Letter D Week: William Edition (Work in Progress)

Letter D week turned out to be the week of Thanksgiving.  William and Mike were still sick from the previous week, we had a big snow storm, and then we traveled for the holiday.  So, we extended letter D an additional week.

Its especially nice when a book will have a title with the letter of the week as well as one of the author's names.   We are especially lucky with books by Emma Dodd for all the d's!

As always, there are extra books because you never know what will be available when you go to the library.  The books here focus a lot on dogs, because that is William's thing now. 

Books:
If You Give a Dog a Donut by Laura Numeroff
Dog's Noisy Day by Emma Dodd
Dog's Colorful Day by Emma Dodd
I Don't Want a Posh Dog by Emma Dodd
Big Dog and Little Dog series by Dav Pikley
Good Dog, Carl by Alexandra Day
Go, Dog, Go! by P D Eastman
Busy Doggies by John Schindel
Circle Dogs by Kevin Henkes
Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion
Doggies by Sandra Boynton
Dogs by Emily Gravett
Digby Takes Charge by Caroline Jayne Church
Danny and the Dinosaur by Syd Hoff
Dinosaur vs series by Bob Shea
How do Dinosaurs Say series by Jane Yolen
Dinosaur Roar by Paul Stickland
That's Not My Dinosaur by Fiona Watt
Edwina, the Dinosaur Who Didn't Know She Was Extinct by Mo Willems
Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs by Barton Byron
Bones, Bones, Dinosaur Bones by Barton Byron
Little Dinos Don't series by Michael Dahl
Doctor De Soto by William Steig
Do Donkey's Dance? by Melanie Walsh
Elephants Cannot Dance! by Mo Willems
Barnyard Dance by Sandra Boynton
Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! by Mo Willems


Key words:
dog, dinosaur, dot, donut, doctor, dance, drive, dig, dump, draw,

Movies/TV/Characters:
101 Dalmatians, Daniel Tiger, Dinosaur Dan,

Letter D Playlist:
Here is our letter D playlist. 

Full Alphabet Books:
A B C Kids by Simon Basher
Star Wars ABC
ABC of Cookies (Sesame Street)
Eating the Alphabet by Lois Elhert
Max's ABC by Rosemary Wells (features ants!)
Kipper's A to Z by Mick Inkpen
Shiver Me Letters by June Sobel
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr
LMNO Peas by Keith Baker
Hidden Alphabet by Laura Vaccaro Seeger - William  knows almost all the letters when we read this book.  The mistakes he makes are all logical, and sometimes are based on the artistic representation of the letters.  For example, the C looks a bit like a small e.  After spending a week plus with this book, I feel we can be very lax in our work on the alphabet because William knows most of it!  If we push academic work, it will be more focused on lowercase letters, sounds, and writing (which he doesn't have a lot of interest in right now). 



Here is our full alphabet playlist.  


 Games / Apps:
Super Why Alphabet Adventures.    This was perfect for us.  William enjoyed the four alphabet song videos, as well as Woofster's tracing game with the bones and paw prints and Pig's game finding the letters and taking their picture.  The other games were harder for him because they involved a stronger knowlegde of letter sounds and Super Why's game involved greater fine motor control.
SesameStreet.org Cookie Monster's Alphabet soup.
SesameStreet.org Elmo's Keyboard-o-rama

Activities:
I'll highlight the ones he really enjoyed this week.   

• Read books.  (see above)
• Play games/apps on computer or tablet. (see above)
• Trace letter with manipulatives (rocks, buttons, pom poms, cereal pieces, etc), stickers, or Do-a-Dot markers
• Magnet pages
• Playdoh.  
• Watch playlists.  (We did this every morning before watching any other TV).
• Sing alphabet song
• Tracing letters with a finger in books
• Finding letters in environmental print
• Alphabet stampers
• Play with toys from letter bin.  (DOGS - He played with these a lot, but one day we lined them up along the letters D and d).
• Tracing sheets
• Lacing cards
• Puzzles.  I had some paper ones that made a simple picture with one sentence featuring the letter.  He also enjoy a full alphabet puzzles, both upper and lower.  
• Hand print animals
• Lego letters
• Painting over taped off letters
• Rubbings 
• Matching.  Matching same case or different cases.   We can use magnet letters for this or print outs.  
• Watch letter related movies.   
• Eat foods starting with letter.  (Donuts, thought this was a coincidence and William always took a bite and said that it looked like a C like Cookie Monster says in the C is for Cookie video).