Living Abundantly With Joy: Letter D week

I am so excited to share about our Preschool letter /d/ week! Of course, one our first ventures was making homemade baked donuts! I bought a perfect donut pan online at Walmart for less than $10 and found an easy homemade donut recipe on the Food Network website recipe courtesy of Ina Gartner! We decided to make a glaze for the topping and I found a wonderful recipe at Jenny Steffens blog. They were delightful and fluffy which completely inspired me to keep trying new recipes especially after my weekly baking mishaps!

My little Baker!

Our yummy donuts! YAY!

Did I mention they love to be silly! I love how Little Man always copies his sister!

Bug just adores Dora the Explorer so it was wonderful to implement her character in a variety of activities to keep Bug motivated. I will continue to use the idea I found at .... to make rainbow letter in order to make writing fun and motivating with lots of repetition tom improve handwriting skills

We also practiced number recognition (1-20) using free printables from This Reading Mama. We had a race to see who could find more numbers first. Before, she stamped each one with the Do-A-Dot markers, I had her identify the number orally. I have seen a leap in improvement in her number recognitions skills and I am confident she will have this skill mastered in no time!

Ready to race mom!

Dairy Queen was a perfect choice for our Letter D week! Bug was so excited to make her Dilly Bar puzzle during preschool time!

During outside time, we pretended to fly to Dora's house and went on quite the imaginary adventure! Bug was thrilled to find another caterpillar and treated it like royalty! She took her green caterpillar on airplane rides, tractor rides, and carried it around like a prized possession for a majority of the day!

Bug and her new found friend!

Bug taking her cute little caterpillar on a plane ride!

During /D/ week, we focused much of our attention on dental health and also on dolphins!

I found this precious idea at Pre-K Fun under the dental theme which had free printables to categorize what is healthy for you teeth and what is not. We read a book about going to the dentist called: "Max Goes to the Dentist" by Adria F. Klein. We did this great activity to learn about how to floss which you can find here at From the Hive. Afterward, we practiced flossing Bug's teeth. There are several wonderful pinterest activities regarding dental health for the preschool age! I didn't have time for all the ones I had planned!

Bug and Little Man were elated to visit the pond and feed the ducks for /d/ week also!

Little Man loved how the goose ate right out of his hand! He kept chasing the geese saying "here, here, here."

Sweet Bug had a wonderful morning visiting the ducks and geese!

Bug loves the outdoors and especially beautiful flowers so I couldn't resist using the idea I found at: Fun at Home with Kids blog to give her the opportunity to create a daisy garden! We also discussed the four needs that plants have and the basic parts of a flower. She loved making a bird out of the left-over flower petals!

Bug also learned about the sight word "I" and practiced counting syllables this week using these great printables and more at: This Reading Mama!

I love for Bug to practice handwriting but I always try to make sure it is fun! So, we discussed her favorite things that start with the letter /d/, she traced the letter /D/ and I wrote the rest. Of course, Dora and Doc Mcstuffins made it to the top!

Little Man enjoying lunch during Preschool time!

Bug earned a dolphin box for a reward this week which she gladly colored purple! We also read a wonderful book this week called "I am Dolphin: The Life of a Bottlenose Dolphin" by Darlene R. Stille which tells about the daily life and activities of a bottle nosed dolphin from the perspecitive of a dolphin! Bug learned all about dolphin communication including echo-location!! She loved nodding her heard up and down to pretend she was a mommy dolphin telling her baby dolphin to stop what she was doing. We read a cute, funny little book about dog called. We also plowed through our Sonlight books this week and enjoyed them thoroughly too! Our letter /d/ movie this week was 101 Dalmation and Bug was completely fascinated and entertained buy this fun filled movie!

I love hands-on learning and this dough project was the ideal fit for our letter /d/ week! Bug learned about fractions as we measured the ingredients for the dough, fine motor skills as we painted and practiced comparing and contrasting the different play-doh ornaments she created! We found the idea to make homemade play-doh and leaf impressions at The Imagination Tree blog. After we finished making the leaf impressions and hypothesizing about the type of tree it came from, Bug asked to use the remainder of the dough to make Christmas ornaments. Of course, I couldn't resist this sweet little smile! Afterwards, she enjoyed carefully coloring each ornament. It was a wonderful activity and so easy!

We had a fun "What begins with letter /d/?" scavenger hunt! We used a cute, free printable from Confessions of A Homeschooler for our letter /d/ hunt! She has a wealth of ideas for each letter of the alphabet perfect for preschool and I couldn't love her site more! We also used the free printable dinosaur cards with numbers from her site to practice number recognition and fine motor skills.