One of our school friends went to the pumpkin patch on her home days. What a great way to kick off our "Pumpkin" theme at school. :)
Today in Small Group, we sorted objects by their beginning sounds. The objects needed to match the /p/ sound like "pumpkin," or the /l/ sound like "leaf." The school friends were encouraged to listen to the sounds of the words, but also to notice what shape the mouth and tongue made when figuring out where each item went. They worked carefully and correctly sorted all of the things in the basket. It was also quite funny to name each object with the "other" letter sound to make the word "pig" sound like "lig," and so on. :D
The objects for "L" were leaf, lemon, the L acorn, log, and lego.
The objects for "P" were pig, pink, pumpkin, the P acorn, and pom-pom.
During Work Time, anyone who wanted to could work on hammering Pegs into a Pumpkin to promote fine motor skills. Ms. Harmony had the pegs started so the children could use two hands on the hammer if they needed to. This really worked out our hand-eye coordination and hand strength!
Additionally during Work Time, the children had the opportunity to work with Play-Doh, or make contact paper art with Pumpkin Parts around a big letter P. ;) Friend "K" asked why there was a big P on the sticky paper. She started sticking on bits of orange, green, and brown things, and then said, "I know! Pumpkins start with P! These are pumpkin things!" It's always super cool to hear children ask and answer their own questions through the process of discovery. Friends "S" and Baby "K" also worked on this sticky paper pumpkin project.
There were so many times today that we could hear the /p/ sound in our work!
