M is for Mouse



For our second day on the Letter M, Little Miss and I worked together on several of the activities that enable us to explore more M words together.  

For the Cut and Paste M words for example, I read her the word and she finds the picture and happily glues the word over it.  The help I am offering, in her mind, is minimal, so I think she feels that she has done it all herself.  And she is getting familiar with the formation of the words, how to place them right side up and facing the right direction. 


Next, we moved on to the Path of Motion Practice Sheet.  She has a lot of fun with these now, and follows the arrows independently to make her letters.

Next, we moved on to one of our favorite Mouse stories.  If you haven't read "The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear", you are truly missing out.  Check it out in this YouTube video below:


Just like all of Don and Audrey Woods' other stories, the imagery in this picture book is so delightful.   But this one is a very fun read-aloud, too.



In our Letter of the Week packet for M, we have a very fun little printable Mouse craft. Printable mice are always fun for children to hold and enact a story that is read aloud to them.  We did this mouse craft recently and here it is below: 


It either comes in color (gray and pink) or your child may color it on their own as we did in this picture up above. 


After cutting it out, you twirl it up into a little cone, tape it together and add the ears and tail.  If you wish to get very spiffy, you might glue googly eyes over the top of the little eyes we put on.  But that's up to you. 

For the activities found in our blog, head over to our store here to check it out in more detail:  https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Letter-of-the-Week-M-2085302

M is for Montessori


I don't necessarily follow any Educational philosophy to a T, but there are generally a few great things to pull from each one, and today, as we introduced Little Miss to the letter M, we were all about the Montessori method. 

Mostly because the letter M is Little Miss's special letter.  Her name begins with M so I wanted to make sure we had lots of fun with it.  We began by sharing the story of how Glimmercat found some milk in the forest, and loved it so much she said, "Mmmmmmmm", which is of course, the sound of M.


Then, we drank some milk.  Because anytime we can connect munchies with letter sounds and our little stories that go with them, it is magnificent.


Then, we sang our letter M song...


And then, we went to have some Montessori fun, learning about our letter by playing with our Path of Motion M sheet, and discovering fun ways to make Ms.


I had pulled out pom poms, and so, first she filled in her Letter M with pom poms. 



She came up with the idea long ago to use big pom poms for the big letter and small pom poms for the little letter, so that's what she did this time, too.


Then we experimented with playdough, since we had recently picked some up.  And this was novel and very fun for her.


But then, she wanted to get down to business.  She is used to these Path of Motion pages now and knows how to use them to draw her letters.


But we were really trying to keep this day all about play, so I pulled out the crayons so she could color her sheet. 

I think Mrs. Montessori would still approve.  :)

All the Letter M printables seen in this blog are available at our store:  https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Letter-of-the-Week-M-2085302

L is for Leaves


Today, we introduced "L is for Leaves" by starting off painting in the tree trunk that we will be leafing out later in the day.


Giving children the opportunity to experiment with many different utensils for writing, painting, drawing...is so great for them.  Here, Little Miss is wielding a paintbrush to fill in her tree.


Then, we sat down (while the paint was drying) and read Steve Metzger's version of "Going on a Bear Hunt" together.  My kids really love this story and they don't miss the scary bear, either.  I think there's something lovely in the idea of these little children going out together to gather various leaves.  The most frightening thing they run into is a little skunk, and that instigates their run back home.  I love the multicultural images of the children, and I love the images of the leaves which can be easily deciphered as the trees they're described as belonging to.


And here is where we took our Scavenger Hunt activity page that accompanies this story.  And, since the weather was lovely for late February, we went on a little nature hunt ourselves to attempt to fill in all the squares.


We found some old brown leaves, a rock and a pine-cone.  But the spider web, the dandelion and the ant eluded us this time.  Even with Older Brother's help.


But that's okay.  Home we went, and (trying a different utensil this time), we filled in Little Mys' brown tree by adding green dots with a Q-tip.


For all of the activities seen here in this blog, check out our Letter of the Week packet for L:

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Letter-of-the-Week-L-2070170