Preschool Corner: Letter R

This week I'll be sharing about our preschool fun studying the letter "R" and the lapbook for Runaway Bunny that I created to go along with the book. At the end of the post you will find Mr. Linky so that you can participate too in the fun by sharing what you've been doing during your preschool time.

Rick had a business trip this week and I was able to tag along for a few days, so I spent some of my alone time during the day sketching out the lapbook pieces and putting them together for us to do. I based most of the minit books on the areas that Before Five in a Row covers. All of the pieces I made are now posted at Homeschool Share and Ami was great to make the cover (which I forgot) and also a few bonus games to go along with it.

We did do a few activities that weren't related to the book, but it's all listed below, so enjoy looking around. I've provided links to the various activities and sites that we used whenever possible. Of course now that I'm posting, I'm thinking of a bunch of other little minit books that I could have made too ~ sigh.

ABC Book:

The alphabet book page for the letter "R" was a rainbow using fingerprints for each of the bands of the rainbow. We glued some clouds (cotton balls) on at the ends of the rainbow...and made a general mess. {grins}

Alphabet Activities: Rice Tracing

Zachary had a lot of fun with this activity...and then Kaleb joined in and the REAL fun began. He practiced his uppercase and lowercase 'R's' and also made rectangles.

Fun Activities: Shadow Matching and Patterning

Homeschool Share has a fun game that uses images of rabbits with long ears, short ears, etc...and then has a shadow image of it to match. We stored our game pieces in a pocket on the back of the lapbook. You can find the shadow match and patterning games here.

Lapbook: Runaway Bunny

The lapbook pieces that I created can be found at Homeschool Share. Here are the links for the lapbook cover and some other games to go along with the lapbook. I used a full size folder for this lapbook and glued some of the game pieces directly onto the folder so that we could open it up and play it. On the back of the lapbook I glued our math game (only three sides) so that the pieces to the game can slide down in between the game board and the lapbook cover. You can see it in one of the pictures below if you can't visualize it.

Lapbook pieces closed:

Lapbook pieces open:

Here are the minit books that we worked on:

Types of Art ~ Runaway Bunny uses two different kinds of art for the pictures ~ pen and ink drawings and also coloring paintings

What is Round? We looked throughout the book for different things that are round (spheres, disks, circles).

Catching a Bunny ~ Zachary had to remember what the Mommy bunny used as bait for her 'fish' son

Scarecrow puppet ~ We made a popsicle stick puppet for Zachary to play with since there is a scarecrow in the garden

Animal identification and matching ~ There were several different animals in the story at some point: bird, rabbit, monkey, donkey, kangaroo, fish, dog and donkey. There are two sets of cards to use either as a matching game or as animal id cards.

If/Then ~ Throughout the book the little bunny says he will become different things and his mother then says she will be something to find him (if you are a rock then I will become a mountain climber). There are cards for each of the If/Then's in the book.

Shapes throughout the book ~ This minit book has four different shapes: square, crescent, circle and triangle.

Letter Sheet/Collage

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Academic Work worksheets alphabet activity

Math: Rectangles

I pulled out a bag of rice and poured it into a shallow baking pan so we could 'trace' letters and shapes in the rice. We also had fun with our geo boards making rectangle shapes with rubber bands.

We also had other things that would fit in the math category (rabbit patterns) but they are listed above. :)

Stories and Books

Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown
Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister
I've Been Working on the Railroad by Nadine Westcott

Verse: Exodus 20:8

"Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy."

Writing

We're still using the Peterson's Writing book for our handwriting. There are great prompts and reminders for him to visualize how the letters are formed. Here's a look at his work from this week:

About the Preschool Corner:

The Preschool Corner is a place for us to share the ideas we are using during our "preschool time" with our kids. You can join in the fun and record what you are doing in your house. Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below (if you have questions feel free to ask). Be sure to link back to this blog post so that your readers can find some other great ideas too!

The guidelines can be found here if you need them.

Share what you've been doing in your house this week!