10.04.07
Francy Fish - Ff week - Oct. 4, 2007
We’ve really been working hard this week on the letter f. Ask your child to sing “You’re a Grand Ole Flag”. We’ve been singing it every day since Monday as the kids march around waving their flags. Some days I’ve finally had to put the iPod on “repeat song” because they ask me to “play it again” so many times. Cliff says it sounds like I’m brainwashing them. Well, you know, Terina, all the blond hair and all! 
Some of the fun things that we’ve enjoyed this week include learning the Zoophonics computer game that we got. This game will carry them through sounding out words (if we get that far), but it has several areas that are perfect for their beginning level. We’ve also started practicing putting the letters (a-f) in alphabetical order. They did really well with that! We just sang our song “Come Meet Us at the Zoo” while playing and we zipped right through. Earlier in the week we played Hide and Seek with the a-f cards. I would hide the cards throughout the room while they waited in the living room, then they would dash in and find as many letters as they could. Of course, then I gathered up all the cards and we sounded them and signaled them before playing another round. We’ve also read about Benjamin Franklin and the artist Faberge. I found a great pop-up book showcasing Faberge’s art that the kids love. It even has some of his flower sculptures that he created so today we made flowers after becoming inspired by looking at his. Tomorrow we’ll make “Fantastic Fudge” to take home. As you enjoy the fudge with your child, have him/her tell you what sound is at the beginning of “Fantastic Fudge”. Can they think of other words that begin with Francy Fish’s letter? Can they “teach” you Francy Fish’s signal?
Although we learn/reinforce the sounds of all the letters throughout each week, as you know, we focus on one letter a week to cement the sound into the children’s knowledge base. Also, sprinkled throughout the year are review weeks where we’ll review the last set of letters and numbers since the last review. Next week is one such week where we’ll revisit a-f as well as the numbers 0-6. I’ll use some of the activities that were planned originally that we never got around to doing and I’ll throw in a few other things. The biggest thing we’ll be doing is starting a picture dictionary to build upon throughout the year.
Enjoy!
“Miss Gina”
