T is for Tiger

Hailey was excited about the big cats that we saw at the Hoogle Zoo. So, for the letter T we did tigers.

This picture was taken at Hoogle Zoo and was her favorite thing there.

We first colored our Itsy Bitsy T Book with crayons. My mom had a book of new crayons. I forgot how nice it is to color with new crayons.

Then we painted paper plates to make a tiger. Hailey loves paints. I had a cup of water and paper towels to clean the brush before she switched colors.

I cut out the stripes, eyes, ears, and nose and Hailey pasted them on her plate. Hailey was entertained with this craft for a long time. An apron is necessary when dealing with paints.
After we were done making our tigers, I showed her pictures of the tigers we saw at the Omaha Zoo. Kyle likes white tigers.

We read "Tiny Tiger" by Barbara deRubertis. It's about a shy tiger who ends up making friends. I also got "Mother to Tigers" by George Ella Lyon from the library. It's based on a true story about a woman who took care of baby animals in her apartment. It has beautiful pictures but Hailey was done with Hailey School when we started that book.

I was also able to take this picture at the Omaha Zoo.

P is for Peacock

For the letter P we made a Peacock out of a paper plate.

We first practiced making straight lines with the markers to make the feathers.

Hailey started to trace her hand to make the peacock more unique.

Then we used green paint on our thumbs and yellow paint on our pinkies to make the "eyes" of the peacock.

We finished by coloring the peacock's body, hair, and beak with markers.

We read "Hen Lake" by Mary Hane Auch together. It was a little too advance and long for Hailey but I like the pictures and the message. It's about a hen who wants to be a ballerina and a the new peacock the farmer just got was making fun of her and kept telling her that he can do everything better. It has a great lesson for kids (and adults) to learn.

L is for Lions

To start on our lion adventure, we read "The Show-and-Tell Lion" by Barbara Abercrombie. It's about a little boy who made up a story about owning a lion for show and tell day. When it came time to tell the truth, he showed the class the book he wrote about this lion. It's a cute book about using your imagination and telling the truth.
Then we made a lion mask. Last night, I cut up the brown, yellow, and orange paper. I also had the paper plate's middle cut out and ears and a handle attached. I thought that would be too difficult for Hailey.

I had Hailey point out which color she wanted on the lion mask. During this Hailey started singing to her paper, rocking it, and telling it to go night-night. It was cute but very random.

I curled the ends with a pencil and Hailey liked playing with it.

Hailey is roaring like a lion in this picture.

J is for Jellyfish

This was another hard letter to think of activities to do. After we added the J to caterpillar, we read the J Alphabook. Then we colored the Itsy Bitsy Book that has 5 J words. I got this Itsy Bitsy Book from: http://www.kidzone.ws/kindergarten/learning-letters/ib-book-j.htm. They have a book for very letter expect for the vowels. It gave us a lot of J words to talk about. It is a great learning tool. I wish I found this earlier.

After I put the book together, we made a paper plate jellyfish. The idea is from: http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/search/label/Paper%20plate%20Jelly%20Fish.

I have tons of letter stickers from scrap booking so we decorated our jellyfish with stickers.

This entertained Hailey for 20-30 minutes. It was a big hit.

When we finished with our jellyfish, we watched the video that went along with this craft. Hailey loved this song and we watched it 10-15 times. I did the song without playing the video once and Hailey stopped me and wanted the video back on.

We had a very successful session on Hailey School today!!!