T Week

We had a very busy T week!  With appointments, playdates, sicknesses, and the beautiful weather the last few days of the week, I felt very rushed to get school time done most days!  I ended up just doing what I could whenever we had some free time.  I’m still trying to learn to be flexible (even though I hate not doing what I worked hard to plan!).  Our verse was “Trust in the Lord with all of your heart” Proverbs 3:5.  This was a good reminder for me to trust God with the plans He has for my days.  Even though I often think I know best what we should be doing, God may have a different plan.  

Monday was actually the only completely free day we had all week.  We spent some time learning our new songs, poem, and verse and talking about the letter T and the sound it makes.  For our T tree, Brooklyn glued a big, brown letter T to her paper then glued big green leaves on the top to make a tree.  She also did her T dot picture and practiced writing T’s.

We went on a little adventure on Tuesday and didn’t have time to do school.  

On Wednesday, we started by coloring the shapes in the train printout.  I let Brooklyn use her do-a-dot markers which she decided to use to make dots on all of the train shapes.  While they were drying, we did our circle time.  We sang “The Train” song and slapped our hands on our legs to make the noise of a train going down the tracks while we sang.  Brooklyn added in lots of extra verses so that everyone in our family could have a turn riding on the train.  After circle time, we cut out the train shapes and glued them together onto a piece of construction paper.  I ended up trimming the large rectangles down a little bit to make the train fit better on the paper.  I showed Brooklyn the diagram of the assembled train and helped guide her as she figured out where each piece went.  Next, we did our math activity.  I gave Brooklyn 10 toothpicks.  I used colored toothpicks and gave her 2 each of 5 different colors to make this activity easier.  She first counted out the 10 toothpicks.  I then told her to put each color together - this made 5 sets of 2.  I then taught her how to count by 2’s.  This was really confusing to her.  I counted “2, 4, 6, 8, 10” over and over to familiarize her with it.

We spent Thursday and Friday going to story time and the park with friends. Since we only accomplished two days worth of school this week, I decided to carry the letter T over to the next week.  We had a few things going on this week also, so only having three days worth of school time to do worked out perfectly.  

On Monday (of week 2) we learned about turtles.  First, I gave Brooklyn a sponge, a paper plate, and some green and brown paint.  I let her sponge paint the bottom of the paper plate to make a turtle shell.  While the paint was drying, we said the “Turtle Action Poem” then watched a short Youtube video about turtles.  Afterwards, we pretended to be turtles by placing towels on our back and slowly crawling around.  While Brooklyn the turtle was crawling around, I would pretend to be a bigger, scary animal, and Brooklyn would quickly pull her arms, legs, and head into her shell (towel).  We had so much fun with this activity!  Brooklyn now wants to play this all of the time :)  Finally our paint was dry, and I let Brooklyn help me staple the turtles legs, tail, and head onto his shell.  She added eyes to his face to complete her cute turtle.  

My little turtle hiding in her shell

Brooklyn, the turtle

The next free day we had was Thursday, and we spent that day learning about a few body parts that start with the letter T.  We started in the morning while we brushed our teeth.  We counted to see how many teeth we each have.  We talked about the importance of brushing our teeth every morning and night.  Next, we did a little tasting, for our science activity, with our tongues.  I gathered 4 small bowls and placed salt, sugar, coffee, and lemon juice in them.  I then let Brooklyn choose which one she wanted to taste first.  I would dip a q-tip into the bowl of lemon juice, then place it on the part of her tongue that tastes sour things.  For the salt and sugar, I dipped the q-tip in water first so that it would stick.  After tasting all of the flavors, Brooklyn (obviously) liked the sugar the best.  She wasn’t a big fan of the lemon juice.  Our last activity was about our toes.  First, we counted our toes, then traced them onto a piece of paper.  

On Friday, we read the story of Moses going onto Mount Sinai and receiving the ten commandments.  I wrote out the ten commandments in simpler language and explained to Brooklyn what each of them meant.  I cut a paper lunch bag apart, folded it in half, then arched the top.  We opened it up and then Brooklyn glued each commandment inside.  

For details and instructions of these crafts and activities, please click to see my lesson plans.  If you have more ideas for the letter T, please comment and share - I would love to hear them!!