Excited for Ee: Top 10 e activities

 

E is exciting and extraordinary, just like our little ones, so I've put together some ideas you can enjoy doing together.

There are LOTS of ways explore eggs, so let's start with them.

1. Use egg shells to make the letter E!  

For this activity I saved and cleaned egg shells, and let them dry.  Then I did something extra special - I let my students use REAL grown up tools - safety goggles and a mallet from my garage - and we smashed those shells to bits!

Oh yes, that was exciting! They felt interesting, but a little sharp and gritty, so we didn't play with them for long...

We carefully poured them out of the box we had smashed them in, into a releasable bag, then added a little food coloring and rubbing alcohol to dye them colors (exact amounts don't matter, just add enough rubbing alcohol to disperse the coloring, then pour them out onto newspaper or an old box to dry).  Later in the day we wrote the letter E on a paper using a LOT of glue, then sprinkled on the egg shells. When it was dry we gently shook off the extra pieces of shell, and had a lovely eggy letter E!

2. Beginning sound sort.

Put tiny toys inside plastic Easter eggs, making sure some have things that begin with E, and some don't.  I was able to include these things: toy elephant, eagle, Elmo, erasers, and a couple were even empty - an unexpected E word!  The children pulled the eggs out of a basket, opened them, and decided if the items started with E or not.  We also repeated this game with 1" letter tiles, and the children sorted the letters into Ee / not Ee.

3.  Make a torn paper Elmo craft.

I don't think I came up with this idea, but one of the challenges of blogging about almost 30 years of teaching, is I no longer know where I found ideas or inspiration, and how much of an activity is my take on something I saw long ago. Until I sat down to write this, I thought I had pinned it from someone else - but when I look for it on my Letter E Pinterest board, it's not there.  

4. Humpty Dumpty's Egg Drop

I DO know where I found this idea! Mrs. Kelly's Kindergarten did this so well, I flat out copied her!  Go ahead and set a couple of eggs to hard boil, and while they're cooking click the link above to check out the details.  You'll be dropping this poor egg off his wall several times!

5.  Field trip to the zoo

Children learn best through experience - it's one thing to tell you an apple is red and round and tastes good, but you don't know apples until you hold one in your hand, take a crunchy bite, and taste it.  It's the same with everything else - your child will learn MORE when they can see, smell, hear, taste and touch things.  Obviously there are plenty of things we can't or shouldn't explore with all our senses, but if you are able to, find ways to let your children experience the world.  

One of our favorites is to visit the zoo.  When I had my preschool I was very fortunate to live near a world class zoo that also offered year long passes at a discount.  Having a pass for the year meant we could go often without paying more, so we did!  One of the harder to recognize benefits of this, is that we never felt compelled to stay all day to "get our money's worth".  Little legs wear out quicker than grown up ones, and if tired kiddos can't stop and nap.... well... that's a whole different experience!

Not everyone has access to a zoo, or the funds for that matter.  Do what you can.  For the letter E, that might mean looking for eagles, visiting someone who has chickens so you can collect the eggs, or stopping to look at an earwig you spot.  It also doesn't have to be this week!  

6.  Easter egg hunt.

Yes, I know, it's currently September, and not even close to Easter.  Yes, I know, not everyone celebrates Easter.  Guess what?  Your children won't mind a bit!  This is us, every September:

I keep empty Easter eggs tucked away, and every year when we learn about the letter E, I get them out.  Here's what I've learned from my students:  It doesn't matter if anything is in the eggs.  The fun of an egg hunt is in the running and searching and gathering and squealing and laughing.  Hiding the eggs is just as much fun as collecting them.  No basket? No problem!  Use an empty plant pot, a bucket from the sandbox, or collect them in your shirt.  

This is a game my students can play over and again for a couple of weeks.  As they do, they're learning: if you want to play the game again, you have to help hide the eggs, it doesn't feel nice to have all the eggs and see your friends feel sad that they have none, it's fun to give a friend hints to help them find some, waiting for the egg hunt to start over is hard but we CAN control ourselves and wait for everyone to be ready, and more! We repeat this whole process again in the spring, in the weeks before our actual Easter egg hunt.

7.  Hand prints - let's get messy!

The elephant hand print is self explanatory:  paint their hand gray and stamp it on paper.  When its dry, they can add details with a black marker.  You can see we added torn tissue paper to suggest grass along the bottom of our page.  I found this idea here.

The link to the original eagle hand print no longer works, but my pin for it does - find it here on my hand print and foot print board.

This one is a little more complex.  As you can see, we printed it on a separate paper, which we glued onto our tissue paper sky.  (Tissue paper doesn't work well to take hand prints.)  This one was completed in 3 steps.  First we made 2 brown hand prints, overlapping slightly on the palms.  Once that was dry, we painted 3 fingers white and pressed those on for the tail feathers.  We also painted the side of our curved pinky fingers, which made the head.  Beak and eyes were added when dry.

8.  Music, of course!  Here's a rhyme about 5 and 5 eggs:

 

9.  The elevator song, from Riverton Branch Library:

and10. 5 Elephants in the Bathtub, by Jbrary:

 

 Bonus activity 11: Initial letter worksheets

 I'm not big on worksheets for preschool, but I know sometimes they're helpful, and some children enjoy them. This week I put together an initial sound alphabet, 26 coloring pages that focus on the first letter sound in words.  If you and your littles are working on initial sounds and they enjoy coloring, please consider supporting my blog by checking out this (and other) resources in my TeachersPayTeachers store.

I hope these ideas keep you and your little ones happily learning this week!  Remember to tag me on Instagram @paulabeckerman2399 or Paula's Primary Classroom on FaceBook if you try any of these ideas.  I LOVE seeing your happy, smiling, engaged children (and once a month I choose someone who has tagged me to win $10 worth of free resources)!

See you Wednesday for a list of books to accompany your letter E learning!

Letter E (part two)

About ten years ago I attended a training by Janet Chambers, a teacher-author who shared wonderful ideas about teaching literacy.  One of her ideas that really stuck with me was that of a "big event" to introduce each letter of the alphabet.  Ever since, we've had an alphabet worth of big events here at school each year. (See her book, Ready, Set, READ here.)

For the letter E, I've put together a small Easter basket of plastic eggs, each with something that begins with the letter e: envelope, Elmo, toy eggs, elephants - and some that are empty.  The kiddos LOVE it!

 I also took two groups of children to the zoo, to see the elephants (and of course, other animals.)

 

 I have to admit, I was surprised that the children had an idea in mind for the letter E, and were quite insistent that we do their activity: an Easter egg hunt.  I certainly didn't mind, I had that in mind myself, but I think it says something about the relevance of the activity, that the children who reviewed E with egg hunts last April remember it, and wanted to revisit it.  Not for candy, our eggs were empty every time except for our Good Friday egg hunt.  They loved the hiding and the seeking.  Needless to say, I dug out 6 dozen eggs, some baskets, buckets from the sandbox, and we had at it! 

 The kiddos hid the eggs (usually in a big clump, in "their" spot, so they could find them again quickly.)

 We lined up, and....

 Go!

 We hid and found the eggs over and over!

.

Next week, letter F!

Letter E activities (part one)

I'd start by saying it's been another busy week here at school, but really, when is it not?  There are always so many fun things we want to do,  and the backyard always beckons us too, so it is always busy.  Children are very busy people, constantly doing and learning!  

As we do each week, we made our hand print alphabet crafts: eagles and elephants this week.

 Getting paint on our hands is a fun sensory experience, and adding the details to the dried prints works out our fine motor skills, and results in a project that our moms and dads will treasure.  Sounds like a winner to me!

 We played Elefun, a game that's been around for a very long time, and is still cool!  The children love being able to turn it on and off, to catch or pick up the butterflies, and to put them back in so they can play it over again.  They practiced taking turns and working together, and look at their faces - pure joy!  Several times they broke into spontaneous jumping and clapping and giggling, which is a lovely thing to watch!

 We identified and matched shapes and colors with a scrambled eggs game too.

 On this particular day we had read Humpty Dumpty, and the kiddos got to work together to make a giant Humpty Dumpty puzzle. 

 It wouldn't be Humpty Dumpty day without an egg on a wall!  This idea came from Mrs. Kelly's Kindergarten, and the children LOVE it!

 Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.  We knew he was going to have a great fall!  I put down different surfaces for him to fall on, and the children predicted whether Humpty would break on each one.  Felt?  He cracked!

 Pee-ew, he smells like a hard boiled egg!  (Some children thought that smelled good, but it was much more fun to pretend it was stinky!)

 Humpty also took turns falling on cotton balls, and paper towels.  Do you wonder if he broke?  You'll have to hard boil and egg and try it yourself!  I will tell you that falling all the way to the floor was not a good plan for Humpty!  The children wanted us to drop him again and again, they really liked seeing - and hearing - him hit the ground!

 So what on earth can we do to follow that up?  :-)  We're making scrambled eggs for lunch, of course!

Z is for Zebras and Zoo

 We're at the end of the alphabet, and like the other last few letters, there's not a lot that starts with Z.  Fortunately, zoo and zebra do, and we live near a great zoo, so we can include a zoo visit in our learning activities this week.

We started the week with Animal ABC's, and a sensory box full of plastic zoo animals.  After we read the book, the children dug in the sensory box for the animals, and then sorted them by initial letter.  This was a fun, sensory activity that engaged the children, and let us review our letters all at once.  After we completed this activity as a class, I made it available for free play too, and the children used it all week.

 

To follow up the whole class sorting lesson, the children made their zebra striped uppercase Z craft.  Teachers prepared plain white paper with lines to show where the children would need to cut, and the kiddos glued torn black paper stripes onto the other side.

 Later in the day, once the glue was dry, they cut out their letters.  Our Z's stripes were all unique, just like zebras'.

On Tuesday, we read two class-made books.  One was an alphabet book illustrated with photos of a previous class at the zoo.  (A is for aviary, B is for birds, etc.)  The children helped me brainstorm lots of zoo animals, and what letters they start with.  I wrote them all down, to prep for our field trips to the zoo, and for making a new photo alphabet book about the zoo with this year's kiddos.

We also read a copy of The Zoo Book by Heidi Butkus which we've been singing along with all week on YouTube.com.  After we read the one made by last year's class, we illustrated a new one - OUR copy.  The children love reading books that they helped to make!  

We also made our lower case z craft, once again cutting out the letter z, and adding stickers and cut paper zoo animals.

 Here are some of our completed letter crafts.

On Wednesday, I took 2 trips to the zoo.  Boy, was I tired that afternoon!  It's nicest all around to take a small group of kiddos, so I divide the kiddos into three groups of 4, take one group at a time, and leave the others at school with Ms. Julie.  Next week, I'll take the final group!  

The kiddos back at school made their z page for their individual alphabet photo albums.  This page is a bit sparse looking, as I couldn't find clip art, stamps or stickers for zucchini, zither or zig-zag, and the zero looked like a letter o, so I didn't want to use it.

To prepare for the zoo field trips, and to make sure we get a picture for each letter of the alphabet, I made a list of animals for each group to look for.  The first group went to the Museum of Living Art, and the birds, penguins and kangaroos, all located towards the middle of the zoo.  The second group went to the far end of the zoo, to Texas Wild, and the last group will go to the African Savannah and Asian Falls areas.  There isn't time to see the whole 64 acres of zoo in one trip, not with little legs that get worn out easily, so we try to see different areas on each trip.

 In case you would like to make a similar alphabet book on your trip to the zoo, here's how I divided our search.  I've included some letters in more than one area, and of course, there are many other possible choices!
MOLA and central areas of the zoo: C (cobra or crane), D (diamond back rattlesnake or ducks), F (flamingo, fish), I (iguana, insects), K (kangaroo, komodo dragon), N (newts), P (penguins, python), S (snake, scorpion), U (underground snake - the Louisianna Pine Snake), V (vulture, venemous vipers)
Texas Wild: A (alligator, ammonites-fossils in the Texas map near the entrance to Texas Wild), B (bald eagle, bobcat), J (jaguar), L (longhorn cow), M (mountain lion), O (otters), Q (quail), U (sea Urchins - touch tank in the Gulf Coast display), W (white tailed deer, wagon, wolf), X (in Texas, or in exit), Y (Yellow Rose Express train).
African and Asian animals: B (sun bears), E (elephant), G (gorilla), H (hippo), I (ibex), L (lion), M (monkeys, meerkats), O (ostrich, orangutan), R (rhino), T (tiger), W (warthog), Z (zebra).

On Thursday we read More Life Size Zoo by Teruyuki Komiva, but again, there are many choices of zoo themed books to choose from.  Here are some others I have available for the children:

We followed up with a cute craft, creating our own zoo pictures with foam stickers.  Simple, easy enough for the smallest kiddos, but still working fine-motor muscles for the preschoolers, and of course, the children had to write their name.  It's hard to see from these photos, but they wrote "My name's Zoo" in the center of their picture.

On Friday, we made our zebra hand print crafts based on this one, and zucchini muffins. We used this recipe, because I was fairly sure that having chocolate chips in the muffins would convince everyone to at least try them.  The ingredients looked yummy!

 I had 3 small zucchinis to grate, and 12 kiddos to help, so I cut each zucchini into 4 pieces.  One of the kiddos exclaimed, "Hey, that's in quarters, just like when we cut up bananas!"  I love when they remember concepts weeks after I introduce them - it means they are really learning.

 Each child got to put a piece of zucchini in the food processor to grate it.  This was their first time to use the food processor, so they were very excited!

 We all took turns adding another ingredient, and of course smelling the spices and chocolate chips.

 At snack time we got to try them!  They looked so good!

I had the children predict whether they thought they would like the zucchini muffins, and to graph our predictions.  After tasting we checked to see what the actual results were - we are scientists, after all!  The final veridct?  Well, there were 48 mini muffins to start with, and here's what was left:

Only one child didn't like them, everyone else ate 2 - 5 muffins each!  We will definitely make this recipe again, and next time, I'm going to add a cup of applesauce to the mix, to moisten it a little more.  Yum!