Rr is for rainbows

This week our letter focus was the letter Rr as in rainbows.  This theme fits in nicely between wind, umbrellas, caterpillars (colorful butterflies), and St. Patrick's Day.

The children really enjoyed dropping paint onto a paper in the shape of the butterfly, folding it over, and then seeing the "ink blot" effect.  For the second art project, I changed it to a stain glass window rainbow.  Each child stuck the colors of the rainbow onto contact paper.  Hang them in a window with a lot of light.  The light shines through and it's really pretty.  The children either tried to imitate a rainbow or stuck colors all over the contact paper, which resulted in their own special rainbow.

I was worried about the tangram center, but the children really enjoyed creating with the different shapes.  The other centers were to finish cutting and to practice writing their name.  I'm going to send home the master copies of the name writing pages that I created, so that you can make copies for them to do at home when you are looking for things for them to do.  I'll also send home the papers that are not finished so they can finish them up at home.

On Facebook, I posted that I was frustrated with the information that's out there regarding pencil grip.  Thanks to a mom in this group, she found an article that is research based that showed that children tend to hold a crayon with the three finger hold better than a pencil.  For the children who are holding a pencil with a fist grip, I gave them a crayon and was amazed at the results.

I posted some pictures of some of the materials I use to teach your children.  Please read the caption to understand each one.

Enjoy this week's photos:

Rr is for rainbow

Her person :)

It's fun to hear what their structures are

Folding the paper over and smoothing out the paint, so that it spreads and mixes

Dropping paint

Silly, crazy fun!!

ink blot butterflies

His grip is usually fist grip.  Look at how he's holding the crayon!  The chunky pencil with the triangle grip is the same width, however, the crayon feels heavier and not so top heavy.  It seems to have a better center of gravity.

Stain glass rainbow

adding clouds

For each letter, I have a puppet friend.  For the letter Rr, I have Ralph the Rooster.  I also have objects that the children can touch and pass around that start with the letter of the week.  The objects for the letter Rr are a rainbow, robot, rat, rose, radio, ring, and the upper and lower case letters.

I use an old set of Open Court cards and the paragraph that goes with them.  I used these cards in elementary classes, because the district didn't have enough money to buy me a new set.  Every classroom was required to have the cards up.  These cards have been very useful to me when it came to teaching and reviewing phonics!

These are all of the letters we've learned so far.  As you see, the first two rows are just the lower case.  Those are the oldest letters.  Since lower case is used more than upper case, when we review theses letters (almost every day), they review the lower case.  We have actions that go along with the sounds.

When I teach phonics on Monday and Tuesday, I use flash cards to show pictures of things that begin with the letter of the week.

I read at least two books that match the theme of the week.  The theme matches the letter of the week.  The children discuss and are exposed to many life science themes.