Letter M

We have been working on the letter M for a little over a week now. I have managed to incorporate art (crafts) and letter/sound as usual. We also snuck in a little math and science. We started out by making mittens. I traced around each girl's hand in a mitten shape so it would be her size mitten. Then, after I cut them out the girls were able to color them and add star stickers. I also cut out zig zag shapes for the cuffs.

I have read part of the book, "The Missing Mitten Mystery" by Steven Kellogg to Amelia. It's a cute little book. I was actually looking for "The Mitten" by Jan Brett when I found it. Unfortunately our library didn't have "The Mitten" so I had to put it on hold from interlibrary loan. That's okay, they got a chance to wear mittens this week as it decided to snow on Wednesday and we got to go out and play. I let them use measuring cups in the snow, as we have been talking about measuring (math) and we took some inside in the cups when we were all done so we could see what would happen to the snow when it got warm, it melts (science).

We actually started talking about measuring on Monday. The girls enjoy playing with the measuring tape (mainly because they like to pull it out and have it go back in). However, on Monday, we measured different objects, like paper, with the measuring tape and a ruler. We also measured a couple of their baby dolls. There were a couple of purposes to this. One, we got to see that their babies were a little bit bigger than the baby in mommy's uterus is right now. Two, we wanted to discuss how big a baby was when it was born so we could discuss baby Jesus and how big the manger (also an M word) would have had to be to hold him. We added a manger picture to their letter books that we do for each letter (will have to share those in a separate post. We were actually doing these before I started the letter of the week with Tabitha).

Later in the week we actually made mangers. I cut out a manger shape (just a trapezoid) with legs. Then I cut a baby shape out of felt and a square of white material. The girls got to wrap their baby Jesus up in the swaddling cloth. I stapled it so it would stay put. Then we glued it to the manger and glued on bits of yellow yarn for hay.

Today I printed out pictures of a menorah and the girls colored them. We will be putting a flame on the candles every night of Hanukkah. We discussed that Jesus would have celebrated Hanukkah. And yesterday I was looking up recipes for latkes and listening to Jewish Hanukkah music online.

Speaking of music, we have also been listening to a CD of music Mozart composed; we found it at the library of course. When I ask if they want to listen to music and dance Tabitha has actually been requesting the Mozart over Raffi.

Plans for next week include reading the books "Goodnight Moon" and "If You Give a Moose a Muffin." I have some ideas for activities, but I will wait to see where each day leads us.