Parker Prep: E is for Eggs

I was having a tough time coming up with E ideas, so my amazing husband did some brainstorming and came up with this week's themes.

Day 1

We kicked off the week with the "Clap, Clap, Clap," song by Carol Peterson. Then practiced a finger play that he had been learning in Sunday School. It goes like this,

"Open, shut them, open, shut them,

Give a little clap!

Open, shut them, open shut them,

put them in your lap."

Next, we counted to 20, and then worked with the number flashcards. He now recognizes 1-5 in text form, so I had him clip clothespins to the numbers. More fine-motor practice!

We reviewed the past weeks' letters and verses. Letter E is the first letter that Parker is actually learning for the first time. When he sings the ABC's, he always says, A-B-C-D-A-F-G. We practiced singing it the correct way, and then learned this week's verse,

"Every good and perfect gift is from above. James 1:17"

For our intro to letter E activity, I put the dots on the board again like I did with letter A, except this time he had to match the colors, too.

Then we read

We made our own Elmer by gluing squares to the elephant. It was Parker's first time with the glue stick. He loved putting glue everywhere, but was not eager to cover the whole elephant with squares ;)

Parker really liked Elmer, so we read

Day 2

We spent the morning at a friend's house today, so we squeezed in a little bit of preschool after nap time...which is now called "quiet rest time" since he doesn't think he needs to sleep =) We sang songs, reviewed letter E and it's verse, counted to 20, and then read

The night before, I filled two plastic eggs with rice, two with noodles, and the same with puff balls, money and raisins. I laid them all out for Parker and guided him through the process of matching up the sounds. He chose one to start with, shook it, and then shook all the rest of find its match. When he thought he got it, we opened them up to see what was inside. He had a lot of fun with this one.

(Now they are taped shut and in his instrument box).

Then we read

to see how animals ears are different than ours. Did you know a crickets have ears on their legs?

Day 3

We sang some new songs today. Of course they are both by Carol Peterson. The first was, "Everybody Clap Your Hands." This is similar to the other clapping songs, but it requires you to do more than one thing at a time. By the end of the song, you are clapping, stamping, and turning around. We also sang, "Shine, Shine, Shine." It's really fun to dance to, and talks about letting your light shine bright!

Before we started, I hid 10 egg halves around the living room. Each half had either an upper or lowercase letter on it. Parker hunted for them. Once he found all ten, he had to match up the uppercase letters to the lowercase letters.

Next, we read

I totally love this book. It's a rhyming book, which is always fun, and it does a great job of describing other animals' eggs. It even ends with the word "oviparous," so we talked about what that means and what a mammal is. We read it twice. Then I got out some cards that I made with different animal pictures on them. All the oviparous animals were ones in the book, and the mammals were ones he is familiar with. He did a great job sorting them out!