Z Week!

1/17-1/21/2011

Our chalkboard letters this week:  zoo, zebra, zero, zucchini, zip code, zipper, Zsa Zsu (the bird from Lion King), zebra finch, zodiac

What all did we try with zucchini this week?  Zucchini cut into circles, zucchini cut into strips, fried zucchini, zucchini pancakes (no, not for breakfast they were fried for dinner...think more like potato latkes).   Isabel was only mildly interested in the fried zucchini...she did not like it any other way.  Not even heavily "ranched" ;)

She did however, peel and grate zucchini!  And although she was a little nervous about using the peeler, she did quite well with both.

We read What if the Zebras Lost Their Stripes? by John Reitano and William Haines which introduces diversity to young children, while encouraging appreciation of differences.  To follow up this book, I found this car washing activity and applied it to washing the stripes off a zebra!  I cut out a foam zebra and gave him a tail, eye and hooves using a permanent marker.   Iz dove right in, coloring stripes on her foam zebra with washable markers, and scrubbing them off with her sponge...she did this several times and really enjoyed it.

She matched zoo animals to their first letter...wayyy too easy for her.  She was done in less than a minute!

I made some letter Z traceables:  zebra finch, zucchini, zipper, zebra and zoo 

She was very careful, tracing these with a dry erase marker.

Letter Z tracing worksheet: this one she used a colored pencil.  

We made our Letter Z using black paint for "zebra stripes" stamped with a thin sponge.

We read a book about the constellations that appear within the zodiac. 

She wrote and traced our zip code and talked about what it's for.  

We had zig zag lines for cutting practice with scissors.  It is amazing the improvement she has made with using scissors this year over last!  

Other activities included numerically ordering and naming numbers 20-29.  

Gluing the remaining pictures in her sound book for the following sounds:  j, k, n, q, r, u, v, x, y, z.

 And introducing blended consonants:  ch, th, pl, bl, cr, fl, sl, qu.

We went on our first ARCH (Association of Roman Catholic Homeschoolers) playdate at the park this week.  Hopefully we can start making this a habit! :)

Library story time on Wednesday.

And we tried a homemade dot stamper art project, that really ended up as a disaster after a miscommunication.  I thought her first stamped page was just a "practice/test page" and suggested later that she fill it up with dots, and started dotting it myself.  At which time, she burst into tears and told me I was "ruining her face"...apparently her test page was really a picture of a face!  Woops!  I felt awful and apologized, but it had already ruined the moment...from there on out she was very upset and I was upset that I had upset her! LOL! 

What a week! ;)