These Kids Really Love Their Letters!

Confession: The alphabet unit is not one of my favorites of the year.

Hey, they can't all be my favorites, and it's not that I hate the alphabet unit, I just prefer other units over it.

Any lack of enthusiasm I may have had was not at all contagious though. My students were all about the alphabet this month.

The Z Was Zapped (Chris Van Allsburg) was a BIG hit. Then last week we read The Turn Around, Upside Down Alphabet Book (Lisa Campbell Ernst). I of course forgot my camera that day. Sure wish I had it with me, 'cause those kids were a hoot! The book takes each letter and makes suggestions of what it could look like if turned another direction. The kids ate that up! They were even throwing out their own suggestions.

Then I threw some large paper letters out for them to play with, and they were pretending they were all were all the things mentioned in the book... and beyond. I really liked them taking the letter "J" and pretending it was a snorkel breathing tube. They were having so much fun with it, they wanted to take the letters home.

This week they got their wish. We read The Hidden Alphabet (Laura Vaccaro Seeger), which they were at least equally amazed with. Then we hunted down the hidden letters in our room. And the best part was that they got to dress their letters up and take them home with them! They were thrilled!

Alphabet Awesomeness

That's right, February is alphabet month! We're going to fall in the love with letters for Valentine's Day!

We kicked off the alphabet awesomeness with The Z Was Zapped (Chris Van Allsburg). This book is magic. Read it to a group of preschoolers and you'll see. On the way to reading class some of them were anxious to get our stories over with so they could head out for some much overdue playground time (snow and cold have been trapping us all indoors). But once I read the last page of The Z Was Zapped, they had forgotten about going outside and were asking me to "read it again!" Magic!

One group of students decided the book was "scary" upon simply seeing the cover. As I turned each page, they were more and more convinced that this was indeed a spooky story. But they loved it! You should have heard all the "oohs" and "aahs."

And when we were done reading the book, we became the letters! We donned headbands with our letters on them, and did the same actions that the letters were doing in the book! Look!

Letter "A" in an avalanche.

Letter "M" melting.

Letter "Z" being Zapped.

Tornados and Snow

Spring like storms and tornados last week, and then cold and snow this week... what's up with that??? Tennessee is a weird place.

So I'm at home today on a self-declared Snow Day (most local schools have a Snow Day today too)!! Woohoo! The way I schedule Literacy Launchpad makes it pretty easy most months to reschedule class if necessary. It felt necessary today. Local schools are closed today, so our normal classroom would have been occupied by school-agers. That means we would have been forced to have class in the hallway. That's always difficult. Plus, I was told that many children are absent today due to the weather, and I would hate for so many kiddos to miss our lesson this week (or any week). ... And although I am from the Chicago area originally, I still hate getting out in any kind of snow (even if it's just a dusting). Especially with some of these crazy Tennessee drivers.

Now that I have justified my Snow Day to everyone, I want to tell you how much fun I've been having with our lesson this week. I'm surprised, because I wasn't sure this lesson would go over the best. But the kids have been loving it, and it seems like the content of the lesson is really sticking with them (at least all the way back to their classrooms).

We read The Z Was Zapped: A Play in Twenty-Six Acts, and they have been fascinated with this book! All eyes are glued to each page, as they eagerly await what will happen to the next letter in the alphabet. It's awesome!

Our activity this week was acting out the parts of the letters. Each child was assigned a letter of the alphabet (not all the letters were represented in each class). They decorated headbands with their assigned letter on it. Then we read through our story a second time. When they heard their letter, they stood up and acted out what was happening to the letter on that page.

These kids are very dramatic actors!! They had a ball doing this activity. They wanted to read the story again and again. And they were interested not only in their own letter, but in what letter everyone else had. They loved seeing everyone else act out their part too! And on the way back to class they were all talking about what had happened to each letter in the story. I was amazed at how much was sticking with them.

So no class today, and no class tomorrow since everyone will be having Valentine's Day parties. We'll move on to a new lesson next week, and then I'll come back to this lesson for the ones who missed it this week.

Magic Me!

I have a couple cute little Literacy Launchpad anecdotes to share from my week (so far).

Yesterday, I had one of my pre-K kiddos tell me that they didn't want to graduate (from pre-K). I was surprised to hear her say that. Graduation is always so eagerly anticipated by the pre-K kids, so I asked her why she felt this way. She told me, "because then I can't come to class with you." I assured her that she would get to read lots of stories when she goes to kindergarten, and here's the best part of the story... She said, "but not cool stories like yours!"


This week we're reading The Hidden Alphabet (Ala Notable Children's Books. Younger Readers (Awards)) (Neal Porter Books). So before class I hid large cardboard letters around the room, and we searched for these hidden letters after we read our story.

I had one little girl though that couldn't fathom how I could have possibly hid those letters without her seeing. I guess the idea that I could have hid them before class isn't obvious to a pre-K child. So after our search she was just starring at the cardboard letter she found in disbelief, and she finally looked up at me and said, "are you magic?"