F is for...Fishy Alphabet Match Game

Cristi from Through the Calm and Through the Storm and Meg from Adventures with Jude are hosting this great weekly party called Blogging Through the Alphabet. All are welcome to join in, just make sure to keep your posts family-friendly. I am determined to stay faithful this time around. I might not always post on the same day of the week, but I have every intention to post something each week.

Here is how I decided my "theme" for this round of Blogging Through the Alphabet. As I was going through old blog posts recently, I noticed I have some neat ideas for activities and crafts that I did with in the past. Unfortunately, I always included them in my weekly wrap up posts or more recently in Poppins Book Nook posts, so they sort of got buried. I can't really share them as individual activities or create pinnable images to promote them and share my ideas, which is why I started this blog in the first place (to share my ideas with others who work with children). So, I am going to make new posts for these ideas.

I have found there is a huge benefit in this strategy. I am remembering  ideas that I had forgotten, which means I can now do these activities with the younger children. I will be sharing the old pictures and possibly sharing new pictures of the younger children participating. In fact, this is the second week where I wasn't sure what I was going to post about, and through searching my blog I found activities I had completely forgotten about.

Several years ago, when we were on the letter F, it was also Dr. Seuss's birthday, so we read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish. I decided to make a kind of fishing game, though it is fishing in reverse. 

F is for. . . Fishy Alphabet Match Game

That probably doesn't make a lot of sense, does it? Here, let me explain. The girls were told that the fish had all jumped out of the pond and they had to flip them over, make the match, and put them back in the pond to save them.

I found a fish image I liked on Google images and printed out enough for each letter of the alphabet. I then wrote the capital letters on them. 

The next step was to make the pond. I printed out 4 sheets of fish on blue construction paper, making sure there were 26 fish. Then I taped them together, folded them up, and cut out the curve on the corner. The lower case letters were written in random order.  

 The magnets on the back of the fish are really optional. The girls like the idea of going fishing, even if it was in reverse, so I put some magnets on them and we used a safety pin on yarn. I had used magnetic strip, which if I remember right, didn't work very well. 

It was a fun way for the girls to practice matching upper and lower case letters. As a bonus, it was quite easy to put together.  

School Time Week 24 (Ff continued)

I have to call this week "Ff continued" because I am most definitely going to have to do some more F lessons to finish everything I had planned.  It was another week of appointments here, there and everywhere. The appointments came on the days that we didn't have play group or story time, which was great because we at least got to go to those. But it left me with no time to get much else done.  Here is what we did do.

On Monday we read Dr. Seuss's The Foot Book which is one of my favorites.  We started taking pictures to make our own foot book.  Sort of a foot scavenger hunt.

We found left feet

and right feet.

We found feet at night

We found wet feet

And dry feet.

This coming week we will continue finding feet.

While getting our wet feet/dry feet pictures we made foot prints.

Even Mommy took a turn.

Then they really went to town

We have been having a muffin tin everyday for the last few days.  I decided to give the girls a muffin tin for each color of the rainbow and then on St. Patrick's day we will have a rainbow muffin tin.

If you are wondering what everything is, I will be sharing the details in my Muffin Tin Monday Post.

We ended our week with a trip to the library.  The library I go to is in a nearby town.  We do have a library in town, but I prefer the interlibrary system up in New York (benefits of living near the border).  And we go to Story Time up there as well.  This library has weekly programs/concerts/movies/plays.  On Saturday we finally had a chance to go.  And I am so glad we did.  We got to see a program put on by Jeff Boyer.  He has several different programs he puts on.  The one we went to is called Bubble Trouble.  I loved the way he explained the science of bubbles in simple terms and made it so fun for the kids.  Did you know you can catch a bubble?  Did you know you can juggle bubbles?  He made tiny bubbles and medium sized bubbles.  He made bubbles with bubbles inside them.  He made a bubble blow its own bubbles.  He made smoke filled bubbles.  Then he made some HUGE bubbles.  For his grand finale he put a little boy inside a bubble.  I thought it was really cool that it was the boy's fifth birthday, what a great birthday present.  

I found a video on You Tube that he has posted

I was glad to find this to share as I forgot my camera.  How could I forget my camera????  Oh well.

We are looking forward to finishing our Ff lessons this week.  We will also be doing some St. Patrick's Day stuff and we will be starting our Art Lessons from over at Pineapple Paintbrush that I posted about a few days ago.  If you are interested in a free online preschool art class I would suggest heading on over and checking it out.

I am linking to:

School Time Week 23 (Ff, Dr Seuss)

We started this week off, as always, with Muffin tin Monday. We started F this week, so we had an F muffin tin.

The girls also worked on their Ff collages.  Our words this week are: 

flag, flower, frog, fan, fairy and fox.

We didn't get that much done this week. Tuesday was of course play group. On Wednesday we celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday by having another muffin tin based on one of his books, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish.

Of course, this book is not all about fish, it is about all the funny things that go by.  So the girls made their own "funny things."

Tabitha wanted to take some pictures of her own.

Tabitha's "funny creature" has wings and can fly.  It is sort of a fairy (she is obsessed with playing Abby Cadabby games on Sesame Street website) and it is a cuppy creature named Fluffy.

Amelia's is an angel.  That is all I got from her.

It worked well that I took out the above book for this week.  Originally it was because we were doing the letter F.  Then I remembered it was Dr. Seuss's birthday.  I also had a lower case/upper case fishing game planned.  The fish in the pond all have lower case letters written on them.  I had found a fish outline picture on Google that had the open space I needed to write my letters on.  Then I printed out some on blue paper and some on white paper.  The white fish have upper case letters on them. They have jumped out of the pond and the girls needed to flip them over and put them back on the right space.

I tried making a fishing pole with yarn and a safety pin, while the fish have magnet strip on them.  The magnet wasn't strong enough to pick them up.  The girls had fun anyway.

That is about all we got done this week.  Amelia wasn't feeling well and I had surgery on Thursday.  Hoping to have a more productive week next week.  All the kids have had the stomach bug, of course now they have colds, but we should feel more up to learning.  Which would be good, because I have plans.

One thing we did do was read lots of Dr. Seuss books.  We still have the Horton books from last week. So I took Horton Hatches The Egg to play group to read.  We also took The Lorax, which is one we read a lot at the Montessori where I worked.  Another one we read is Oh, The Places You'll Go!

Tabitha is no longer taking naps while the other girls nap.  Instead, she rests a bit on the love seat, spends time on more.starfall.com or sesamestreet.com or she reads to me.  We finished (finally) the first book in the Progressive Phonics series with the short a sound.  Now she is reading The Cat in the Hat to me!  We read a little at a time and mommy helps with some harder words, like "anything" or "something." Other than that, she is reading it by herself.  

I have decided that we are going to try to read at least one new book every day this month as it is Reading Month.  Besides the Dr Seuss books we have also read Now It Is Winter by Eileen Spinelli. The impatient little mouse in this story keeps asking his mom when spring is going to come so they can enjoy all the different things that spring brings.  His mother keeps telling his spring will come,while drawing his attention to the good things about winter that are all around him.  I thought it was a sweet way to focus on the blessings that we have.

I am participating in the March Read Along over at Helping Little Hands

There are many different bloggers out there who were assigned one day of the month to showcase activities they did in response to a book.  I will be sharing on March 9th.  Head on over to Helping Little Hands to check out all the great activities that are being shared.
Tiny Tot Time

Tabitha wrote the big V. I helped Hannah write the little one to the left.

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