Thursday, February 20, 2025
Hello Early Learners Blue Class!
Another snow day! Please find some additional learning ideas below:
📚 Stories/Literacy: Snow by Roy Mckie and P.D. Eastman
🚰 Science/Simple Sink or Float Experiment:
Fill a basin with water and provide objects that start with the letter S – like a stone, spoon, or straw. Let your child predict whether the items will sink or float. This fun hands-on science activity can help them learn about buoyancy and cause-and-effect reasoning.
❄️ Songs/Phonics: Snow Song ♫ What Is Snow? ♫ Flurries? What’s a Blizzard? ♫ Kids Songs by The Learning Station
🔵 Exploring Shapes, Sorting, and Counting:
Now let’s bring some math activities into the mix with the letter S!
- Sorting Objects: Provide various objects, such as shapes, stones, or socks, and have your child sort them by size, shape, or color. Sorting helps with early classification skills and will develop their understanding of attributes and categories.
- Counting with S: Find or create groups of objects that start with S, such as seeds, shells, or stars. Have your child count how many items are in each group. This is a great way to practice basic counting skills and one-to-one correspondence.
- Shape Hunt: Look for squares, stars, and other shapes around the house or outside. Help your child identify the shapes and count how many they find. This encourages both shape recognition and counting skills.
🎨 Shape Art/Circle Prints:
Go on a circle hunt around the house with your child. Look for ring-shaped items like plastic cups, the cap from your juice container, paper towel rolls, etc. Next, have your child dip the circular items in paint, then stamp onto paper. Feel free to offer just a single color of paint with a few different objects to stamp. Limiting the color options will help keep the emphasis on exploring the shapes and the action of stamping. Have fun with these shape prints!
Happy learning EL Blue! I sure do miss you!
-Love,
Mrs. Beard
Wednesday, February 19, 2025
What a week! Please find some additional learning ideas below:
📚 Stories/Literacy: Snowmen All Year
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96U47WRXeuU
As you listen to this story, point out some of the words that start with the letter Ss. Count how many you find and talk about any words that are new to them! You could even create a simple graph to keep track of how many times you hear frequently repeated ‘S’ words like “snowman”.
🧮 Science/Sensory Soapy Suds: Fill an empty tray or small bin with snow, shaving cream, sand, salt or soapy water and have your child experiment with this! Talk about the letter “Ss” as they play and learn.
You can also opt to fill your kitchen sink with warm soapy water. Have your child use a sponge to wash a variety of spoons! These activities help to engage their senses by using a variety of textures, sights, and sounds to enhance learning.
🔤 Songs/Phonics: Letter S Song (Your child can shake their sillies out with this one!)
🎲 Shadow Game Fun: You can use a flashlight and various objects found around your house with different shapes; toys, paper, etc.
Use a flashlight in a dark room to explore shadows. Let your child experiment with how objects like toys, shapes, and their own hands make different shadow shapes. Talk about the letter S for ‘Shadow’ and ‘Shape’ and explore how they change.
🕵🏼 Scavenger Hunt: Create a verbal or visual list of items (such as a sock, spoon, shoe, soap bar, etc.), and use a small bag or basket to hold the items as they are gathered. Give your child the verbal or visual list of the items and then ask them to hunt for the corresponding objects. At the end, they can count how many items they found!
🎨 Snow Art/Fine Motor: Engage in snow art activities like painting on snow, building snowmen, and crafting snow castles. These fun projects promote coordination and creativity. Use diluted watercolors or food coloring in squeezable containers or small bowls to paint on freshly packed snow for a colorful winter masterpiece!
🍝 Spaghetti/Soup/Salad/Nutrition: If possible, incorporate health and nutrition with their favorite healthy foods that begin with the letter ‘Ss’, like spaghetti, sloppy joe sandwich, salad, soup, sushi or stew. You can talk about how foods taste such as sweet, sour, salty, spicy and savory!
I hope all of you are staying safe and warm. Love, Mrs. Beard
Tuesday, February 18, 2025
Hello Early Learners Blue Class:
This week our focus is the letter Ss and Health & Nutrition! The letter “S” offers countless opportunities for interactive and creative learning. With its soothing sound and a wealth of relatable words like strawberry, sun, star, snake, spider, smile, and more, the letter “S” is ideal for engaging your little ones in an enjoyable and meaningful way.
Literacy/Read Aloud:
🌮 PETE THE CAT’S WACKY TACO TUESDAY
🥪 Pete the Cat Pete’s Big Lunch
🍓 EATING THE ALPHABET: Fruits & Vegetables From A to Z By Lois Ehlert
🫐 Math/ Science – Encourage your child to create patterns using any fruits, vegetables, or healthy snacks you already have at home. This activity is a great way for young learners to engage their critical thinking skills as they observe and recognize the rhythm and structure of patterns, (ex. 🫐🫐🧀🫐🫐🧀). Have them count these too!
S | Sea Star | ABC Alphabet Songs | Phonics:
🐌 Play a Rhyming Game – Practice rhyming words by asking your child to name words that rhyme with:
So Star
Sat Stop
See Smile
Sip Snail
Sun Stick
Sing Snake
📚 Read this poem with your child and see if they can spot all the rhyming words!
Cake by the Lake
By a little lake, sat a happy snake,
Eating a slice of frosted cake.
He heard a splash, the water did shake –
Out jumped a frog with a wooden rake!
“Why are you here?” the snake did quake.
“This is my spot, for goodness’ sake!”
The frog just laughed, “I only came for the birthday bake!”
The snake did smile, “Well, for your sake,
Here’s some cake – it’s only a tiny flake.”
Then they laughed together by the lake.
🐍 Fine Motor, Art Activity – Silly Snake
Happy Learning! -Love, Mrs. Beard
Wednesday, February 12, 2025
Hello Early Learners Blue Class!
Teaching Early Learners the alphabet is an exciting journey, and the letter R brings plenty of opportunities for interactive and creative learning.
With its rolling sound and abundance of relatable words such as rainbow, ribbon, rabbit, robot, rice, etc. The letter R is perfect for engaging your little ones.
R Collage Activity – Create a letter R-shaped collage using cutouts of objects from old magazines, junk mail flyers, food packaging, etc. that start with the letter R. Examples include pictures of a raccoon, rainbow, raspberries, ravioli, rabbit, etc.
Glue them onto a large letter R cutout for a fun and engaging art project.
R is for Rain, Rainbow, Rabbit and Roses! – To engage your child’s creativity, have them color or paint a picture of a rainbow.
❤️ R | Rain | ABC Alphabet Songs | Phonics | PINKFONG Songs for Children
Play a Rhyming Game – Introduce rhyming words by asking your child to find words that rhyme with “red” or “rain.” This helps develop phonemic awareness while reinforcing the R sound.
As we continue to focus on the letter “R” and Valentine’s Day this week, this rhyming book has raccoons making sparkly cards and preparing a yummy treat to share with special friends. There might even be a Valentine’s party!
❤️ Enjoy this read-along book: Valentine’s Day Treats by Tera Knudson
❤️ Super Why! Sing-Along Alphabet: The Alphabet Parade
Stay warm & happy learning! – Mrs. Beard
Here are some snow day activities that can be completed using some common household items.
Cotton Ball Snowflakes
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- Materials: Cotton balls, white paper, glue, scissors
- Instructions: Glue cotton balls onto the paper in the shape of a snowflake. You can arrange them symmetrically or make a freeform design! Be creative & have fun!!
Snowy Name Writing Practice
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- Materials: Paper, crayons, snowflake stickers
- Instructions: Practice writing your name on paper. Add snowflake stickers and/or draw snowflakes falling around your name!
Snowflake Counting
- Materials: Paper snowflakes (EL- DIY paper snowflakes), markers, stickers
- Instructions: Draw or cut out snowflakes and write numbers on them. Count out that number of stickers or small objects to place on each snowflake!
There are so many wonderful books about snow to read in a cozy blanket fort! Feel welcome to send your photos of your child reading their favorite books or stories or ANY snow day activities to my email (lbeard@thesummitprep.org).
Here are a couple of links to some winter and snowy day Read-Alouds:
These activities help to engage children in creative play while reinforcing essential literacy, handwriting and math skills, making snow days both fun and educational!
Stay warm & happy learning! – Mrs. Beard
