OVERVIEW
Our Letter E unit days were a bit scattered, mainly spending only 3 days on this letter. We had some family vacation planned in the middle, and when we returned I didn’t feel like it was needed to spend a whole other week on Letter E, so we went ahead and moved on to Letter F. Generally speaking, the reason I do 2 weeks per Letter Unit is to make sure we have enough time to cover the letter well and to not pressure myself to do too much.
BIBLE FOCUS
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E is for Earth: “The Earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.” (Psalm 24:1).
We created the Seven Days of Creation out of play dough! We read the creation story out of The Jesus Storybook Bible first and then slowly went day by day and created the story out of play dough, counting and talking about the days of the week as we went. We also sang the “God Created” song (the printout I made is available here). The imagery of this story in The Jesus Storybook Bible is so beautiful & we loved singing our gratitude for all that God has made. Materials:
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SONG
Do You Ears Hang Low? (Jame with Jamie How To Sing Classic Kids’ Songs)
This song was seriously such a hit, especially with my 2 year old — it has been 14 weeks since we learned this and she still sings it ALL. THE. TIME.
BOOKS
- Rechenka’s Eggs*
- An Egg Is Quiet*
- Elmer
- E is for Ear Books:
*From The Peaceful Preschool book list
LEARNING ACTIVITIES
Note that we do a number of phonics & letter formation activities with every Letter Unit and I don’t always snap a photo (thank God). I’ve also started finding ways to incorporate these activities throughout the day: not just as a part of school time in the morning. My son and I get some one-on-one time while my daughter naps so we may spend some time on letter activities then.
- Salt tray
- Glitter glue letters (via The Peaceful Preschool)
- Forming letters with natural materials or play dough
- Sandpaper card tracings
- Dry erase write and wipe pouches
- Chalkboard write and wipe
- B is for Breakdancing Bear letter activities
- Stamp it! Write it! Poke it! from Simply Learning
- Letter Unit item basket (things that start with E)
- Letter Unit 3-Part Cards
And, of course, my goal is to try as many of these as possible in our 2-week period but we certainly rarely do all of them!
Below are some of the specific Letter E activities we did:
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Elmer themed patchwork “E” using cut paint sample sheets I’ve used many times for scissor skills exercises.
Whenever we glue things to a large letter sheet I have my son spread the glue with a Q-tip first, holding it like he would a pencil. |
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Coloring large-scale Elmer. Another great idea from Simply Learning. I gave the kids the option of what media to use & they both chose crayons and Kwik Stix. |
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E is for Elephant. E is for Ears. And E is for Elephant Ears!
My mother-in-law gave me this charming A to Z Alpha-Bakery children’s cookbook from 1987. There are some recipes in it which sound terrible to me, but a few gems like this one that I knew we’d have to try! A great one for hands-on cooking: the kids could easily participate in the whole process. |
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This week we jumped on the “Stamp it! Write it! Poke it!” train via Simply Learning and did letter review for A through E.
My kids actually use a plastic yarn needle for the Poke It! part because we don’t have jumbo tacks. I also like these ink pads instead of the jumbo ink pads because with those my kids tend to mix the colors a ton. |
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E is for Ear — Egg Sound Matching Game
The idea is to shake the eggs & try to find the matching pairs without peeking. Materials:
Other common household items that could work: buttons, paper clips, popcorn kernels, rice, broken crayons, beads, etc… |
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E is for Ear — Rhyming Basket Literacy Game
This is a super fun, engaging, and low-prep activity! Just dig around your toy bins to find rhyming pairs and you’re done! When we did this activity, I started with only 5 pairs at a time because I wasn’t sure how difficult this would be. That seemed to be a good start (10 would have been too difficult). Here are the rhyming pairs I provided: |
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We also did our Target Dollar Spot Rhyming Picture Cards (you use a clothespin to clip the correct rhyme). I can’t find these cards online but there’s this cool rhyme puzzle that is similar (ages 3+).
Finding rhyming pairs is a great listening exercise and also builds vocabulary. |
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E is for Ear — Listening Walk.
Often on our walks I play “quiet game” with my kids and ask them to pause and tell me what they hear. Well, for our listening walk we did that PLUS basically the inverse: what are things happening around us during our walk that we cannot hear? I actually stole this idea from Richard Louv’s The Last Child in the Woods — the game is called “The Sound of a Creature Not Stirring.” We made a list as we went. Books: |
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E is for Egg! We read Rechenka’s Eggs and made “color volcanoes”: baking soda, food coloring drops, and vinegar. This is a repeat activity for us from Easter.
The kids helped place the Easter eggs in the carton, spoon in the baking soda, count & color match the food coloring drops, and poured their own vinegar. I cut the egg cartons in to the egg shape. And of course I jumped in with an eye dropper to play as well — we could do this all day!! |
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E is for Eating: 3-Part Card game.
Basically this is just a version of “I Spy” for feeding our little shark finger puppet. — “Shark is really hungry for … something oval … with a shell … the inside is yellow…” etc. Then my son named the item for shark, fed shark, and set it aside. Repeat. FYI: half of these 3-Part Cards are ones I made to supplement the Treehouse Schoolhouse ones for Letter E. You can get that second set of Letter E 3-Part Cards here (PDF). |
THE SILVAN REVERIE 