Literacy Bags for Kindergarten - Letter E - Elelphant

Reading:

Elmer

Elephant and Piggy books

Elephant Families - Let's Read and Find Out

The Elephant and Piggy books are fabulous for early readers!  There are very few words on a page and they are FUNNY!  It is great for kids just starting to read and they can easily understand context.  The thrill of reading the words and understanding the humor in it is priceless!

Poetry:

I found several elephant poems here is the list of them:

Read-Aloud Poems for the Very Young

The Elephant Carries a Great Big Trunk

The elephant carries a great a great big trunk;

He never packs it with clothes;

It has not lock and it has no key;

But he takes it wherever he goes.

~ Anonymous

There are also elephant poems in Eric Carle's Animals Animals and in The Random House Book of Poetry.  These are all great poetry books the I highly suggest you have on hand for fun reading.

Science:

Youtube movie about elephant facts

From here, I will ask Justin to repeat back to me a few facts that he remembers and I will write it down for him on the story paper.  He can then draw a picture of an elephant.

Math:

We will be counting to 14.  We will also be doing this Trace and roll activity

Justin still needs quite a bit more practice just writing his numbers.  Don't feel like you have to complete the page in one day.  If you see that your child is getting tired writing, let them be done and come back to it the next day.  Many kids start to hate writing when they have to do a lot of it or it is very hard for them.

Another activity to repeat from the previous week would be the using the peanuts and counting by 2's.  Also, there are some great songs for learning to skip count.  We will be learning the Classical Conversations songs for the tunes for skip counting by two.

Art:

How to Draw an Elephant step by step

This is will be what he can draw on his story paper if he needs help on how to draw an elephant.

How to Draw Elephant and Piggie - printable

Elmer template

We will be glueing squares of tissue paper on here by panting them on with a brush and decoupage.  

Sight Words:

We will begin going off the Dolch site word list and playing some games This is one that I will be using.  You can use Banangrams to match the letters, or playdoh or wikisticks to form the letters.  

Dolch site word mats

Literacy Bags for Kindergarten - Letter D - Ducks

Reading:
Make Way for Ducklings

Ducks Don't Get Wet - Let's Read and Find Out

Poetry:

Five little ducks:

Five little ducks went out one day

Over the hill and far away

Mother duck said, 

"Quack!, quack!, quack!, quack!"

But only four ducks came back

Writing/Narration:
We will be using this story paper. I will be having Justin narrate to me what he liked about the book that we read or retell the book to me.  He will draw a picture, and then I will write it.  As he gets older, I will have him to begin to write words.  We are not at the point yet though, but maybe you are!  Remember, start we you are and move forward. Don't fret about being "behind."  You can't rush little brains to develop faster than they are, but you can lay the groundwork for a love of learning!


Science:

The story of Ping and Water

Ping is another GREAT book.  This is an experiment showing that oil and water don't mix.  This goes along well with the Ducks Don't Get Wet book.

This would combine both science and art!  Use this duck template.  Color this using oil pastels or non washable crayons.  Then paint over with watercolors to show that the oil in the crayons or oil pastels repel the water.

Math - counting to 14

In the story Make Way for Ducklings, the ducks are fed peanuts.  Buy a bag of peanuts the kind in a whole shell.  First count 14, then break them open and practice counting by two's.  
Another math activity is to buy some rubber ducks and number them 1-6.  Then using a regular dice, roll the dice and match the number you roll to the number written on the duck.  This helps to teach knowing what the number looks like without having to count the dots on the dice.
And one more - this is pretty easy to recreate by just drawing this out on a page:
bead counting


Art:

printable ducks

These would be super cute to cute out and place on a pond/land page that you have created using both crayons and watercolor for a wax resist page.  Make sure to use card stock paper or even water color paper so that it doesn't buckle when wet.

Sight Words:
Sight words are best learned in context!  Take the words from the poem 5 Little Ducks and write them on lined paper or story paper  Even if you just to the first 2 lines.  Cut them apart and practice putting them back together in order.

Literacy bags for kindergarten - letter C Carrots

We are going with the Carrot Seed them for Justin's literacy notebook.  I LOVED the book The Carrot Seed when I was a kid.

Reading:
The Carrot Seed
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Corduroy

A note on poetry - poetry is a great way to train little brains to hear rhyming sounds and hear the patterns in poetry.
Poetry:
See the carrots in the groundI pull them hard without a sound
I wash and clean them up and down.
I love to eat them all year round.

Science:
carrot lifecycle
Math: We are counting to 12.  Some ideas for this are get a bag of mini carrots and pull out enough to count to 12, line them up from biggest to smallest, and also take a big carrot and cut it so that you have a flat end.  Dip it in paint and use it like you would a dot marker.  Make 12 dots on the page that are carrot stamps.
Measuring carrots
carrot shape sorting

Art:
tissue paper carrot

Sight words:

Lapbook resources from homeschool share:
The Carrot Seed
Corduroy

Literacy Bags for Kindergarten - Letter B - Butterflies

Don't think that butterflies have to be all girly!  Let's get down to science here!

Reading:
From Caterpiller to Butterfly - Let's Read and Find out
The Very Hungry Caterpillar


Poetry:
Butterfly, butterfly flutter around.
Butterlfly, butterfly touch the ground.
Butterfly, butterfly fly so free.
Butterfly, butterfly land on me!
Butterfly, butterfly reach the sky,
Butterfly, butterfly say good-bye.

Science:
butterfly garden
Free and CUTE lifecycle cards for both a butterfly and a frog.  File that frog one away for the letter F!
Lifecycle cards
Another one that has the lesson all planned out:
Lakeshore lesson on butterflies

Math: - we are counting to 11

Art:
printmaking - butterflies
Here is a good basic template:
butterfly template
If your older kids want to jump in, this would be super fun too!  If you don't know about Deep Space Sparkle, you should!
Collage Butterfly


Sight Words:
This is very inexpensive.  This give all the color words for sight words
butterfly book for sight words

Literacy Bags for Kindergarten - Letter A - apples

I started putting these together after seeing the bags that my son was sent home with from pre-k.  Yes, I homeschool and send one to pre-k.  I will talk more about that later!  He is a summer birthday, and a VERY active boy.  I think he will be truly ready to jump into kinder work material about mid year.  So, we will start with reviewing letter sounds.  I will be using a Bob Jones book for phonics at his pace, and also using the book The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading  I have a TON of fabulous children's books.  So, I thought, Kindergarten should be ALL about falling in love with books.  So here we go!
Reading:
Letter A -
Books:
Ten Apples Up on Top
How Do Apples Grow? - Let's Read and Find Out
The Apple Pie Tree

This is a little movie of Ten Apples up on Top being read.  Super cute!
Ten Apples up on Top - school tube

Poetry:
Apple Poem:
Way up in the apple tree,
Two red apples smiled at me!
I shook that tree as hard as I could!
Down came the apples.
Mmmm - they were good!

Here is a Youtube clip of this little poem as a song.  Super cute!

This is a FREE, cute apple packet with the life cycle of an apple.
Apple packet


Math:
When he can can count to 20 without help, we will start a math curriculum.  Until then we will count apples, butterflies, carrots, etc.
We will start with counting to 10 because I know that he can do that already.  So we will start with where he is and move forward.  We will be glueing 10 apple seeds to a page.

Art:
We will be using the small size of paper plates because we are going to be putting together a literacy notebook, and I want to all fit in nicely.
paper plate apple
coffee filter apple
and if you are just really rocking and rolling with this apple theme and want even more:
apple poem and art

Sight words:
apple sight words - FREE