In my last letter sounds post, [t] is for tiger and tweezers, I wrote about my dislike of cleaning up craft activities involving sequins. Ha ha. I’ve found an equally elusive material that’s possibly even harder to clean up – hundreds and thousands!
This week, we’re learning about the letter [a]. We started off rainbow writing the letter [a].
We used Texta Silk Crayons. They’re really fun. They are of similar consistency as window crayons – think rich oil pastels but washable.
These silk crayons could be also be changed to water colours with a wet brush. Going over the letter shape of [a] with a wet brush provided more chances for N & M to practise the shape of the letter [a].
We then made some chocolate fairy apples as part of our introduction to the sound [a].
We used delicious fuji apples.
N & M placed chocolate melts into a microwaveable bowl. They practised counting orally to ten and learnt about matching each number word to one, and only one object when counting – (a most tricky lesson to master).
A quick minute or two in the microwave and we had yummy melted chocolate. I placed a skewer in the middle of the apple to help them move the apple around more easily. Using a teaspoon, they spread the melted chocolate over the apples. So far, the mess was very manageable.
Enter the hundreds and thousands. They poured it over the melted chocolate and those little things bounce everywhere!
Do the pretty colours of the hundreds and thousands make the mess worth while? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. N&M are convinced that the sugary goodness of the hundreds and thousands are worth while.
Presenting our chocolate fairy apples.
We sliced them up (most of the chocolate bits fell off the apple at this stage), and N&M gobbled them up.
Simple ideas for introducing [a]
Show children a written lower case [a]
- Model the mouth movement and sound[a]
- Visually connect the picture/word “apple” with the letter sound [a].
- Kinaesthetically simulate biting an apple. Open mouth and place open hand close to mouth as if biting an apple.
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