One Fish, Two Fish

Today is letter F day!  Usually we do preschool shortly after breakfast- after the boys have had a chance to eat and then play a little.  But today we started with breakfast!  For breakfast we had "Sight Word Pancakes"  :)  I used a squirt bottle to make "if" "it" and "is" pancakes to review the sight words we learned last week.  I made a few sets of each word and mixed them up on a plate and then asked the boys to eat one word at a time.  They had to "fish" around on the plate to find the right word.  Yum!  But don't get too excited about my creativity with the squirt bottle- you should see the amazing creations Jon can come up with in pancake form!  I'm surprised the boys were even the slightest bit interested in my letter pancakes when they are used to daddy's!

Next we played an alphabet fishing game that the boys got for their birthday last year.  Its from Constructive Playthings and has two magnetic fishing poles and a set of magnetic alphabet letters. We've also got the same set but with real (well, not really) fish to catch but that set was scattered around upstairs and in all honesty, I was too lazy to go get it!   So the boys stood on the "dock" and fished for letters.  At first I let them catch whatever they wanted and they had to shout out a word that started with the letter they caught.  Then I asked them to try to catch specific letters, which required some serious hand-eye coordination and was a bit more tricky!!!  We "caught" the letter of the day and all the letters we needed to spell our sight words from last week :)

Then we did a fishy craft that also served as a bit of a counting exercise.  The boys made 3 handprint fish and glued on the eyeballs (gosh I love those googley eyes- adds life to everything!).  Then I told them how many air bubbles each fish needed.  They had to count out that many glue dots and then add that many cheerios for the bubbles.  Caleb was an instant pro.  Even his gluing skills are improving.  Matthew on the other hand needed to fill his belly before he could get started on the counting part!

While the paint dried, we reviewed our sight word sticks and I added in a new word using our letter of the day- "if". Both boys were able to sound it out instantly. Granted its not a huge word, but it felt like a huge accomplishment. And I know the boys felt proud too, given the giant smiles on their faces!! I made a little worksheet using all four of our sight words, including today's new word. I gave each of the boys 4 crayons and asked them to use a certain color to circle each word. It was a pretty nifty little exercise- it required them not only to read the sight word, but to listen and follow directions to use the right color for each word. They both seemed to really enjoy this- I think I'll do more with it in the future :) Lastly, we practiced writing our letter "F's" and finished by reading Dr. Suess's One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish as our story of the day.

 

Sight Word Pancake review for breakfast!

Caleb caught the letter of the day!

Matthew prefers to fish from the dock

Cal working on his F's

Matthew working on his circling sight words worksheet

Matty adding his counting bubbles to his fish art

Caleb working on his counting and fish art

Sight word sticks game

F is for Fish!

Circling sight words worksheet

 

Writing practice...  Caleb is still more interested in completing these than his brother is!