P is for. . . Pizza Word Family Activity

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.

I used to enjoy coming up with fun activities for the girls to practice reading using word families. Several years ago we were doing a pizza unit and I came up with these.

P is for. . . Pizza Word Family Activity

In order to make these I took brown construction paper and cut out 8 pizza slice shapes. Then I took white paper, cut in the same shape but with the crust cut off. I then colored a tiny bit red for the sauce and the rest yellow for the cheese.

I knew I wanted to start with the short a vowel family words so I decided to cut out some pink paper to represent ham (short vowel word). Then I made a list of words for each family (at, am, an, ap, ack, ab, ag, and ad) and wrote them on the ham pieces. 

I placed them in a bowl and grabbed a die out of a game we have.

In order to play the game we took turns rolling the die and counting out the number of toppings rolled. Then we sounded out the words one at a time and placed them on the pizza. The first ham piece got placed on any pizza slice. Then for the following pieces we would see if the word rhymed with any that were already on the pizza. If they rhymed they got placed on the same slice. If they didn't rhyme they got placed on a new slice.

As there is no winner or loser in this game it is fun for the children. They get to listen for rhyming words and because the rhyming words are all on the same slice the children can see the similarities. 

I had every intention of creating toppings for the other vowels, but I never got to it. I think when we get to the letter P this time around, I am going to do this again. Here were my ideas for the toppings to go with the other vowels:

Short e-pepperoni

Short i- olives

Short o- broccoli

Short u- mushroom

Tot and Preschool Time Week of Nov 4-8 More Penguin Fun

We didn't do very much for school this week. We continued on with our habitats for Penguins.  Here are the finished snow scenes.

Hannah's

Harold's

Amelia's

Tabitha

Then I remembered the Global Art book we reviewed over the summer had a section on Antarctica, so I found a fun snowflake craft.

I was staring at this shoebox which has a little pompom sized hole in the side, thinking it would make a fun activity for Harold.

Hide the Pompoms:

Peek-a-boo

Oh, wait, dump the pompoms.

Harold also likes to use this activity cube at times. It keeps him busy when we try to get work done.

What would a letter P unit be without some pudding. Harold and Hannah were my helpers in the kitchen to make some Chocolate Peanut Butter Pudding.

Pouring in the pudding mix.

Pouring in the milk.

Mixing the pudding.

Don't forget to add the peanut butter, two heaping tablespoons to be exact.

And the reward for being such good helpers?

Yummy!!

Then mommy added the pudding to their P muffin tins in the form of penguins.

This week at co-op the preschool class made turkeys.

They colored the bodies.

And glued on tail feathers.

I had them rip strips of fall-colored construction paper into little pieces.

Harold's

Hannah's

(I love that she tried to write her name. I can see the H's!)

I think most of our learning about penguins this past week came from the books we read at rest time. We read some informational books and some fun "pretend stories that can't really happen," as Amelia called them.

Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers

A cute little story about a penguin and a boy. The boy thinks the sad-looking little penguin who knocks on his door is lost, so they embark on an adventure to return him to the South Pole. He discovers that he wasn't lost after all.

Don't Be Afraid Little Pip by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman

Another cute little story that helps reassure young children that they do not need to be afraid. Little Pip is afraid of learning to swim for the first time and would much rather fly like the other birds. 

Penguins by Liz Pichon

In this book the penguins live in a zoo instead of in the wild. One day a little girl drops her camera into the penguin enclosure and the penguins have a grand old time with it. I love the pictures that she finds after she develops her film.

A Penguin Story by Antoinette Portis

Every day the colors are the same: black, white and blue. Edna, the little penguin feels there must be some other colors in the world. She sets off to find them and when she does she asks her friends to join her. 

Amazing Animals: Penguins by Valerie Bodden

In this informational book we learned a little bit about different penguins. Each double page spread consists of a full page color photograph with the other page being a short paragraph of information with some new vocabulary being learned as well. 

My favorite informational book tells the story of the mother penguins. So many of the other books focused on the father staying behind with the egg and newborn chick or on the family together. In 

A Mother's Journey by Sandra Markle and Alan Marks

we follow the new mommy emperor penguins as they head for the sea. There are a lot of descriptive words that help tell of their journey. The illustrations really help to make this a memorable book. 

We still have a few more penguin books we haven't read yet. I will share the remainder next week as we conclude our Penguin unit.