Sound of the Week

Language and literacy learning opportunities are blended into all areas of the curriculum. There is a balance of intentional lessons and spontaneous work that happens. We begin each week with a sound study and are currently on the letter “g”. Our routine begins with a mystery box containing several items that begin with our sound of the week. The children love trying to guess the items using simple clues that I give them. The activity remains on the shelf all week for the children to play with and repeat the mystery guessing game with a partner. We often do special projects inspired by the sound of the week. For example, we might make pancakes during the week we study “p”.

Paired with the sound study are several hands on activities to memorize and practice building or writing the letter. They use a Montessori sand paper letter, chalkboard, wiki sticks, and wooden shapes from the Handwriting Without Tears curriculum. Throughout the week, the children make their own sandpaper letter with glue and colorful sand. A favorite weekly project is making their “My Letter Booklet” containing coloring pages of things that start with sound of the week. We finish out the sound study by making a poster filled with as many words we can think of starting with that letter. The children love counting the words!

Book Making 

A spontaneous activity the children have started on their own is story telling and book making. They have been using water color paints, scissors, glue, and markers to create fantasy stories that mostly center around friendship. Once they create the pages, a teacher dictates the story for them. Then, we read them at story time. The authors are typically beaming with pride when their story is being read to the class.

To motivate fine motor work and name writing practice, I created a friendship book activity. They children use tracing paper to copy their classmates and their own names and get to put a colorful cover and stickers on the front and back. They love writing each others names. They also have access to letter stamps to write their names as they work on this skill.

Any time we need a label for the classroom, the Mariposa children are enthusiastic about helping. They all participated in creating the name tags for our caterpillars using a pin to punch out letters. This takes quite a bit of focus and patience.

As we move through the year, there will be rotating botany, zoology, geography, etc., book making materials. So far, the children have made the parts of the honey bee book and will enjoy the parts of the rocket ship this week. I always encourage them to “read” these to their grownups at home.