Letter X

Some of what we did this week for the letter X.  Letter X always seems to be a difficult letter to plan for.  But thanks to other bloggers we had a couple "new" activities for the letter X.  They were both enjoyed!  Neither of the first two activities pictured are very open ended so I made sure to have open ended art and sensory exploration activities also.

Fox in Socks

inspired by  Izzie, Mac, and Me

Definitely not an open ended project but I expected SOME variation from one to the next.  :-D  Look at the angles of those bottom two heads?  And the facial features?  Obviously I had left one of the children's fox where the other child could see it.  Typically if they want to see the other child's work that's fine but then I put it up on a counter where they don't see it for the duration of the project.  Otherwise, most preschoolers will feel it has to be completed in the same exact manner.

 

Prior to reading this book we talked about the sound that X makes.  We only touched on the X is for xylophone.  I do not care to reinforce the letter X with the word xylophone because really...the /z/ sound is not all that common.  So instead I often use pictures of words that have X somewhere in the word or at the end of the word.  So this activity shows that.  I used the ABC Twiggles  Letter X booklet for the pictures.  Just printed them so they were a quarter of the size.  Something that I was surprised at was that they didn't really get into decorating the socks.  I thought there would be a bit more of that going on as we've noticed patterns on socks and patterns in our environment but maybe it was just "today".

XRay Boy/Girl

inspired by Squidoo

 

I added a mirror and talked about the details we saw when we looked at our face before I gave them their circle for their face and a set of oil pastels.  This was our official scissors activity today as I had them cut out the block letter X before completing the project. They really got a kick out of the craft foam bones on the X.  :-D

XRay Counting

printable found at Jackie'sEmbroidery

We are beyond these counting sets but since the highest set was 9 I went ahead and used them and we also brought out our Touch Spot Number Mats again. 

Opened Ended Explorations

Painting with Texture Tools

I simply provided white paint on black paper, for the contrast but also to allow for conversation about x rays.

Slime

Slime lasts a long time!  The recipe can be found here.  So we had pink and blue slime...that even went out, accidentally, to the trailer and froze.  Then came in and thawed.  We rolled it in a bit more liquid starch and voila!  We are in business again.  :-)  Today I let them mix it.  So they got a shade of purple.  I love to use plastic stencils with slime.  All the children get a kick out of the slime popping out the top.

Well, lots of pictures of T. for this day.  Not intentional by any means. Just the way it worked.  But you know what...today he participated in every single activity we did!  Granted he used tools for the slime and the paint and had to wash his hands immediately after each...he still participated!  I loved watching him with the fox and xray boy.  He's definitely more of a preschooler now than a toddler!