Week 21: The Letter U

The letter U! This week we had so much going on that we were some big slackers. We never even made it to the library! We did do a little bit of work however. For the letter U we talked about utensils, real exciting I know. We talked about the obvious: fork, spoon and knife. However, we also talked about cooking utensils and the different uses for a spaghetti server, whisk, ladle and a flipper. Our vocab words for the week were: up, under, umbrella and uncle. We spent a lot of time looking around the house for things that were up or under something. We also listed off many uncles. We were fortunate that it rained a lot this past week. So it was helpful when we talked about an umbrella and our poem:

Under my umbrella
I like to feel the drops
Of rain    its happy tapping
Of pitter-platter plops.

Under my umbrella
I like to feel a dash
Of water as it hits the ground
And rises with a splash.

Under my umbrella
I like to stay all dry
And enjoy the rainy weather
As it falls down from the sky.

Our Bible time was even more lacking this week than last with only a verse: What time I am afraid, I will trust in you. Psalm 56:3

Our shape for the week was a heart.

For science we talked about urchins, umbrella tree, unicorn and an umbrella bird.

Wow, looking back over this week it was bad. But, that will happen and hopefully next week will be better!

Week 20: The Letter T

Twenty weeks into school and we had so much fun with the letter T! The girls really enjoyed just about everything with this letter. I think their favorite thing was our poem this week: Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear:

Teddy bear, teddy bear turn around.
Teddy bear, teddy bear touch the ground.
Teddy bear, teddy bear show your shoe.
Teddy bear, teddy bear that will do.

Teddy bear, teddy bear go upstairs.
Teddy bear, teddy bear say your prayers.
Teddy bear, teddy bear turn out the light.
Teddy bear, teddy bear say good night.

We added motions to this poem and they even wanted to do this poem again while we were doing our new lesson with the letter U! We also had a lot of fun with our theme, trees. We read It Could Still be a Tree by Allan Fowler. Our craft time also focused on this. We had talked about the leaves, branches, trunk, bark and roots. We made hand prints for the roots, cut out a trunk and then colored the trunk to show the bark. We added on branches and leaves to finish it off!

E working on adding her leaves.

A adding leaves too!

E almost finished with her tree.  She really got into the coloring of her bark! I don't know why I don't have a picture of it.

We also found some great books to read together: Tracks in the Snow by Wong Herbert Yee, Tony's Trip and the Letter T by Cynthia Klingel and Robert Noyich, The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr. (A and E thought this book was hilarious.)

Our Bible time was a little lacking this week but we did do verse Psalm 138:1 I will praise thee with my whole heart. We tried to spend a little time talking about the Ten Commandments.

For science we did a lot with trees, which I mentioned earlier, but we also read about Tigers in a book by Derek Zobel. We also talked a little bit about tuna (fish), tulips and a toucan to help build animal vocabulary.

For our music we sang Little Teapot and Twinkle, Twinkle.

Math time was spent looking at triangles. We found a great book by Sarah Schuette. We also tried counting by tens. I wanted to start looking at telling time for at least the hours but we ran out of time this week.

Social studies we read about Harriet Tubman by Wil Mara and Mother Teresa by Susan Eddy. Can't believe how fast this week has gone. Moving on and as A says, we are almost to the end!