Thursday, March 15, 2012

Letter identification project

These "Animal Antic" books are fabulous and actually quite recent. The last of them came out just last Fall I believe. A few years ago I had an idea for a series of children's books that would have a real story (not like the usual alphabet books) that used many words starting with that letter of the alphabet and THESE books are better than my idea. They not only have a letter a book and use lots of words containing the letter they are focusing on AND have interesting real stories it's all about animals! At the end of each book they have fun facts about the animal that was the star in the book and also a few project ideas to help the kids recognize the letters.
I did my own version of the letter recognition thing. After reading the stories to the girls I taped a plastic bag to the table and slipped their books inside (Renna has the "R" book about Rosie Raccoon and Lily as the "L" about Lana Llama.)
I told them to circle the words that started with their letter. Renna is four and has already been noticing when she sees an "R" because she knows her name starts with that letter, so she's at just the right place for this project.
Lily had fun with this even though it wasn't too hard for her. Another way to do this with her age could be having her look for those sight words that she is memorizing.. like "was" and "has" and so on.
After they do a page they can wipe off the markings, slide the book out, turn the page, and slide the book back in. I helped them with that part, but for the most part it was a pretty independent project.. which was great considering that the baby was getting into everything! :}

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