U & V

We have not been quite as consistent with letter activities lately, but we still try to squeeze some projects in whenever we have a lighter day at home. Here is some of the fun we had with the letters U and V...

We kicked off our letter U learning by having our snack underneath the table. Cody and Jaden thought that this was "a pretty silly idea."

Then, we painted umbrella outlines with watercolors. This project started the boys on a week or two long watercolor kick.

After painting the umbrellas, the boys added raindrops using Q-tips and tempera paint.

Jaden had more of a downpour on his umbrella. He did, however, keep the rain on top of his umbrella as opposed to Cody's full-out rainstorm.

The final paintings:

Another day, I stuck foam letters into an umbrella. We took turns spinning the umbrella around (although the boys arms weren't quite long enough to do this very well). 

When the umbrella stopped, the boys each grabbed out a letter. They identified the letter, tried to name its sound, and then attempted to say a word that started with this letter (I had to guide them quite a bit with the last two steps).

Then, of course, we had to pretend that it was raining inside the house.

For our tactile letter book, Jaden and Cody filled their U with clipart of "up arrows." I printed off the arrows in one big strip, so the boys were able to help with most of the cutting.

Letter V was a fun one because we got to play with vehicles! First we had vehicle races down the stairs.

We awarded the cars with a first, second, or third place trophy.

Another day, we did a few vehicle sorting activities. We first sorted them into groups by type (car, truck, bus, other), and then we sorted them by color.

Jaden and Cody really enjoyed this parking lot activity. We put stickers on their vehicles so that they were numbered from 1 to 10. Then, the boys had to count the stars in each parking space, and put the correctly numbered car in each spot.

The boys' favorite part of this activity was getting to put numbers on their cars! We spent the rest of the day numbering most of the rest of their vehicles.

Finally, we learned a little about volcanoes. After watching a couple clips of volcanic eruptions on youtube, Cody and Jaden performed the familiar vinegar & baking soda experiment to create their own eruption.

After doing this project, Cody asked to draw a few pictures of a volcano. Also, both boys started incorporating volcanic eruptions into their playtime ("Hurry, let's run away from all the hot lava!"). I love what little sponges these boys are now!