The Letter G: Part 2

If you missed the first part of this unit, you can see what we did over here.

Our G unit consisted of learning about the letter G and the sound it makes, but it was also unit about goats and one of three units on farm animals.

After reading several books about goats to Banana Bear and Princess, I had Banana Bear draw a picture of something she learned about goats.  I also had her write a sentence about her picture.  I love seeing how she spells phonetically! (You can see my translation below her sentence.)

Since our Letter G and goat unit is one of three units about farm animals, the MFW curriculum had us make stick puppets of farm animals.  I thought it would be really fun for Banana Bear to put on a puppet show to Old MacDonald.  She had a blast!  

While learning about goats and farm animals, we practiced the names of baby farm animals.  Banana Bear made a book using a worksheet from MFW.  On each page, she paired the adult with the baby. And (with much drama) she wrote a simple sentence on each page: "A _______ is  a baby ________."

Since we were learning about goats, I thought we would try some goat's milk cheese.  I gave the children some goats milk cheese and a little bit of mozzarella for comparison.  They loved it!  It was a really fun way for them to compare and contract items.

Our unit would not have been complete with out another tactile activity for the girls to partake in!  So we made glitter G's.  I chose to use glitter because glitter starts with G and helps to solidify the sound that G makes, especially for Princess.

On our last day of the unit, we read The Year At Maple Hill Farm by Alice and Martin Provensen.  It was a really great book, and we were able to use it as the starting place for a lot of different topics.  After we read the book, we went through the book for a second time and listed off all of the animals that we saw in the book.  Then we separated the animals into two different groups: farm animals and wild animals.

After discussing the animals, we discussed the different months of the year. Banana Bear had a really fun time when I got down my calendar and we went through the year month by month discussing the holidays.  

After we discussed the holidays and months of the year, Banana Bear painted a picture from the book.  She had the most fun painting.  She loves to paint!

And that concluded our G-g-goat unit.  We had so much fun, and the girls learned so much!

The Letter G: Part 1

Last week we finished up our Gg-Goats unit.  I thought I would share a review of what we did during this unit. Because it was six days' worth of learning, I am going to break this up into two posts! We really did have a great time learning.

On the first day, I introduced the letter G and the sound it makes.  This is review for Banana Bear, but it really helps Princess out.  After introducing the letter and the sound, I give the girls textured letters from our letter puzzle.  Banana Bear tells me the sound each letter makes and tells me a word that starts with each letter.  For Princess, I name the sound and she gives me the appropriate letter.

Lil' Man appears very interested.  Maybe he's learning by osmosis! ;)

After I introduced the sound, Banana Bear worked on her picture cards.  These cards are part of her My Father's World Curriculum.  After she colored all her pictures, she cut them out and glued the letter to an envelope.  Then she says the name of each picture, the sound it starts with and traces the textured letter with her finger.  One of the sentences she did for the letter G unit was "Grass starts with /g/." Then she traced the letter g with her index finger as if she were writing it. 

Banana Bear coloring her picture cards.

While Banana Bear worked on her picture cards, Princess colored a worksheet with the letter G and three pictures of things that start with the letter G.  

Here, notice Princess coloring with her left hand.

Princess also did a dry erase sheet tracing the letter G while Banana Bear made letter G's in a container of salt. 

And here, notice her writing with her right hand.  It makes my head spin!

My girls love tactile experiences, and this little salt container is one of their favorite things to get out and practice making letters in!

One of Princess's favorite things to do each unit is a size sorting activity!  For our G unit, she got to cut out gumball machines of various sizes and put them in order from smallest to largest.

And that was all in the first day! We did so much more, and I can't wait to share it with you in my next post!