Y is for Yarn!

We had a few fun activities today to review the letter Y! Keep scrolling to see what we did, or click on one of the links below to revisit similar themes from the past!

Y is for Yarn - 2015

The Letter Y - 2014

Book

Honey Pot and Little M&M were so excited to see that I got this book from the library. They remember it so fondly from a few years ago, when we borrowed it from the library so often. Love this book! Sweet E seems equally as enchanted by it. She asked to read it over and over!

Letter Recognition Activity

In the above book, a girl named Annabelle has a magical box that never runs out of yarn. She knits colorful sweaters for everybody (and everything!) in her dreary town. So I made this Sweet E's magic box of yarn!

And she "knitted a sweater" for our cardboard Y by wrapping it up!

When she wanted to change colors, she'd use her scissors to cut it off. And then she just loved cutting the yarn so much, that she cut lots of little pieces. These we kept aside for an activity later.

Here is her finished Y!

Lacing with Yarn - Number Order

I wrote the numbers 1-20 on a paper plate, and hole punched it below each number. Then I invited Sweet E to feed the yarn through in number order.

She's still learning how to recognize those larger numbers. But she did great!

Sticky Paper Yarn Shapes

For this last activity I drew shapes on our dry erase easel, and covered it with contact paper, sticky-side up. We gathered the pieces of yarn that Sweet E cut earlier in the day, and I asked if she wanted to cover the shapes up with them.

She LOVED this! It seems so simple, but she was really into doing each one so perfectly.

And if she didn't have just the right size yarn, she cut one to fit!

I'll definitely be offering this activity again with another theme. So fun!

One letter to go in our alphabet themes! 😃

Y is for Yarn

Books

I had discovered three books about yarn by searching the library's online catalog; however, I was only able to find one when I got there. After asking a librarian to help me find the others, it had turned out they were missing! But the one I did find actually turned out to be so, so good. The kids asked that we read it over and over. It's a cute story about a girl who lives in a grey world, and finds a magical box of never-ending colorful yarn, which she uses to knit sweaters for everyone and everything. The pictures are just beautiful and the story is so engaging.

Letter Recognition Activity

For today's letter recognition activity we tried the ol' salt + watercolors technique. The idea is that you create a design out of glue (in our case, the letter Y)...

then you sprinkle salt over it...

and finally, you use a pipette filled with watercolors (though we always substitute water with food coloring) and watch the color spread across the salt. Our results weren't as great as we'd done in the past (see that July 4th fireworks craft here), but still a fun project for them. And afterward, they really enjoyed continuing to use their pipettes, scooping the salt from bowl to bowl, and making a big mess on the craft table.

Yarn Painting

There are a lot of varieties of yarn painting going around Pinterest. I've seen yarn used to create a homemade paintbrush, I've seen people making them into stamps, and I've seen various weaving and gluing projects. We decided to go with a yarn version of splat painting. Remember how we painted our piggies in mud with this clementine box during our F is for Farm week, using a rubber ball? We brought the box out again, and taped some yarn across tightly. First Honey Pot took her turn. She chose a few paint colors, and painted the pieces of yarn with her brush.

Then she flicked the yarn, as if strumming a guitar.

Then she painted on more paint, and flicked the yarn some more. The results were pretty cool!

Then it was Little M&M's turn. He chose his own paint colors and got started in the same fashion. He painted the yarn...

then he flicked the yarn...

and then for some reason he just dipped his messy hand down there and started making all kinds of smudges and smears. LOL. Ah well. He obviously was enjoying himself!

 I left the two paintings out to dry in the sun, and here is what they looked like. Pretty awesome!

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And if you enjoyed this, take a look at Honey Pot's Letter Y theme from last year!

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