The Loving Learner- On Teaching and Being a Mom: Hats Off to H

Hats Off to H!

It was another week of balancing schedule changes. Between a home school museum program for Ava, foster care obligations, and church school we had a full week.We had two full mornings of preschool and finished up the remainder of our work on Saturday. This will be my last post for a couple of weeks. This coming week we will focus on reviewing letters A-H and numbers 1-10 using the activities I have created over the last 8 weeks. We will also learn about the life cycle of a pumpkin and do some pumpkin carving. Then, we will spend one week enjoying a visit from Mimi and Papa! Ava and Dominic can't wait! (And I can't either!)

Here is a look at our fun with letter H!

Tuesday: H is for Hats!

Book: Caps for Sale By: Esphyr Slobodkina (I replaced the word cap with hat while reading it. We talked about how a cap is another word for a hat.)

Song: Hats are Blowing

Beginning our week with our sound box is a must!The kids can't wait to reach in and see what they will find.Of course, this week the box was filled with objects that start with H.

Ava's turn

I gathered several different types of hats such as a fire hat, construction hat, bike helmet, sun hat, baseball cap, crown, baker's hat, and winter hat. We talked about the different kinds of hats and what they are used for. We sorted them and found hats that might be different, but have similarities (ie. the fire helmet, construction hat, and bike helmet are all hard and can protect your head, but they are used for different reasons.)

We had fun trying on the different hats! I had the kids each pick a hat they wanted to wear while we sang our hat song.

We sang Hats are Blowing using hat puppets.

During our art time, we made heart hats out of paper plates.

Stylish!

One of the activities that I introduced on Tuesday and brought out throughout the rest of the week was the hammering activity. I was so excited about this activity. I knew that they would just love it! (Especially since lately Dominic is into making anything that is easy to bang a hammer!) I found clip art of objects that start with H. I laminated each picture and punched holes along the perimeter of the pictures. The kid then had to "nail" the pictures to foam insulation using plastic hammers and golf tees. This activity was a hit and so good for hand eye coordination!

We used 2 inch foam insulation. You can purchase it at any hardware store. My father in law happen to have some scraps left over from a project he has been working on! I can see us taking this activity out over and over again.

The sensory activity for this week was Halloween play dough. I made orange play dough and added cinnamon to give it an extra fall feel. At the dollar store, I found some little Halloween bats, bugs, and spiders to use with the play dough. I also got out all the Halloween cookie cutters.

Lots of spooky cookies were made!

Wednesday: H is for Halloween!

Book: The Spooky Smells of Halloween By: Mary Man Kong

Songs: I brought back out the ghost songs and puppets from last week!

Baby Ghost and I Saw a Ghost

Ava started her day off with the alphabet train puzzle.

Our calendar pattern is going strong!

We brought back our ghost songs in honor of Halloween.

During our art time, we painted pumpkins. Dominic was all about this! He worked on this for a long time and didn't even try to eat the paint!

It is fun to see how having something different to paint on makes painting even more exciting! We added glitter to the pumpkins when they were finished painting. They love to use the glitter!

More spooky cookies were made today!

I found a fun number workbook at the Dollar Store. Ava needs some extra practice with one to one correspondence and recognizing numbers. Since she loves coloring and writing, this workbook is a fun way for her to practice. We worked on numbers 6 and 7 today.

During math time, Ava also sorted three types of candy corn.

Using the sorted candy, we worked on creating patterns in our pumpkin tray. She may have also had found the pattern of sort one, eat one, sort one, eat one...though I am not sure she would ever admit it!