Ff and a new hope

Wednesday was awesome. It was all about fingers. ABCs. Sang a couple songs: 'The Fishy Song', '10 fingers on my hand' ('10 little indian boys' back in my day.) Then we traced our hands on to construction paper, numbered the fingers and cut them out.

I wanted to teach the kids about long, medium and short. I knew I could make an F with somethings long, med, and short, but was pleasantly suprized to find I could make all the capital letters in this first group with just our fingers. A little morbid to cut them up, but it is construction paper.

Next, we glued craft sticks together to make the letter F. 5yo through a fit that we weren't using the new package I just bought. I found some craft sticks from storage that had little grooves so as to bend and break them to the desired size. Why 5yo didn't think that was awesome is beyond me. 2yo and I used them to make long, med, and short and glued them together. I brought the 5yo back in with some froggy finger puppets I made when 8yo was in preschool. There are two holes at the bottom of the frogs for your fingers to be the frog's legs. I had a feeling to save this for the end. 5yo participated again and suggested we sing the 'Five green and freckle frogs' several times.

Thursday was fun for me. I made PVC pipe flutes for preschool. Another thing I had done with the 8yo. I made one long, one medium, and one short. I'll figure out how to post a how-to video tomorrow. For now I'll tell you that each had a cap at one end and an oval hole about and inch and a half from that same end. I made the hole with a drill bit and moved the drill from side to side to make the oval. You could glue the cap on, but when I put them on to see how they looked, I couldn't get them off again.
5yo had a rough time figuring out how to make the flute play. I just had to keep encouraging him to keep watching me and that there were more instructions. The instructions are: pucker and kiss the hole, then role it down your lip and blow like your spitting rice. If you achieve a flute sound you can talk about how blowing faster makes a higher note and blowing slower makes a lower note. If you don't achieve the flute sound, hold the flute for the child and move it around while the child is blowing. Have them experiment with different kinds of blowing. I knew this would be difficult so I bought recorders from the grociery store. Every child in my school learned to play them in the 5th grade. 5yo was despairing about the finger position with this one, but at least he could make a sound with it. Perhaps I'm asking too much of him, but I think exposure at a young age is so important. 5yo was very interested in the fact that the longer flute made a lower sound and the shorter flute made a higher sound and asked me to play them several times. whew!
Just a side note- don't let the kids play with the flutes unattended if they tend to make everything into swords. I learned that a few years ago as well.

I failed to mention that we started with the ABCs and talked about Fathers in our Family. We added root and grandma's and grandpa's to the family tree. I don't think they quite get it with all the death's, remarried's and divorces', but it's visually helpful for the 8yo who happened to work on the same thing at school; the third time that's happened. Cool!

We ended with laying the flutes on a large sheet of paper and tracing an F shape. Then we used the side of a broken crayon to color it in. Then I used a marker to draw numbers and arrows instructing how to draw and F.

Today the kids weren't quite willing to sing the ABCs at first so I started with the Founding Fathers. 5yo cut out the faces (2yo gave up and I let her for some reason) while I read We The Kids by David Catrow. Maybe that's why 2yo gave up; to listen to the book. It's a book with pictures set to the Preamble. Very silly pictures. I wanted to show 'America Rocks' again, but I think I'll wait until I get the DVD. I'd loose the kids trying to cue up the video.
Next, the kids were willing to sing the ABCs and I got out the Case Matching Game. It always suprizes me that the 5yo likes it. Then, I got out yesterdays giant F we traced with the flutes. then I used another paper and made a lower case f and included the numbers and arrows.

5yo thought the numbers and arrows were important but that didn't encourage him to practice on the page I printed from LearningPage.com. I've got to find a way to get him to write letters. I got out the markers, they're more tempting to use than pencil. But the 5yo has developed a guessing game in which he mixes up the lids and has me guess what the color of the marker really is. I think I should try sandbox letter writing.

Now we're on our way to a field trip to learn more about the Founding Fathers. I'm so excited.