The Letter Nn

Every week, we do a letter of the week. I usually introduce the letter with a few of my favorite alphabet books, including The Hidden Alphabet by Laura Vaccaro Seeger, Animalia by Graeme Base, and a picture dictionary from our school library. We usually search through our alphabet flash cards first, to find out letter of the week. Then, we talk about what it sounds like and what words or names we know that start with that letter. Next, we look into some of our alphabet books. I usually save Animalia for the second day of the week, just because it's very detailed and it's good to have time to really look into the picture and see what we can find. One of my favorite new things is the Animalia app, which we have on the school ipads. It includes the same illustrations as the book, but there are various games for finding certain things in each picture, searching for Grame, and more. I LOVE it!

This week was the letter Nn. This year I am trying to do more hands-on activities with letters and stay away from boring old worksheets. Every week, I do one craft activity on Monday, which hangs in our room all week, and one painting/art activity on Friday.

This week, we used dry noodles to decorate the letter Nn.

First, I printed out and copied the Nn template from DLTK. I don't know how I forgot about this website! All year, I have been messing with font size and bubble letters to create my own letter templates, when there are great ones right there online! Silly me.

The children cut out the letters.

Next, they chose a colored paper and glued the letters down. Then, they used white glue to stick noodles onto the paper. I had bought three different shapes of noodles, and I was surprised that most of them were making patterns or interesting designs! I guess I thought they would just stick them on wantonly. I really am amazed by my little learners :)

We worked in three small groups. One group worked on the N is for noodles craft, one group worked on a letter Nn worksheet (tracing and recognizing Nn), and the last group worked with me on a letter sound game. I wrote the word "noodles" on the board, so that children could write it on their art if they wished. I don't want to push my children into reading and writing at this age, but the ones who are ready and interested usually take these opportunities and are eager to do and learn more.

Our end-of-the-week Nn art this week was painting with nuts! I love that I am doing Alphabet Art this year, because it is pushing me to be creative with painting. I have made lists in the past of all the interesting things kids could paint with, but I have never actually done it until this year! I would have liked to get nuts in a shell, but I waited a little too long (and didn't want to spend too much money), so we used shelled walnuts. It was still fun, as always!

Stay tuned for Letter Oo next week...