Today my preschool students returned, and we started our study of the short sound of the letter “U”. Here are some of the highlights of our morning.
We started our morning by reading the book The Yellow Umbrella
by Caitlin Dundon. This book is about a little boy and his mother who are walking to school and work on a rainy day. The boy’s mother is in a hurry, but he wants to look at all of the colorful umbrellas and splash in the puddles. The mother later realizes she was in too much of a hurry. When she picks her son up from school she is carrying a yellow umbrella and lets him splash in the puddles. It is a good reminder to those of us that are parents to slow down and enjoy splashing in the puddles instead of being in such a hurry all of the time. The pictures in the book look as though they have been streaked by water. I think they make it feel like you are actually in the rain, too
After the story we made letter “U” umbrellas loosely based on the tutorial from No Time for Flashcards.
To make the umbrellas the children first colored a letter “U” from Itty Bitty Bookworms (printed at 40%). Then I cut them out and they glued them to a piece of paper. They also added a pre-cut yellow rectangle and an umbrella top. To finish their pictures they glued on 6 blue raindrops that I had pre-cut. This added a counting element to our letter activity.
Later we made paper plate umbrellas. I cut a small hole in the center of each paper plate and then asked the children to color one side of it. When they were finished the children put their pointer finger through the hole and walked around as we chanted this cute rhyme. The idea came from Preschool Rainbow.
One of our center activities today incorporated two skills. First, I asked the children to sort the umbrella cards in numerical order. (They worked in pairs for this activity.) Then I asked them to put the correct raindrop card under each number. I found these umbrella number cards at Home Grown Hearts. They were originally designed to be a flip book, but I liked this application a little better.
Another center activity today was this umbrella letter match from Home Grown Hearts. The children were to match the raindrops to the correct capital or lower case letter “U”.
The children also painted today, but I will share more about that on Friday. Since we are having a short week we will finish our study of the letter “U” on Friday. Have a great afternoon!
