Letter U With Miss Whitney

It was an awesome day today! The kids had so much fun and were really well behaved! 

We started out with some fun songs (gets their attention so fast!). While during the weather they said it was windy so I took that opportunity to play a little game with them. I had them count to three and then blow me down. We took turns trying to blow everyone down. It took some a few blows to get them down. When it got to Henry's turn he was determined to not blow down. He said that he was made of metal and if we wanted to blow him down we needed to unscrew him. I tried to unscrew him, but then he said that instead we had to push a button to blow him over...after many attempts he ended up just having to sit down...quite the imagination! They had a lot of fun with this! Next we talked about what the letter U looked like and sounded like. I had the kids make a U with their arms and sign it. We pretended to be a train making our way to the alphabet train to put up our pictures for the U car (simple, but they really loved it!)

We read "My U Book" by Jane Belk Mancure, these are a great line of books I found at the library. They have every letter of the alphabet. After the book I told the kids to close their eyes. I started making the sound of rain and asked them what they heard. I quickly covered them with our giant umbrella and we sang some rain songs. They thought this was great and really played along.

Then we talked about what type of animals live up above the ground and what type of animals live under the sea and under the ground. 

While we were playing the game the kids were being really affectionate to one another. These boys have sure taken a liking to the girls! Jackson kept coming over to Taelee to put his arm around her. And kept looking up at her like he was so in love! So cute (that is while it's still so innocent!)

I was wracking my brain trying to come up with some fun things to do with the letter U. I thought it would be a cute idea to talk to the kids about how they were each unique. They each made their own poster with all the things that make them unique and special. Their favorite colors, favorite foods, their heritage, and other things they love. I could tell each of them felt very special getting to share their posters. They were all really interested in hearing what the others had to say too. It was so neat to see how unique each of their posters were. They really did an amazing job (moms too)!

It cracked me up when we went to sit at the table. Josh and Jackson were fighting over who got to sit by Taelee. They had to squeeze in next to her...so much love!
Next was our Spy Bottles. The point of this was for them to get to look "under" the rice to find all their treasures. I tried to get really creative with the treasures to make them tie in with the letter U (it's a tough letter!). I let them each pick what colors they wanted and they got to put their treasures in their bottles. They put in the letter U, Undershirt, United States, Unicorn, Unbuttoned button, arrow pointing Up, Underwated treasure, Underwated creature, Underground worm, marble that looks like Uranus, Unique butterfly, and an Unusual gem. After they filled up their bottles they got to fill it with rice, and then I glued the lid shut. They were so excited to have their own spy bottles!

After lunch we played a game of Up and Under with a parachute I made. It was a hit! They really liked it when we added balls, balloons, and different objects and watch them go Up! Eventually we made our way outside so they could make the object go even higher!

Here's a close up of all their beautiful posters!