Letter X, Easter, Earth Day

I am actually already through teaching letter X but did not get a chance to blog on here due to Easter busyness, but I thought I'd write a quick synopsis of what we did.
Letter X Art and Letter Recognition and Fine Motor Practice.  From:  enchantedmommy.com

I gave each child a sheet of white paper on which I had used Washi tape to mark out a letter X.  I instructed them to use various colors of paint (tempura with a little water added to make it runnier) to paint all around the letter X.  I gave them the option of using a paintbrush or a medicine dropper.  They did both.  They liked "sucking up" the paint in the dropper and dropping it on their papers.  Then they took their brushes and spread the paint around the paper.  Once this is dry, you instruct the kids to take off the washi tape, revealing the letter X in white!

Earth Day:  Earth Day took place during the week of teaching Letter X.  We talked a lot about recycling, reusing and repurposing.  The students always seem to be quite interested in this subject each year when I teach it.  They love to hear of the various ways we can help keep God's earth beautiful and clean.

Bible:  I taught about Jesus being the Light of the world and how we are to be lights to others for Jesus.  We made a little tealight holder out of small glass cups I purchased at the thrift store.  We put glue on the outside of the glasses and then simply sprinkled glitter over the glue.  We then tied a ribbon around the top of the glasses and added a tea light.

Madison, one of my students, shared with us an X-ray of her collar bone.  She broke it when she was younger.  We talked about the sound letter X makes.

Mother's Day:  We are continuing working on our Mother's Day gifts, which I won't talk about yet, because my moms might be watching this blog, and it's a secret, so shhhhhh!

The weather has been turning nice, so we are spending lots more time outdoors.  I purchased some items from the thrift store for the kids club house (under my rhododendron bush)--pots, pans, tray, towels, rugs, utensils, play food.  They loved this!  I love all the imagination and discussions that went on.  They work really well together; sometimes I wonder why we adults can do better about working together and collaborating on our ideas!  We need to learn a lesson from children.

We have been doing some worksheets on beginning sounds.  The children are doing really well picking out what letter a word begins with:  violin begins with V, etc.  The older kids are able to sound out some words on their own at this point, which is really amazing to watch!  We are also working on our math skills and doing some math games and worksheets.  For Easter, I took 15 plastic eggs, and on the larger half of an egg I put a particular number of dots; then on the smaller half of the egg, I put a number.  The children then had to match up the numbered eggs with the dotted eggs.  I made sure to not match the eggs up by color, so the kids had to count, not match by color.
http://room-mom101.blogspot.com/2010/03/easter-egg-matching-activity.html?m=1

For my student's Easter egg hunt, I put triangle shapes on 20 eggs, rectangle shapes on 20 eggs, and square shapes on 20 eggs (with Sharpie).  I also put my student's names on approx. 10 eggs--10 per student.  Madison hunted all the eggs with the rectangles, Jake hunted all the eggs with the squares, and Casey hunted all the eggs with the triangles, and then they each hunted with the eggs with their names on them.  Favorite item in each egg was multicolored coin chocolates, found at a shop in Maryland.  We ate pizza and ham, carrots, and lots of different fruits for our Easter celebration lunch.  Lots of fun!

Another Easter art project was an Easter egg wreath.  I gave each student egg-shaped pieces of paper (about 14 each) and allowed them to paint them in any design or color they liked.  Once they dried, I glued them around the edge of a blue, green or pink paper plate.  I did not cut the center of the plate out, but left it and had the kids write "Happy Easter" on the middle of the plate.  Cute!  Found on jennwa.blogspot.com

We also made Resurrection Cookies:  Found on motherhoodonadime.com--Great way to explain the Easter story!

Another teaching game we did, and the kids loved it and stayed with it for a long time:  http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/2014/04/color-number-easter-eggs.html.  Simply prepare the markers with numbers, have the children take turns selecting a number from a pile of number cards, and then they choose the marker that corresponds with the number on their card.  They keep choosing cards until they have a variety of colors on their eggs.  My students found that rubbing the color with a paper towel made a cool marbled effect, and it was very pretty!  Don't eat!!!!