this post brought to you by the letter W

We had a couple of kids from our preschool out of town this week, so I gave AJ a choice between taking the one remaining child on an outing, like visiting the zoo or having a lesson at home. Much to my surprise, he chose having a lesson and he specifically wanted to “study the letter that begins the word ‘wood’.” It was an awesome choice.

I didn't put together one of my alliteration pages, but it did give me an excuse to try my hand at drawing a walrus.

We read one of my favorite childhood books; Wacky Wednesday.

We got the biggest kick out of this cute little rhyme that is supposed to help with phonemic awareness by switching the first sound out of their name with the w sound, for example...
Willaby Wallaby woo an elephant sat on you, willaby wallaby wee an 
elephant sat on me! Willaby wallaby woo an elephant sat on Wary (Mary)
Willaby wallaby wee an elephant sat on Wason (Mason)

We talked about spider webs and threw wadded up tissue paper at a painter's tape web that I'd built in the hall.  (We tried regular paper but it was heavy and the web wasn't strong enough to hold on to it.)

AJ loves to help wash windows and so we did.  I think the other kid thought we were weird.

Next we bent chenille stems into w shapes.  These were our worms.  We had clothes pins for our beaks and we pretended to be birds gathering up the worms.

The kids tried out wiggling like worms and watched an inch worm video to get the technique right.  They thought it was hilarious to see me waddle like a duck (I'm sure it was), and followed me around like baby ducks in a line.

I asked them to make a w with their bodies and this is what they came up with up.

We talked about the weather and wind.  I took a blow dryer and used it to blow a small silk scarf into the air while they tried to catch it.  I didn't have enough hands to take a photo of this, but they loved it.

Next we made our own wind by blowing clouds (cotton balls) across the floor to the blue tape line.  They had straws, but mostly just blew without them.

By this time we needed a snack and waffles with whipping cream sounded perfect.

Watermelon would also have been a good snack choice, but we used them for counting practice instead.  We each got a paper watermelon (just graduating half circles glued together) and a die.  Roll the die to find out how many seeds (mini chocolate chipsJ) you get to put on your watermelon!  You can bet they wanted to play lots of rounds of this game.

The last inside activity was a little small motor skills fun.  We used scissors to cut out green leaves for paper apples and then tried out the hole punch to make worm holes in our apples.  I had green yarn worms ready before hand with googlie eyes on a big knot on one end for fun heads.  Then we wove the worms through the holes.

(all of these tasks are best done with your tongue sticking out to promote better concentration.J)

Outside we dug in vain in the garden for real live worms, but since it was lightly snowing, we figured that the worms were probably hunkered down deep.  No big deal because we finally got to the wood part of the lesson.  We have random bits of lumber leftover from projects that the kids are allowed to play with in the yard; little kids' dream come true!  In spite of the weather, I think they could have stayed out there for hours if we'd have let them.