We're Going on a Letter Hunt!

I'm discovering that this year's class is much, much different than last year's. This is to be expected, but since I'm only in year 2, it's weird to transition to a new class with different needs and challenges. Last year's class was crazy smart. I'm fortunate to teach in a private school with parents who care, really care, as well as a great pre-school with amazing teachers. Last year, 8 out of 10 of my students came from our Pre-K. This meant that they all had fine motor skills that were well-developed, good classroom routines, they were familiar with the school, and they all came in knowing almost all their letters and many letter sounds. This year, only 3 out of 6 students came from our Pre-K. This means that I'm encountering students who don't recognize letters and under-developed fine motor skills.

Sooo I've spent the last few days combing Pinterest for some good ideas for letter recognition and fine motor development. One purchase I made that I am extremely excited about are these Alphabet and Number Play Dough Mats  from the Printable Princess! The Letter Play Dough mats had been on my TPT wish list for weeks, but when I saw the bundle yesterday, I was sold! And my husband lovingly spent hours today cutting laminating for me :-) I'm excited to use these for letter recognition, number recognition, and fine motor development.

A letter activity we did today is based on the book Alphabet City. This is an activity I snagged from my mom in her teaching days. Alphabet City is a book of just photos of hidden letters in various places around a city. The kids absolutely loved looking through it to try and find the letters.

Today, we went on a letter hunt to make our own Alphabet School Book. The difficult part of this was trying to show the kids what we were looking for -- not printed letters like on signs or posters, but "hidden" letters we could find in furniture, walls, etc., in order to follow the theme of the original book we read. After a few examples, they seemed to get the hang of it!

He found a D in the shape of my teacher table.

He found a V in the table legs.

We started in the classroom. We looked around and found some letters. I helped by finding them and then asking kids to identify them, or just by pointing out a general area to guide them. I put one student (who knows all his letters) in charge of marking off the letters that we found as we went. He felt very special doing that!

We found a P in the wall rack and an X in the lines on the floor!

After the classroom, we moved to the gym. The lines on the floor and equipment on the walls provide lots of hidden letters!

We found A in the legs of the picnic table. 

She found S in the fence.

Lastly, we went to the playground to finish up our list. The last few letters were a bit of a stretch (R and K are really hard!), but hey, we got them all!

My next step was to put all the photos into a class book. Rather than having to pay to get them printed, I was planning on just putting them into a Publisher document and printing them in color. I figured while I was there, I might as well just add the text! I made them simple sentences. Each page has the sentence "(Student's Name) can see (Letter)." The simple text and the fact that the students have their own pictures on the pages will hopefully encourage them to read this book in our classroom library!

God's blessings and happy teaching!
Mikaela