see saw play in this afternoon.

U is for Umbrella.

Well, Pooh went floating in his umbrella boat so we did a couple activities.  First a simple word family sort file folder game that I used with my kids when they were her age.  And then we also chose some containers to use like boats and explored with putting bears inside of the boats.   We found out that they would hold a LOT of bears before they started sinking!

W is for Woozles

For our book journal, I mentioned the reminder about woozles were part of Pooh Bear's dreams.  And, "What is something that you dream about?"  Sure glad I didn't ask her to draw a "scary" dream after she drew a picture of "you and me working"!  LOL

X is for Xylophone.

Did I ever mention that I don't like it when books and activities use xylophone as a word to represent X?  :-D Anyway, I pulled out of xylophone with our number stickers on it for during free play.  We talked high/low and a scale.

Sure was a busy morning...I'm ready for a few Zzzz's myself!  But it was fun and worth it all.  Tomorrow will go a 'little' slower.  :-)