Letter E Week: William Edition (Work In Progress)

Letter E is the first letter we've come to thus far that William frequently identifies incorrectly, so I'm going to want to be less lax on this letter.  We've taken a big break for the holidays and I am only just now feeling the motivation to get back into planning, enforcing, and documenting this work each week. 


Books:
Piggie and Elephant series by Mo Willems
Elmer series by Dave McKee (Elmer is an Elephant)
Little Elliot, Big City by Mike Curato (Elliot's an elephant, too)
Green Eggs and Ham by Dr Seuss
Eggs, 1, 2, 3: Who Will the Babies Be? by Janet Halfmann
 Roly-Poly Egg by Kali Stileman
An Extraordinary Egg by Leo Lionni
Fish Eyes by Lois Elhert
Eye Guess by Phyllis Limbacher Tildes
The Earth Book by Todd Parr
I Am Planet Earth by Jean Marzollo
Funny Ears by Liesbet Slegers
Whose Ears? by Jeannette Rowe
Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet Ahlberg
Now I Eat My ABC's by Pam Abrams
I Will Not Ever Eat a Tomato by Lauren Child
How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food by Jane Yolen
The Everything Book by Denise Fleming
Shhhh! Everybody's Sleeping by Julie Markes
The Great Escape from City Zoo by Tohby Riddle


One of the things I'd like to work into our program is Natalie reading to William, so I think I'll have her give Green Eggs and Ham a try. 

Key words:
eat, egg, eyes, ears, Earth, elephant, end, exit, echo, ever, every, Easter

Movies/TV/Characters:
Elmo, Ernie, Ewok, Emperor, Eve (from Wall-E), Edith (Despicable Me)


Letter E Playlist:
Here is our letter E 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
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



Here is our full alphabet playlist.  


 Games / Apps:
WallyKazam: During our hiatus for that last several weeks, William has fallen in love with this show.  Its very similar to Super Why, but with more personality.  The app is also similar to Super Why.  It has letter identification and tracing that we have explored so far.  
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 knowledge 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.
• Tracing sheets (We typically do these with the dry erase markers on page protectors, but I'm starting to amass such a collection of these sheets that I might just let the kids do them for real).
• 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 or crayon resist with water color.
• 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.