The Letter W

We haven't had time to fit in as many letter activities at home this spring, but hopefully we'll get back into more letter fun over the summer. It's been such a great way to teach Jaden and Cody new preschool-type skills, and it's encouraged me to research new activities for them that I might never have done otherwise. Our recent letter W activities taught Cody and Jaden a variety of new things...

First, we talked about wind. Then, we set up an experiment with our tower fan. We gathered items from our household and predicted whether these items would blow away in the wind or if they'd fall flat. Jaden tested out the marker first.

Cody could tell right away that the Kleenex was going to get blown away!

I had high hopes for Cody and Jaden being engaged in this activity for much longer. But, when they discovered how fun it was to have the fan blow on their bare bellies, we decided it'd be best to move on to something different. :)

For our letter W tactile page, the boys glued a variety of words from our newspaper onto their W. Recently, Cody has been deciding to shade in the O and the D in his name, his Y is often an upside down letter, and his C is usually backwards. Writing his name is obviously still a work in progress! :)

These next two science activities were my favorite of our letter W activities. First, we experimented with dissolving. I gave the boys a variety of substances (like pepper, salt, sugar, cinnamon) in small cups. Then, we talked about what the word "dissolve" meant, and the boys predicted whether or not each substance would dissolve in the water. We dumped the substances in the water one at a time....

stirred them up...

and observed what happened! The boys really did seem to grasp what the word dissolve meant, so it was a fun little learning experience.

Next, we did a project on volume, though I didn't actually teach the boys this term. I filled up four different sized containers with the same amount of water.

We put food coloring in the water so that we could more easily see how much water was in each container. I asked Jaden and Cody which container was holding the most water, and which was holding the least. They identified these two as holding the least.

Finally, the boys helped me pour the colored water from each container into identical glasses. It was amazing to see that each amount of water was exactly the same! We ended the experiment by combining water colors just for fun and seeing what colors we got.

I love seeing how curious Cody and Jaden are about the world around them. They are at such a fun stage for projects like this because they ask so many questions and get really excited to experiment. Perhaps we have little scientists in the making! :)