Z is for Zuchini

We made it!  We really made it!  Some weeks were better than others, but we made it all the way to Z!  I'm not surprised, but I'm kind of relieved.  It actually helped to be blogging it all as we went because when my creative juices were low, we were busy, and time was limited, I had to keep on trucking so I could post it on the blog =)  Whatever works, right?

Here's what we did for Letter Z.

Day 1

My brother invited us to the local zoo!  Good timing.   

Later that day, I asked Parker count to 100 by himself.  He did really well!  The only thing I had to help him with was which set of 10 was next.  So for example, when he got to 49, he said 60 instead of 50.  I'd say he's doing alright ;)  

We reviewed letters and number cards, and then I showed him letter Z and its verse,

"Never be lacking in zeal." - Romans 12:11

Parker is a fan of Romans, as am I.  As soon as I said it, he remembered that Letter A's verse and Letter N's verse were from Romans, too.  Smarty.  

For our Intro to Letter Z Activity, I had him circle all of the letter Z's he could find.

After he found them all, he counted how many he had, (6) and I started to make a graph.  Then I asked him to choose another letter.  He chose W, and circled all of those with a different color.  He counted them up (2) and I charted those on the graph.  Then I asked him which letter he found more of, and he answered Z!  Finally, I showed him how to figure out how many more Z's there were than W's.  I did this activity as part of my morning message all the time when I taught Kindergarten.  Graphing letters is so much fun!  Here's a picture of everything when we were finished.

Then he gave the Zz's some zebra stripes.

We practiced zipping zippers. 

And we read

We made zucchini bread with supper that night.  Awesome paleo recipe, btw!

Day 2

Today wasn't so much about Z as it was about alphabet review.

Matching upper and lowercase letters.

Then he chose two alphabet books for us to read.

 I had this worksheet I saved from when I was teaching.  It has all the letters and then you have to find the little pictures that start with each letter and glue them on.  The word is on the picture, so Parker just looked at the first letter and matched them up.  Daddy helped with the gluing =)

We read a few more alphabet books and did an alphabet train puzzle.

Here are some of the books we read.

These ones were my favorite.

That was about it!  It was kind of anti-climactic, but I gave Parker a small sentimental speech about how I'm so happy we were able to do preschool together and I'm really proud of all the things he learned this year =)

Swimming lessons start tomorrow.  We finished just in time.  

Now I have to figure out what to do next year!!

Thanks for reading and happy teaching!