Today we started our study of the letter “X”. “X” is a tricky letter because it can sound like a “Z”, it can say its name, or it can sound like (KS). I chose to find activities for each sound and teach one sound per school day this week. So, today we talked about x-rays. Here are some of the highlights of our morning.
We started our morning by reading the book Maisy Goes to the Hospital by Lucy Cousins. The children liked this story so much they wanted me to read it again before they went home. It is a simple story in which Maisy gets hurt on a trampoline. She then has to go to the hospital to have an x-ray where it is determined she broke her leg.
After the story I showed the children my son’s x-rays from a hospital trip in December. He had to see a specialist last week, so we got a copy of his x-rays to take with us. They said they didn’t need to keep them which was perfect for talking about x-rays today.
The X-Ray Man
(tune of “The Muffin Man”)
Do you know the X-RAY man,
the X-RAY man,
the X-RAY man?
Do you know the X-RAY man?
He takes pictures of my bones.
Oh, he loves the letter X,
the letter X,
the letter X,
Oh, he loves the letter X
and likes to X-RAY me.
Next, the children made letter “X” x-rays. I used the tutorial from No Time For Flashcards for this activity.
I gave each child two large bone shapes I had drawn on off-white construction paper. I asked them to cut out the bones, but helped some of the littler children when necessary. Then, they glued the bones in an “X” onto black construction paper. They could use a white crayon to embellish their x-ray if desired and that was it.
One of our center activities this week is an x-ray counting activity I created. (You may download and print the worksheets by clicking the link below.) I made 5 total counting sheets and placed them in sheet protectors. The children were to count the x-rays and then put a milk jug lid on the correct number. This not only helped with number recognition, but one-to-one correspondence as well.
To end our morning we played a game. The children stood in a line and took turns running to me where there were two straws waiting for them. The children were to pick up the straws and make them into an “X” while holding them in the air. The other children were to clap if it looked like an “X”. If it did then the child was to run back to the line and give the next person a high-five. We continued until everyone had a turn making an “X” out of the straws. They had so much fun we played a second time. When their parents came to pick them up they were still pretty excited from the game. 🙂
We had a great morning and will continue our study of the letter “X” on Wednesday when we will talk about “X” at the end of words (as in fox).
