RRSP A unit part 2

I had mentioned a few posts back that we were doing the Raising Rock Stars Preschool and casually started the A unit that I had printed before our book came. Amazingly, our book showed up early, half way through the week! Heres some more of what we did. She got pretty good at writing A's!





We found this A astronaut unit here and decided to add that in too since my little Princess tells everyone that after she is a doctor that shes going to be an astronaut and, "Don't worry Mom, everyone can come in my rocket, Ill have lots of beds!" We kept a lot of the pages and when we get back to the full A lesson I will bring the rest out.


I figured since we did this with a wreath, why not an apple! We also ate lots of apples and ant on a log!

Clothespin wheels

We printed off the Color wheel, Shape Wheel and ABC Wheel that I found on 1+1+1+1. I pulled out the ABC clothespin wheel and it was harder than I thought it would be for Sophia. This is a good thing! :-) She has so many activities that she is a pro at, that its a good thing when I find an activity that uses the skills she needs to work on! For this reason we got about 9 letters on her first time and then took a break and we moved onto the color wheel. She flew threw that! We will be going back to the clothespin wheel today! It challenged her letter recognition and fine motor. Getting the clothespins open was hard for her. She did giggle as she called them alligators eating the letters. Maybe I'll make some green with teeth??:-)

We also worked on stringing fruit loops with patterns. We did one with two colors and then with three colors. She really enjoyed that!

I also have this tin and put some scrapbook letters in it. While I was setting up one of the activities I let her pull out the letters and make piles. Left side was letters she knew and right was the I need to work on pile.

She did that while I finished creating the winter counting sheets. My wonderful Mother in Law brought over a huge bag of scrapbook scraps, a circle punch and a snowflake punch and some other great additions to our school room! I used the punches to create a winter counting activity. I printed the numbers 1-5 onto paper and let her count out snowmen and snowflakes to match. She could use all of one or mix and match. She stuck with one, my little orderly lady! :-)

Letters Index

Two of the things we are working on is scissor use and letter recognition so I started a box of index cards for this purpose. We pick our letter of the day and I have Sophia look through a magazine with me and we try to find the letters themselves or things that start with said letters. Today was our first day and so, of course, we started with A! It was pretty easy for her to find the A's (first letter of her first name so we work on it lots!) but she needed some encouragement with finding things that start with that letter. I give options like "Do you thing that girls Nose starts with A? Lets sound it out, how bout' her arms?" She could usually pick out which matched the correct sound. I let her cut and use a glue stick to stick them on. Can't decide if I want to move onto B tomorrow or do another A card, we will see if she can remember why we put the pictures on and the sound A makes tomorrow and go from there! :-)

Texture play

We did a few different texture play activities today. First we emptied a noodle box (see I spy post to see what we did with the box then) and we put the noodles into a bowl. I gave both of the kids different sized measuring spoons and we practiced moving them from one bowl to the other, feeling and sorting by color (we used tri-colored noodles)

Then, thanks to the recommendation of my friend Marieke from church, we took out a cookie sheet and filled it with flour. I let Sophia practice writing her letters into the flour. We only worked on 5-10 but that was plenty for today. She had fun but started getting a little frustrated by the end of the newer letters and went back to "just doing O, Mommy" Liam kept trying to get his grubby little fingers in too, so I gave him a paintbrush and let him swoosh some flour around the table with that. It was messy but we have some mats under the kids table so that helped for cleanup.

I Spy

Here is an idea for fun and easy way that we practiced letter recognition today. We took a pasta box that had a clear front in it and cut it out. Then we glued that onto a Popsicle stick.

I walked around the room with Sophia and got my cheesiest voice out so we could pretend we were spies on a letter hunt. She ended up calling it her "Super letter spying tool" I let her either find the letter we were searching for itself or something that started with that letter. Even Little Man got giggly and enjoyed himself with us. He was walking around copying big sister and saying 'Ba, ba, Ballll!" or whatever letter sounds she was making.

Our classroom

We have found some great uses for egg cartons and old baby food jars! Now we are on the hunt for more jars of different sizes to help us organize and work on fine motor and sorting skills! Have any great ideas, share them here

Egg carton activities have included sorting by color, shape, or size. Also math/number work of getting the correct number of "things" into the right hole.

Baby jars/mason jars are currently holding:: button assortment, googly eyes, cord, colored Popsicle sticks, glitter starts and sparkles, feathers, and pom poms.

Different activities pictured below: 'A' apple art, cut an apple in half and paint with it! Wreath making- tearing paper is fun and great for fine motor skills. Number match game somehow makes numbers fun and accessible for Sophie, I want to get them laminated and have a few sets for when friends come over and can make it a game. Rhyming worksheet was easier for her than I anticipated. Circling shapes by sizes was enjoyable but too quick. The leaves on the ceiling was our project in the month of November, we each wrote things we were thankful for daily on the leaves and then attached them to the ceiling until Thanksgiving came. I am thinking of either stringing them together to keep or putting them into a small memory book.