E is for Engine


I wasn't sure how Little Miss was going to like our "E is for Engine" day.  I admit, I think of "Engines" as something that would appeal more to my son.  But she has seen a few Thomas the Train episodes, and she likes the story of the little blue engine in the "The Little Engine That Could", so we had fun on this day, just like the others.


Look at our old copy of this book!  It has been around awhile.  Since I was little and read the same exact copy, actually.  (It's so fun to share books you enjoyed as a child with your own kids).



Our Reading Literacy activity revolves around this old picture book by Watty Piper.  It's a lesson on following directions and it involves a happy little engine.  The engine in our image is supposed to be blue like the one in the story, but our printer was running out color on the day I printed this, and Little Miss's engine turned out pink.  She wasn't bothered by this in the exercise where she is coloring the engine's cars, but...


...as you can see, when we began drawing in the items in the train underneath, she decided to keep it accurate and color her engine blue as it should be in the story.  Haha!  Child directed learning is awesome!


I read the sentences on the bottom and Little Miss drew the lines across.  She was kind of done after two, as you can see here.  So I didn't even try to bring out our building sentences worksheet, which looks like this:


This is a little advanced for Little Miss, but for kindergartners who are working on writing, this is a great activity to begin getting them comfortable with writing small sentences, especially when they have the sentences in the Reading Literacy Activity to use for ideas.

The one last worksheet I want to show off is the one that Little Miss is working on in this picture:


I love giving her manipulatives to use to fill in this Big E and little e, and it reminds her of our Glimmercat story for why E says "eh".  Here, she is using little river rocks to fill in the letters.

Teaching Tip:  For little preschoolers who aren't as comfortable with a pencil yet, this is a great way to let them become used to the letters without requiring writing practice all the time.  

Every one of the worksheets and printables seen here (and in our other days of the week posts) are available here at our Teacher Store:  https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Letter-of-the-Week-E-1981207

To view our other days for the Letter E, check out:

E is for Elephant:  http://glimmercat.blogspot.com/2015/10/e-is-for-elephant.html

E is for Elf:  http://glimmercat.blogspot.com/2015/10/e-is-for-elf-on-shelf.html


E is for Egg:  http://glimmercat.blogspot.com/2015/10/e-is-for-eggs.html 

E is for Eggs


 So, here we are on "E is for Egg" day.  

We have done a lot of activities with Eggshells, including this fun craft that the kids really enjoyed (and this is included in our Letter of the Week for E packet):


I think the thing that is the most fun for the kids with this craft is the chance to crunch up the eggshells before gluing them to the egg shape on this one. 


But I did this one already with Little Miss awhile back, so I tried to mix it up a bit.  She loves to paint, so she painted some egg shells first...


This was in the morning.  Then, we let the shells alone while they dried.  A few hours later, they were ready for crunching:


 I prepped a big construction paper E for Little Miss, and she took her little eggshell fragments and carefully placed them all over her big E.


Now we come to one of Little Miss's favorite things to do in the Letter of the Week packets:  the What Do You See? page.

She cuts out her puzzle pieces like a pro now.


And then, together we work on figuring out where these pieces fit.  After we've figured them out, she is wielding her glue-stick.


So happy was she with this completed puzzle page, that she insisted on coloring it, too.
Look at that smile!


Every one of the crafts seen here (and in our other days of the week posts) are available here at our Teacher Store:  https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Letter-of-the-Week-E-1981207

To view our other days for the Letter E, check out:

E is for Elephant:  http://glimmercat.blogspot.com/2015/10/e-is-for-elephant.html

E is for Elf:  http://glimmercat.blogspot.com/2015/10/e-is-for-elf-on-shelf.html

E is for Elephant



"Elephant" is generally the top animal that comes to mind when you think of animals to connect preschool with the letter E.  At least it is for me. 



This Elephant craft is a very simple Elephant paper puppet that once colored and cut out, turns a toddler's hand into a mini elephant.




And, once we have a cute little Elephant puppet it is fun to read an Elephant picture book.  Something like David McKee's "Elmer" is great.


We didn't have Elmer in our book collection, so I pulled out an Eric Carle standby and told Little Miss to keep an eye open for the Elephant in the story. 

 
That made it VERY exciting for her and she hollered out, "There's my elephant!" when she saw the picture.

In our Letter of the Week packet, we also have this great Elephant dot to dot page:

 Here's Little Miss working on it.  She's getting more independent on these, but I still help her after number 10.


 Teaching Tip:  Preschoolers need lots of gentle repetition.  This method below of using the color sheets in the packet for manipulative work on the letters is a great way to keep this repetition going while changing up the manipulatives to keep the interest high. 



I like to use the Path of Motion Color Sheet for this.  Here, we used little river rocks for the manipulatives.

Now, you could create your own worksheets, using these ideas and such, but...



...all of the crafts and worksheets seen here are available for an easy download in our Letter of the Week packet for E, located here in our store:  https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Letter-of-the-Week-E-1981207

There are over 40 pages of crafts, activities, lesson plans and other preschool and kindergarten tactics for teaching children about the letter E.



Whatever the case, have fun with your little people!  This is such a fun age that they are at!  For our other posts about the letter E, see:

E is for Elf :   http://glimmercat.blogspot.com/2015/10/e-is-for-elf-on-shelf.html





E is for Elf on a Shelf

 

After a prolonged and unpleasant visit with the flu at our house, we are back to our letters of the week!  Little Miss was raring to go with the Letter E and was very interested to hear the story behind the Glimmercat image below that introduces E in our packet.  


All of the activities you find in this Letter E blog are available for download in our store, here:  https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Letter-of-the-Week-E-1981207

I've decided to break these posts down into our daily work with our letter of the week activities since they get awfully long with five days of activities.  So, here's Day 1:  E is for Elf


In our letter of the week packet for E, the first lesson plan above, explains the story behind this funny little elf in the image.  As with all our vowels, we begin by introducing the short vowel sound, so E makes the sound of "eh" in this entire packet.  (We'll go back and introduce long vowels after the alphabet is complete).



 Next, I printed out the Letter E matching game, and we went over the pictures that begin with the letter E.  Some of these (like Engine and Eggplant) were new for Little Miss, but she has this cutting thing down. 


I have a new ploy for the Letter Matching Game print-outs.  I like to print them out in color, but they are SO easy to see through when we do that.  So I found these neat glitter foam sheets that have adhesive on the back, after you peel off the paper. 


We stuck them to these neat adhesive sheets, and now we have a game that we can keep around for awhile because it will last better than plain paper will.  Woo hoo!  I like this addition!



For our craft, we printed out the Elf paper and here is Little Miss adding her favorite color to this little paper Elf.  We don't actually do the Elf on a Shelf thing in our home, but we do watch the movie, "Elf", so we still have some context for elves.


In fact, if you need a little Elf to sit on a shelf, this paper craft Elf works pretty good.  Just keep in mind that small hands may need some help cutting out around those detailed parts.

  Little Miss decided her elf needed arms and some more pink (everyone needs more pink) so here she is touching him up now that he is taped together.


Letter of the Week for R


We are Rocking with the letter R!  Look at all these FUN crafts and activities! 


This packet in totality is available in our store

But let's go over some of these fun things first here... Our letter of the week packet is set up so that we focused on one "R word" each day of the week.  One of those days is "Rocket". 


This was SUCH an exciting craft for my daughter and my son!  First, they cut out their rocket-ship and the small rectangle accompanying it.  The small rectangle then was fit snugly around a straw and taped (I helped with this part). 


The end of the rectangle at the top of the straw was also folded over and taped...and then we taped this to the back of the Rocket Ship.


Next, I had the kids draw a little person in the window of their Rocket Ships...(just for fun!)

 
And then they blew their Rocket ships...


They had a blast (hardy-har-har).  In our Letter of the Week packet, we also have a fun puzzle activity that shows a rocket when it is all put together. 



Next Day, we focused on R is for Rabbit, which is available also in our "Tale of Peter Rabbit Literacy Packet"


Here, my son is cutting out the pieces that turn a non-descript toilet paper roll into a cute little bunny rabbit.  We kept our Rabbit cut-outs to the same soft brown color, so there is no need for paint with this craft.  Just googly eyes.  The backside of the Rabbit goes on the backside, of course.  Everything else (ears, eyes, front feet, face) goes on the front.  We also took a cotton ball and broke it in two...one half went on the rabbit's tail, and one half went above his eyes and between his ears.


Now, that's one cute little Rabbit.  If you are looking for just this Rabbit craft, remember, you can pick it up as a single craft here in this Peter Rabbit Reading Literacy Activity Packet.   (<<More about the literacy part at the end of this post!)

When we introduce R for this letter, we also introduce raccoons, since Glimmercat is meeting one in the woods.  I'm going to share the song with you here because it is a cute and memorable way for children to remember the sound for R.


After a song like that, we had to make our kids into little Raccoons so that they could go "Rrrrrr", too.


Most children love to play-act, and getting to be a little Raccoon that runs around and growls, "Rrrrrr!" was the most fun ever.

Just to show kids that Raccoons do, in fact growl, here's a short video of a Raccoon growling:




Our Raccoon craft is purposely not colored because we wanted to use a shape-color connection for kids to create their raccoon in generally accurate tones.  I helped her cut it out, though.

 
My son thought his sister's mask was so cool, he wanted to be a Raccoon, too.  So...


The final craft I will share here is our little Rainbow Craft.  Easy to do and just needs coloring and cotton balls.  (I love keeping those added materials as inexpensive as possible!).  We tried ours in markers.  This wasn't the best plan as our paper tended to wilt from the moisture of the pens.  I'd say sticking with crayons or colored pencils for this one would be best.  Unless you have thicker paper than I do myself.



Now, more about that Reading Literacy activity, mentioned above.  For the letter R, we created a fun activity for "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" by Beatrix Potter.  We made a Peter Rabbit Pictograph, where my son chose the amount of vegetables that he believed Peter ate.




 With this reading literacy activity, we practiced Inference, as all that the delightful Beatrix Potter shares in her story is:  "Peter ate lettuces, radishes and beans".  And we know that Peter gets sick from having eaten so many.


To follow up, we also created a Building Sentences activity that allows children to insert the number that they chose for each of the vegetables in their graph.



For a lot more R activities, both printables, reading literacy activities, flash cards and a Letter R Matching Game, head over to our teacher store here.


What's YOUR favorite Letter R activity?  Share with us int he comments below!


For our other alphabet letter of the week packets, we offer the following blog links with crafts included:


Letter of the Week for A

Letter of the Week for B

Letter of the Week for C

Letter of the Week for D

Letter of the Week for E  

Letter of the Week for F

Letter of the Week for G

Letter of the Week for H

Letter of the Week for I

Letter of the Week for J

Letter of the Week for K

Letter of the Week for L

Letter of the Week for M

Letter of the Week for N

Letter of the Week for O

Letter of the Week for P

Letter of the Week for Q

Letter of the Week for R

Letter of the Week for S


Letter of the Week for T

Letter of the Week for U

Letter of the Week for V

Letter of the Week for W

Letter of the Week for X