Y is for Yellow Yarn and Yogurt

The Letter Y has a lot of mini activities instead of a big one with only one theme.

First, we started with the Itsy Bitsy Y Book.
Then I had Hailey cut the yarn into pieces to put on our Y. (I crocheted a yellow blanket so I had extra yarn.)
Hailey first put the glue on the Y then covered it with yarn. She was excited when she made an X with the yarn all by herself. (I didn't help or suggest this she just pulled the yarn straight and then crossed the other piece with the first one. She's very smart!!!)
Here's our finished product. (Hailey's on the left and mine is on the right.)
Next we did yogurt painting.

I had Hailey squeeze the food coloring on the different piles and stir with her fingers.

Hailey doesn't like being messy so she enjoyed watching (and telling) me what to do. We "drew" a flower, the letter H for Hailey, and the letter Y in the yogurt. She also ate some especially the blue colored one. (We used vanilla yogurt.)

I couldn't think of any books to go along with this. I didn't want a yellow book since we'll be doing colors soon.

X Marks the Spot

This lesson took a lot of preparation to do but was fun.
We first colored a xylophone and a x-ray on one paper.

Then we colored the treasure map that had a big X on it. Then we read "Treasure Map" by Stuart J. Murphy. I hide the first clue on the last page of the book. The clue had a picture of the car.
Hailey was excited about the green paper which had a picture of the phone.
She found her phone quickly and carried the phone with her for a while. The next clue had a picture of the table.

The table led us to the stairs.
The stairs led us to the computer.

The other papers by the computer were a little distracting but she found the green paper with a little help. The paper then led us to the bath tub.
Inside the bath tub was a pumpkin with a big X on it. Hailey got really excited about the X. Here's our "map" and clues with the treasure.
Then we had a lot of fun painting the pumpkins.

Yeah, All-Done!!! This was a great lesson and very interactive.

W is for Whale

Today was W and the lesson went very smoothly. We had three coloring activities and three books (including the Alphabook) and it still didn't take us a long amount of time.
We used water paints to color our Itsy Bitsy W Book. I get excited when we can sneak other W words like that into our activities.
We also used water paints to color our Orca whales. Someday I'll have to take her to Sea World to see Shamu.
We made a whale by finger painting. Hailey enjoyed this but didn't get too messy.
TaDa! Our finished products!

We finished up by reading"Who's in the Ocean?" by Dorothea DePrisco and "Arctic Babies" by Kathy Darling, photographs by Tara Darling.

This letter didn't take as long as I thought it would. We had a great time and was able to clean our mess easily.

V is for Volcanoes

V was a very hard letter to find an activity for. I was so excited when the light bulb went on and thought about volcanoes.

We first colored our Itsy Bitsy V Book with markers.

We looked at the pictures of "DK Readers: Eruption! The Story of Volcanoes" by Anita Ganeri first to help her understand what a volcano is. Earlier I went to http://www.sciencebob.com/experiments/volcano.html to find directions on how to make a volcano. Since the directions dealt with a smaller container we didn't have the huge overflow of messy stuff like I expected but Hailey enjoyed it.

I had her help me scoop out baking soda and pour in the dish soap. Then we put the red food dye in.

To make it go, we put in vinegar.

Hailey wanted to do it again so we did it in a smaller paper cup.
This was a lot of fun and different from our usual craft. Hailey enjoyed pouring the ingredients in and watching it go. I know she doesn't understand what a volcano is but that will come in time.

U is for Umbrella

It was a bit ironic that when we did U for Umbrella is was raining. However, since I didn't have an umbrella for Hailey to play with (she could hurt it or herself easily with a big umbrella) we stayed with paper ones.
First we color the U with crayons. On this U (that we got from www.dltk.com) it has small umbrellas on it.
Then I got the idea from http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/search/label/Umbrella to add raindrops and an umbrella.

Then I found a picture of Little Critter and rain clothes we could dress him up in. (I forgot the link).
We had a fun time putting it all together. Hailey likes dressing up dolls and is so proud of herself when she talks about where the item goes. She glued it by herself and knew that the umbrella goes on the hand.

We read "Here Comes the Rain" by Mary Murphy. That is a cute, short book about how a cat changed its mind about the rain. Finally for bedtime we read "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" by Judi Barrett to review what we learned today.

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.

S is for Snowman

Hailey loves "Once there was a Snowman", so I thought Snowman for the letter S would be a lot of fun.
We colored our Itsy Bitsy S Book with watercolors.

Then we had a couple of ideas on how to make a snowman. One idea is to use white paint. Another is to use three paper plates and attach them with brads. With that one you would focus on dressing the snowman. The one we end up doing was using cotton balls to make the snowman.

I cut out the circles and glued them onto the blue construction paper for her, so it'll be easier to see where the cotton balls go.

This is a cute file folder game from Preschool Printables. You match the snowman up by colors. Hailey did a great job at it. I also made the Number Snowflake one but I don't think Hailey is ready for it yet.

We read "The Biggest Snowman Ever" by Steven Kroll and Jeni Bassett and "All you need for a Snowman" by Alice Schertle. "The Biggest Snowman Ever" is a cute book with mice and "All you need for a Snowman" is fun and an easy read. I also got "The Tiny Snowflake" by Arthur Ginolfi but Hailey was losing interest by the end of Hailey School. "The Tiny Snowflake" is about finding why we are special and understanding that everyone is special.

And of course at the end we sang "Once there was a Snowman".