Letter I Preschool Unit

OVERVIEW

It took us several weeks to cover Letter I because we had a week-long family vacation in the middle and I left plenty of room to slowly re-enter our normal routine without doing too much school stuff (i.e. NOT adding stress to my life!)

We covered Letter I in kind of a wide variety of ways that I suspect will not be super relevant to all of you reading this, but I’m sharing it anyway just in the case something triggers a useful or fun idea for you to implement at home! As always, feel free to email me with questions. I love hearing from you!

BIBLE LESSON

The Peaceful Preschool memory verse for Letter I is for Noah (“… INTO the ark…”) so we kicked off this week reading the Noah story, then made a shaving cream rain cloud, worked on drawing rainbows for an art skill, and worked on our wooden Noah’s Ark puzzle. You can see which stories we read from specific children’s Bibles on my Bible Lessons by Letter Unit page. Also a reminder I have Bible character peg dolls for sale in my Etsy shop which we always use for storytelling aids & play.

LETTER I ACTIVITIES

We use the following letter recognition & formation strategies for every letter. I integrate these activities in different ways throughout our days:

• Jolly Phonics 42 letter sounds and actions
• Handwriting Without Tears letter formation chart
• Salt tray letter formation
• Glitter glue letters (via The Peaceful Preschool)
• Forming letters with natural materials or play dough
• Sandpaper card letter 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 J)
• Letter Unit 3-Part Cards

This list is LONG! I never feel like this is a checklist where I have to complete all of this or somehow I’ve failed. It’s absolutely OKAY if we don’t do it all. I give myself 2 weeks, though, because I want to work on these things slowly and try out a variety of activities with my son. Next year I may switch to one letter per week but for now I’m content to do a little bit spread out over more time.

And now for Letter I…

I IS FOR ICE CREAM

BOOKS

• Ice Cream Summer*
• Should I Share My Ice Cream?
• Frog & Toad All Year (Ice Cream)
• Ice Cream

*From The Peaceful Preschool book list

There are A TON of ice cream preschool activity ideas on Pinterest, but I wanted to just keep this fun, simple, and playful (and low prep).

PRETEND PLAY

Our woodland play dough ice cream shop

After reading Ice Cream Summer this morning we set up our ice cream shop outside with a variety of natural materials (pine cones = ice cream cones; tree branch slices = cookies for ice cream sandwiches). Our play dough was this sick gray/green color because it’s literally 12 color varieties all mixed together. I first imagined us doing an ice cream play dough shop with a bunch of fun colors but then I actually love having an “ugly” batch that I don’t have to care about — my kids love it whenever we take play dough outside so it’s nice to just not care about preserving perfect colors and in a way it’s also easier to use our imaginations: one color can be a ton of flavors!

Book: Today

PRACTICAL LIFE & COUNTING SKILLS

Make real ice cream!

We used pumpkins grown from our garden to make homemade pumpkin ice cream.

We also made homemade waffle cone bowls (recipe from Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams At Home)

FYI, here are my favorite ice cream making supplies:

• Ice Cream Maker
• Waffle Cone Maker
• Ice Cream freezer storage tubs

Book: When Green Becomes Tomatoes

LETTER FORMATION

Rainbow sprinkles writing tray. Because it’s pretty and also a bit more inviting than salt.

ART SKILLS

We also had fun with a variety of painting activities creating lots and lots of ice cream cones!

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I IS FOR ICE & IGLOOS

BOOKS & MEDIA

• Arctic Son
• Berry Magic
• The Story of Snow
• Building an Igloo
• Planet Earth (Season 1 Episode 6: Ice Worlds)
• Once Upon A Mat (Arctic adventure yoga!)

We made snow dough and combined that with some blue ice cubes (with glitter frozen in) and played with our Safari TOOB Arctic Animals. Again, I kept the activities pretty simple and playful. We also watched some arctic related videos from Planet Earth, and did some arctic themed yoga.

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I IS FOR INDIANA

Well we certainly had a BLAST celebrating Indiana. I think some of this could transfer to other activities even if you don’t live in Indiana, so I’m going to go ahead and share all that we did! Maybe this will even tip off some ideas to celebrate your own state with your preschooler.

BOOKS

• The 50 States
• H is for Hoosier: An Indiana Alphabet
• H is for Hoosier
• Goodnight Indiana

LEARNING ACTIVITIES

	Indy 500 racetrack themed letter formation I made these racetracks using black card stock paper to match the shapes of the Handwriting Without Tears wood letter formation blocks. You can do this making your own or there’s this nice printable available as well — I actually printed only one page from this to use as a guide for cutting my black card stock pieces. We practiced letter formation review for A through I and drove our race cars on the tracks for a tracing activity!
	Indiana State Bird lacing card: I just printed a cardinal image on to card stock, laminated it, cut it out and punched holes around the outside. The kids used a shoelace string from our lacing beads to lace around the cardinal. Both my 4 year old and 2 year old could work on this (to varying degrees). I put this on my Instagram, but we also recently bought my son this Backyard Bird Song book for his birthday and it has the cardinal — such a fun book!
	Celebration of Popcorn Orville Redenbacher was from my home town — the photo is of me as a 10 year old meeting him at the annual Popcorn Festival. We love Orville and of course Indiana loves popcorn! We did a variety of popcorn related activities, keeping it pretty simple: Dancing popcorn activity: Fill a jar with water & add a small amount of popcorn kernels Add a spoonful of baking soda & stir Add vinegar (a little goes a long way), and after the initial foamy explosion the popcorn kernels will “dance” up & down in the jar. So fun! We were all mesmerized. Form letter I with Q-tip + glue and then add popcorn kernels. Fine motor skills + letter formation. Cook popcorn and eat it!
	Limestone Quarry learning Did you know Indiana limestone built the Empire State Building, the Pentagon, the National Cathedral, and the Biltmore Estate? We did the following limestone related activities: We visited a retired quarry where rock was used to build the State Capitol building in Indianapolis. I snagged a small rock and brought it home. I painted peroxide on to the limestone rock and we all watched it fizz! Yay geology! The kids then played with a simple baking soda + vinegar transfer activity using eyedroppers and ice cube trays.
	Indiana basketball counting mats and number writing practice. I printed out some basketball hoops, had my son practice writing a numeral in to that hoop, and then he added the corresponding number of mini basketballs to that hoop for some numeral-to-quantity matching. Supplies Basketball shot counting mats Mini orange pom poms Numeral sandpaper cards
	State tree: Tulip Poplar learning & play Form letter I with Tulip Poplar fruit pieces (collected on our nature walks) Thread tulip poplar leaves on to a stick to make a play torch ID Tulip poplar trees outside
	Indiana State Flag art piece: star stamping I cut a sponge in to a star shape and let the kids print stars however they wanted on to a blue sheet of paper. We also added a Tulip poplar fall leaf because it’s the state tree plus it’s yellow and kind of looks like the torch in the center of the flag.
	Indiana map exploration We mapped our home to places in Indiana we have visited — Grammy & Grandpa’s house, Indianapolis, various State Parks, etc. We also took a road trip recently and mapped those out. I love exploring maps with my son! The USA Puzzle is from Janod (it has been updated since we purchased ours
	Abraham Lincoln lived in Indiana from age 7 to 21. He’s pretty great! We read about him in our Indiana books and played with Lincoln Logs and our Abraham Lincoln peg doll (available in my Etsy shop). I had planned to visit our State Museum to see a historical log cabin but with our family vacation falling partially during this time, we weren’t feeling up to it.