Letter Y

We had LOTS of fun with the letter Y. 

By far, the favorite activity was...

Yogurt Fingerpaint!

 

 

I used vanilla yogurt and they chose their first color (food coloring).  After some letter formation reinforcement they went ahead and explored (and ate) their paint.  Yes, they added various colors so turned into an interesting color mixing activity.  And T.!  WOWSERS!  He participated completely after I reminded him that it was yogurt and he could lick it off his fingers.  This is the first messy sensory activity that he really got into! 

Geoboard Explorations

 

Yarn Painting

 

Yarn Balls

Use for

* parachute play

* throwing practice (at targets).  We've also put a piece of tape across the floor and have tossed them back and forth across the tape until the a song is done on a CD and then we count how many are on each side.

* nonstandard measurement

* dramatic play (they were pretending they were snow balls...and that it was snowing, etc)

* counting, 1:1 correspondence

* graphing (if you have several colors of yarn balls).

* shapes/perimeter

* patterning if you have multiple colors

* letter/number formation

* art (make interesting prints)

* in place of bean bags in most bean bag songs/activities

* transitional activities-sharing time.  The person who is holding the pom pom shares or does a specific transitional activity and then tosses the pom pom to another child for their turn.

Y is for Yellow Yolks

We didn't end up using these as planned but that's fine.  We were going to graph the yolks by size but they were having so much fun as it was and we didn't get back to it.  So we'll do it on another day.  They did loved tapping the egg against the bowl to "crack" the egg and then letting the "yolk" fall into the pan.  They used a whisk with their eggs also.  They love this type of dramatic play.  Cracking eggs is one of the most basic cooking skills that they could really use a lot a practice with.  :-)  We do a bit of cooking/baking here and so they get some practice but with plastic eggs and pompoms they can practice all they want.  Wish I had white plastic eggs!  I've never seen plain white plastic eggs all on their own...anyone else?

 

Another way we use these eggs...on each half I have a piece of scotch tape and I've used permanent marker to write the numeral on one side and the dice dots on the other.  Today they did match the egg halves on their own.  Typically what I do is provide colored pom poms and they put the corresponding amount of pom poms in each egg. 

Ways to make it a bit more challenging:

*  Use different colors for each number.  They then have to sort first and then count to place in correct egg.

*  Vary the size of pom poms.  They then have to problem solve because big pom poms won't fit in the larger number eggs.

*  Use more than one number on the same egg.  They then have to pay attention to detail to get it correct.  For example, in the picture above, number 4 and number 9 are both pink. 

FYI:  The children enjoy it when I add a sanitized egg carton for their play with 12 eggs.  This also reinforce that math vocab word: dozen.