Monday - Literacy
Letter X Tracing Page
We started the week with a tracing worksheet from Kid's Learning Station. This was actually more challenging than I imagined. Honey Pot wanted to trace them as four, short lines rather than two, long lines. We talked about the word diagonal in order to correct this.
X Marks the Spot - Tracing Lines
The letter X isn't very ubiquitous in a child's vocabulary, so I had to really think about how to incorporate it into our activities this week. I decided the pirate phrase "X marks the spot" would be perfect. As I researched ideas, I discovered that I wasn't the only one with this idea. This paper bag idea came from Parker Prep. I drew tracing lines on paper bags, to imitate the paper of a pirate's map.
I drew some more on the backs of them, as optional practice. She wanted to do them all.
She even did the crazy swirly one that I drew without any clear idea of what I was doing.
Circling X Sounds - Worksheet
Last week I made my own worksheet for letter sounds practice. But I found this from the Education website, and it worked well for us.
Tuesday - Math and Cognitive Skills + Craft
X Maze
I printed this maze from 1+1+1=1.
Tic Tac Toe Game
I introduced Honey Pot to the game of Tic Tac Toe this week! We used her chalkboard.
And here I noticed that we needed to talk about the word diagonal again, because Honey Pot kept making plus signs instead of x's.
After a few rounds, we switched so she could be O's and I could be X's.
Puzzle
I recently bought a self-correcting alphabet puzzle for Honey Pot, so we could work on matching upper and lowercase letters this summer. We pulled it out for the first time today. I love it, and I think it'll prove incredibly useful. Here is an example of the x puzzle:
X is for X-Ray - Craft
I saw many versions of this, but my favorite comes from Snippets...it's the Little Things. We talked about what an x-ray is and for what doctor's use them. Then I traced Honey Pot's hands onto black construction paper, and she colored them in with white chalk.
She glued q-tips into each finger and wrist to look like bones.
Here is the completed craft!
Wednesday - Social Studies and Social Skills
X Marks the Spot - Map-Reading
Honey Pot hasn't had much exposure to geography. So this week we had a fun pirate activity that could show her the basic map-reading skills, such as locating landmarks and finding a direction. First she dressed like a pirate. I asked her to give herself a name, and she called herself Pirate Wendy.
I had drawn a map of our dining room + living room, being careful to include large pieces of furniture (landmarks). I drew x's in various places, where I placed gold doubloons.
Before we began, she told me we had to roll up the map, so she could unroll it. LOL. So we did that. Here she is studying the map before setting out to find her treasure.
Some of it was hidden under things...
...and some was out in the open. The main part of the activity was map-reading, so we would always look at the map first, try to find where the x was in relation to the room, then head to our location.
She had tons of fun with this activity. After she had found all of the gold doubloons, we counted them up. I think there were 54, so it was a nice review in counting in the bigger numbers.
Thursday - Sensory + Music
Creating X's out of Various Materials - Sensory
I gathered a variety of materials, in all colors of the rainbow, with which Honey Pot could build the letter x.
X seems like a fairly simple letter to create. However, earlier in the week I noticed how easily it can be confused with a plus sign. Honey Pot started off making a plus sign with her first material. But we corrected it, and she seemed to grasp the x shape after that. This was a great activity, and I'm actually a little bummed that we haven't been doing it all along. What a great way to really understand the shapes of letters!
For this one, she first had to roll the playdough into two snakes. Extra skills in play here!
And she saved the hardest for last. Instead of just placing two pieces into place, she had to envision the x before building it out of several pieces. This was pretty difficult! At first she made one of the lines much longer than the other. But we discussed how both lines should be equal, and crossing in the middle.
X is for Xylophone - Color Matching and Song Writing - Music
This was such a great activity! I feel like I saw this on Pinterest somewhere, originating from one of the major kid activity blogs, but have been unable to find it again. If you have seen this, please let me know so I may give credit to my inspiration! First I "wrote" the song Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star in colored rectangles. She had to match the colors to play the song. Such fun!
Then she was able to write her own song. I drew empty rectangles for her to color in herself. Then she played her own song on the xylophone.
She loved it so much, she asked to do it again. So I drew more rectangles. It actually sounded pretty good!
Friday - Science
Xylophone Water Experiment
We did this a long time ago, during Honey Pot's music unit, when she was 21 months old. Where has the time gone??
So I set it up again. We talked about why each glass sounded different. She played with it for a while. Then we played a game of Simon! I asked her to copy whatever I played. So first I played one note, and she copied me. Then I added to it by playing the same note again followed by another note, and she copied. We did this several times up to about six notes! Fun game!
Little M&M woke up from his nap and wanted to participate for a few minutes too.
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