OVERVIEW
We stuck to The Peaceful Preschool quite a bit for Letter K and so I will not share all the details here for those days. You should buy the curriculum if you don’t already have it — seriously: it’s perfection! I will be sharing below some of the additional things we did or just bits and pieces from our days with The Peaceful Preschool. Most days are centered around books as a central theme or inspiration.
BIBLE FOCUS
For more detail on our A-Z Bible Letter Units please visit this page.
K is for Thy Kingdom Come
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The memory verse for The Peaceful Preschool comes from The Lord’s Prayer: “They kingdom come, thy will be done.” We have lately been working on praying The Lord’s Prayer with the kids before bedtime, so I thought I’d create a little mini booklet of this prayer with photo cues to help them memorize it.
You can have this sheet here if you’d like it. I created one version with “trespasses” and another with “debts”.
I cut up each card with a paper cutter. Then, I placed the cut cards in a laminating sheet pocket & laminated it, cut out the cards again, hole punched the corners, then finally added them to a book ring. The idea is that the kids can flip through the booklet as we say the prayer together.
K is for King above all Kings
For Letter K we also celebrated Jesus as King. We read the Nativity story, complete with a visit from the Three Kings. We also read “The Servant King” story where Jesus washes the feet of the disciples. We talked about what it means to be King and what Jesus as King meant and looked like (i.e. power vs. humility).
FYI: my nativity peg doll sets are available for purchase over at my Etsy shop.
BOOKS
- A Kiss For Little Bear*
- K is for Kite books:
- Katy No Pocket
- Katy and the Big Snow
- K is for King & Kingdom books
- Other K books:
*From The Peaceful Preschool book list
I’m not sure if I have said this before, but I really do feel that one of the best things to be doing with my preschooler and tot right now is to read books. We have so many days where I skip planned activities, but we never have a day where we aren’t reading together. I prioritize that above all else when it comes to school.
SONG
Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes demonstrated by Jam With Jamie
It’s a stretch, but “Knee” starts with K so it made me think of this song. This is really simple and silly and my kids absolutely LOVED it.
PHONICS & LETTER FORMATION
As usual, here are my go-to resources & activities for every Letter Unit for phonics & letter formation:
- 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
- Letter Unit 3-Part Cards
- Click here for a lengthy post on how I use 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 OR that my son isn’t learning enough. It’s OKAY if we don’t do it all. I give myself 2 weeks, though, because I want to work on these things slowly. Next year I will likely switch to one letter per week but for now I’m content to do a little bit spread out over more time.
LETTER REVIEW
Note that since we are now on Letter K, I find it more and more important to build in letter review in to our days.
One simple way to do this is: read a favorite ABC book! Lately we have been enjoying the book Alpha Oops!: The Day Z Went First so I had my son go through the alphabet in the order the letters go in that book — all mixed up. We paired sandpaper letter cards with our moveable alphabet.
DAY 1: A KISS FOR LITTLE BEAR
PHONICS
DAY 1 of a new letter means I introduce our Letter Unit 3-Part Cards!
You can read more about all the ways I use 3-Part Cards on this blog post AND I have some updated free printables over here.
We most recently added a puppet show in to our 3-Part Card games list — it’s a new favorite! My son actually came up with this. We took turns making up silly puppet show stories: a KING used a magic KEY and with the help of a KINGFISHER unlocked a KENNEL to reveal a KANGAROO that promised to be his best friend forever.
I don’t have an elaborate puppet show set up — we just flip a small table on its side and hide behind it. My 2 1/2 year old can do this too — her stories are not super elaborate but they are definitely silly and she does use the cards as prompts!
By using the 3-Part Cards we are inherently working on letter identification, beginning letter sounds, and building vocabulary — not to mention working on storytelling and enhancing our imaginations. I’m definitely doing this again.
READ ALOUD
I’ll be honest: my son did not love this story. It was fine and we did a few activities from The Peaceful Preschool related to it, but we never revisited this book.
COUNTING AND NUMBER FORMATION
We used little animal figurines to pair with the book and help with a counting activity. I let my son choose which sandpaper numeral card he wanted to try to write. Then, he had to count as many toy animals and then try to write the number in our salt tray.
ART PROJECT
The kids drew pictures for their Grammy, put them in envelopes, stamped them and mailed them to her just like Little Bear in the book.
DAY 2: KATY AND THE BIG SNOW
READ ALOUD
LETTER FORMATION
I shared on our Letter I post how I made these little road letter formation pieces to match the Handwriting Without Tears wood set. My won worked on forming letter K by (1) tracing the letter K on the sandpaper card, (2) placing the letter formation pieces in to a K, and then (3) forming a K out of play dough.
INVITATION TO PLAY
I set up this invitation to play based on Katy and the Big Snow.
Supplies:
- Roads
- Construction vehicles
- Small houses — a Houses Coloring Page which I printed on yellow, red, and green card stock to match the book illustrations. I did not bother to laminate these.
- Snow play dough — we made white and teal with glitter (hopefully this will last us through the winter)
There are some inherent map skills in the story (North, South, East, and West) and so we also talked about that as we played.
DAY 3: THE EMPEROR AND THE KITE
READ ALOUD
For a simple counting activity, we counted the total number of kids in the book.
PHONICS, SHAPES, AND ART
DIY scratch art kites (“recipe” via The Peaceful Preschool curriculum) plus I had some scratch art letters from the Target Dollar Spot. We used chopsticks for the scratching!
We also looked at kites and talked about the shapes found in them.
CULTURAL LEARNING & FINE MOTOR SKILLS
Chinese cultural study using our MAPS book plus we made Chinese flags & we watched some amazing Chinese kite flying videos on YouTube. I’m planning on taking the kids to the Chinese Lantern Festival in Indianapolis later this month.
PRACTICAL LIFE SKILLS
We made God’s eye kites (yarn wrapping around sticks — both kids needed help but enjoyed the activity).
We also made a simplified version of Chinese sesame cookies & enjoyed them with tea and read the story again.
DAY 4: KINGS AND KINGDOMS
READ ALOUD
- The King of all Kings
- The Servant King
STORYTELLING
For Letter K we also celebrated Jesus as King. We read the Nativity story, complete with a visit from the Three Kings. We also read “The Servant King” story where Jesus washes the feet of the disciples. We talked about what it means to be King and what Jesus as King meant and looked like (i.e. power vs. humility).
FYI: my nativity peg doll sets are available for purchase over at my Etsy shop.
READ ALOUD (AGAIN)
STORYTELLING
To appreciate Kings and Kingdoms we read and enjoyed some fairytale stories like Cinderella. The kids put on crowns and capes and we made shields out of cardboard and played kings and queens. So fun!!
FYI our capes are play silks from Sarah’s Silks and we use these in a wide variety of ways — great for open-ended imaginative play.
POETRY TEA TIME
My Kingdom by Robert Louis Stevenson and A Stick is an Excellent Thing
Celebrating the best kind of imaginative play: building realms of wonder outdoors with nothing but the natural world and sticks and rocks and mud. My kids don’t really exist outdoors without a stick in tow, and I always seem to stumble upon “special sticks” they carry home and place in our front porch for safe-keeping (or play for another day).
DAY 5: KATY NO POCKET
READ ALOUD
PHONICS, ART SKILLS, COUNTING, AND STORYTELLING
K is for Kangaroo craft from Simply Learning — instead of printing her letter K, I just had my kids color in our Peaceful Preschool K printout with brown.
We also looked at the Kangaroo page from our Lifetime book for a mini-nature study.
I made craft coin animals to pair with the story and we played with them by putting them in this little felt pocket. This also worked well for a simple counting activity!
CULTURAL STUDY: AUSTRALIA
Australian cultural study using our MAPS book plus the animal wood craft coins I made.
DAY 6: K IS FOR KEY
On a different day we did the tin foil K is for Key craft from Simply Learning — I had my kids cut the foil with scissors instead of just rip it off.
I also did a simple Key tracing puzzle. This idea came from Slow And Steady Get Me Ready. Keys have similar shapes in general but vary in the teeth and top shape so it’s not as simple as it seems. The activity is simple (trace a key on to a piece of paper to make a puzzle) but great for shape recognition in real life objects, eye-hand coordination, matching skills, awareness of sizes, and problem solving.
We also played around with our house keys and I had the kids open different locks using my key set.
IN SUMMARY
My son’s favorite book from this unit was by far Katy and the Big Snow — all of Virginia Lee Burton’s books are wonderful and he really latches on to her stories. I’m sure later when I’m remembering what we did for Letter K, the simple activity of playing with snow play dough and pretending to plow with toy trucks will be the most memorable.
THE SILVAN REVERIE 