During Small Group today, we worked on a phonemic awareness skill of isolating, hearing, and matching beginning sounds of words. This was a fun game of sorting toys based on how they sounded. We started with two forest animals: a fox, and a bear. We listened to the first sound of the word and matched it to the correct flashcard. Then we all took turns drawing toys from the basket and matching them as well. We tested out saying the word with a B-sound and an F-sound. It made some of the words REALLY funny, like Ffffflashlight Bbbbblashlight or Ffffffeather Bbbbbeather.
The B-words included bus driver, beaver, beetle, bandaid, and ball. The F-words were fly, flashlight, feather, fire, and firefighter.
Once all the toys were sorted, we each took a turn using the toys to tell an alliterative story. For example, "Fox and fly were camping with a fire. All of a sudden, a feather flew by and waved the fire into a huge forest fire! Fly flew off and buzzed in the ear of the firefighter, who grabbed his flashlight and ran into the forest! He used his giant hose to put out the fire and everyone was saved. The end." :) The children used one collection or the other to create silly stories and we all laughed and laughed.
When we got to Work Time, a lot of the morning was spent in the Art Area. These children are very creative and work hard. Here's some of their art plans:
Friend "H" experimented with beads in a few ways. He started by stringing them onto fuzzy sticks. This plan evolved into poking them into red play-doh. Ultimately he chose to use the beads on a paper towel tube. His process was to drizzle glue all over the top of the tube. Then he applied tape and cotton balls. Finally he scooped and poured beads all over the top of the tube. We carefully took it to the drying rack. We learned that because the tube had a round shape, instead of a flat shape, the glue, and some beads, would slide off the sides. We reapplied the beads and hope it will be dry by the time we meet again on Thursday! It was really exciting to see Friend "H" get so involved in his plan that he wasn't concerned about his hands getting sticky or glue getting on the table.
Friend "K" also wanted to work with beads. She decided to string hers onto fuzzy sticks to make a necklace. One fuzzy stick was not long enough to go around, and so we twisted a few sticks together to make it longer. She also worked through the issue that some of the beads had holes too small to slide over the combined fuzzy sticks. Finally, without prompting, she decided to count how many beads she had put on her work. She accurately counted 20 beads on her necklace! Nice work Friend "K!"
