S is for Snake!

Today was "S is for Snake" day! We're speeding through the end of our alphabet, so that we can start fresh themes for homeschool preschool soon. Keep scrolling to see what we did today, or click one of the links below to revisit similar themes from the past!

S is for Snake - 2015

Letter S - 2014

Books

These are the snake books we read today. "Elephant & Piggie" books have been a favorite around here since Honey Pot and Little M&M were little. Sweet E loved it too! We read it several times.

We even brought out the characters, and acted out the story!

Introducing the Letter S

I made our usual page to introduce the letter, and have Sweet E create it in several forms. She traced it, stamped it, poked it with a giant pushpin, and filled it with stickers.

I expected her to just put a few stickers inside the S, but she overlapped them and made quite a project out of it lol.

Look at all those stickers!

Missing Numbers

For our math activity I drew numbers from 1 to 10 on several craft sticks, with a few blanks. I glued on some eyes and tongues to make them resemble snakes. Then I wrote the numbers on clothespins for her to clip on where they belong.

She loved this, and every time she finished a snake, she slithered it along the table making a "ssssss" sound.

She did a great job, and I think we're ready to move onto larger numbers!

Playdoh Snakes

I found this free printable from Danielle's Place, and changed it just a little bit to add colors and words.

I slipped them into a laminating sheet. Then Sweet E rolled playdoh into snakes, and formed the shapes.

We added eyes too just for fun!

Hisss Board Game

Hisss has been a favorite game for years. Great for little kids! And it fit perfectly into our theme, so we played it today. Great activity to learn taking turns and color matching! Little M&M and Honey Pot played with us!

Bubble Snakes

We also made bubble snakes today! It just takes a water bottle with the bottom cut off and a sock put on the end. Then dip it into a bowl of dish soap with a little bit of water.

Sometimes they got really long before falling apart!

Little M&M joined us too! And when the wind picked up, Sweet E chased after his snakes that blew away!

So fun!

S is for Snake!

Books

We borrowed two books about snakes for today's letter of the day. Both were very cute. We are huge Elephant and Piggie fans, and Can I Play Too? quickly became one of our favorites!

Letter Recognition Activity

For today's letter recognition activity, we drew S's on our window with dry erase markers. Then the kids filled them up with Squigz! It was a challenge to stick them all up there before they lost suction, but both kids did a great job!

Little M&M covered his S with the blue Squigz.

And Honey Pot use the green ones.

Afterward, they tried to fill in the empty spaces with orange. It was a fun activity!

Fine Motor Beaded Snakes

We created snakes out of pipe cleaners for our activity of the day. The idea came from Mess for Less. I attached a small jingle bell to one end of the snake. Then the kids had to choose two colors of beads with which to create a pattern. Honey Pot chose pink and purple, and created an AAB pattern.

Little M&M chose dark blue and black, and made and AB pattern.

Then we just attached oval papers to the other end, and the kids drew on their faces. Very cute!

The Letter S!

Honey Pot is 3.5 years old

Leap Frog Fridge Phonics

To introduce the letter of the week, we listened to Scout's S song!

S is for: Salt Tray

I have been seeing versions of this all over Pinterest. What a perfect unit to begin one! I used the Melissa and Doug box that Little M&M's animal magnets came in. (Never throw their wooden boxes away!) We started with some S shapes: the letter S, swirls and squares. Honey Pot just LOVED this sort of pre-writing practice. She did such a wonderful job, and it was a great sensory experience as well. We will be pulling this back out frequently during quiet-times, to practice other letters and shapes!

She decided to do some free drawing. Turns out this was a submarine. LoL. Still fits the S theme!

S is for: Sticker Storytelling

Yes. A thousand times, yes. Honey Pot is a natural storyteller. Oftentimes at dinner she will tell us stories--wild stories about ghosts, wolves, Mickey Mouse, Peter Pan, lava or monsters. I discovered this idea from The Imagination Tree, and thought it would be a nice prompt for her to explore this interest in storytelling. I pulled out both Honey Pot's sticker books, as well as my childhood ones. Then I gave her a piece of scrap paper. And I let her choose a few stickers for each story. I asked her to tell a story that included each of the items. I started her off with "Once upon a time," and let her take it from there. The following is what she came up with.

Sometimes I would try to help her become more descriptive. So I may have encouraged her to say "a pink bird" instead of simply "a bird." And we always finished with, "The end." She had such fun with this activity, and I think we'll be doing it again!

Worksheet - Connect the Dots

This comes from Education. She likes connect the dot pages, and this one helped her discover more words that start with S.

Worksheet - I Spy an S

This also comes from Education. This was a new one for her, and she enjoyed it! I would ask her what she saw in the picture, and what letter she thought it started with, based on the beginning sounds. She found other words, such as tree and bird, which she knew didn't start with S. And she only circled the things that did. I had to help her with the sunflowers though...as she only knew them as flowers.

Worksheet - S Maze

This comes from Twinkl. She used her dot marker to follow all the S's to the end.

S Pattern Block Puzzle

We like these printables from Confessions of a Homeschooler. Honey Pot had no trouble with this!

S is for: Snowflakes

Honey Pot also completed an S craft that used some of our old snowflake confetti. It introduced another word that starts with S, further familiarized her with the shape of the letter, and was nice fine motor practice as well. She likes having a fun project to show Daddy when he gets home too!

Playdough Fun with S Shapes

We love pulling out the playdough for almost any unit. This one was particularly fun, as we focused mainly on rolling and playing with snakes! We slithered them around the table, had our snakes talk to one another and eat food. Sometimes their heads detached as they became too thin, and she thought it was hysterical.

Honey Pot added some eyes and a noodle mouth.

Here's one that has a button nose!

She practiced making really looooong snakes.

She used a craft stick to make a mouth indentation!

And she maneuvered her snake into an S shape.

And all on her own she started to roll it up. S is for snail too, by the way, Honey Pot!

Here are some other S shapes we made, most with cookie cutters: snowman, the letter S, star, snake and stegosaurus.

An S Snake.

And S is for seahorse! Kind of. Sort of. Right?

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