Sophie School: The Letter D

This lesson was fun.  We found so many activities for us to do!   While we still stuck to reviewing all numbers 1-5 and all colors, we did do one activity that focused on green as to get a little more work with colors.  Sophie is signing them much better after working on them for a few weeks, but can't quite get her fingers to do the right movements for some.  She's still working on it.  Also, the only color she gets right is pink.  She doesn't seem to know any other colors yet.  That's ok.  It'll come eventually.  

One day after her nap, she surprised Brandon and I both.  She was playing with something on her own in the floor.  Out of nowhere, she just counted perfectly to 5.  We weren't working on numbers or prompting her in any way.  Of course, she only did it once and has yet to do it again without help, but she did do it one time.  Brandon and I were shocked and just kept staring at her, wondering if we had heard correctly!  I was so glad that he was able to hear her do it as well.  He misses a lot between work and sleeping so I was very happy to share that moment with him.  

Here are our activities for this lesson: 

Sophie finally seemed a little into lacing this time.  She hasn't been wanting to do it because she struggles with it so much.  This time I helped her get started, showing her how to do it, then she did a couple of holes around the duck we had printed. She quickly lost interest, but it was a start. 

Me helping her lace around the duck.

When she did a couple on her own.

We did a couple of paper plate activities dealing with animals with D names.  They were not perfectly the animals they were intended to be, but with some imagination I suppose you could see it.  That's what happens when a non-artistic person puts together a bit of an artistic activity!  Sophie didn't mind, though, and just played along. 

For a dog, we used a whole paper plate, some ears cut out of brown construction paper, a nose out of pink paper, and a red tongue.  We colored on eyes after gluing the pieces onto the plate.  Then we decorated them as we wanted.  Brandon joined us in this activity since he was home.  Sophie had to help us color ours a little as well. 

Sophie coloring momma's dog.  :) 

Clockwise from top left: Mine, Brandon's, and Sophie's.  Sophie's cute little crooked nose makes me smile. 

We also had a template for a duck.  The template is from the Exploring Letters in My World book download I like to use (see below for link).  You could easily make it yourself, though.  It consisted of two hearts for the tail, a circle for the head, and two triangles for the feet.  It was a nice little shapes lesson as well.

Sophie coloring her shapes for her duck.

Our finished ducks.  I'm sure you can see which one was done by whom. :)

We did the normal activities we do every lesson as well.  The lacing card is on top with the individual colorings of the ducks.  The second picture below has some coloring pages she did.  The top left page is actually a start to writing.  She was attempting to trace the lines from one side to the other.  I showed her in the orange color.  The green is what she did (you can click the picture for a larger view).  I felt it was a good effort. 

Our folder this lesson had a dog on the front that we just needed to cut out and glue on.  The pieces were already colored.  

Inside was a D poem, the memory verse, flashcards, and green flap.  The verse this lesson was "Do all things without murmurings and disputings." Philippians 2:14.  Under the green flap a leaf, grapes, and a caterpillar she colored green. 

The sign for D came fairly easy to her.  It only took a day or two of showing her until she got it.

To work on the color green, we went "green shopping."  I gathered all the green toys and books I could find laying around, set them out in different rooms of the house, and then walked with Sophie as we gathered them in her buggy.  Afterwards, we went over what each one was, focusing on the color of each as being green.

Saying "Cheese!" after her shopping.

She had to do her own pose.  Lol.

All of our green shopping items.

Just for fun, I made dog prints.  I couldn't find a good template I liked online to be able to print, so I spent the time cutting out each piece over a couple of days as I had the chance.  Then I laminated them.  She played a little with them.  They may become more useful later as we can use a white board marker to write letters or numbers on them. 

Dog prints

For the letter D, we played several times with dominoes and dice.  Sophie loved playing with the dice and these cups.  She had fun putting them all into the cups, then dumping them back out onto the floor to start all over again.  She did it for an entire dish washing time the first time!  We also pointed out different numbers on the dice and dominoes.  The dominoes have different colors for each number so that was another color activity as well. 

Sophie playing with dice.

Our last activity was fun but a slightly messy for my clean-loving girl.  I printed out a plain large D on a piece of paper.  After rubbing glue all over the D letter itself, we headed outside to add some dirt.  (D for dirt!)  Sophie really enjoyed putting dirt on it, then shaking off the excess dirt.  She ended up with dirt all over her, but she really enjoyed it.  Now, each time she looks at this D (which is currently hanging on the side of my fridge, away from food), she says "Dirt!"

Pouring dirt onto her D.

Finished D - D for Dirt!

For these ideas and other activities, check out these wonderful blogs:

www.1plus1plus1equals1.com
www.oopseydaisyblog.com

The folder and its printouts were from the downloadable book Exploring Letters in My World which is available for purchase HERE.