Q is for Queen

Today we started our study of the letter "Q".  At first I was concerned that I wouldn't have enough activities to fill the week, but after brainstorming with my husband I think I have plenty of ideas for the letter "Q".

We started our morning by talking about the word "quiet".  I asked the children to sit quietly for one minute and listen.  We then talked about what we heard when we were quiet.  After that I read the book The Listening Walk by Paul Showers.  This is a story about a little girl who goes on a walk with her father and dog.  She and her father walk quietly so they can listen to all of the sounds in their neighborhood.  It really kept the attention of the children because I had to make the sounds of all the things that the little girl heard on her walk.

After the story I recited the nursery rhyme The Queen of Hearts to lead into our letter activity.

The Queen of Hearts,

She made some tarts,
All on a summer's day;

The Knave of Hearts,

He stole the tarts,
And took them clean away.
 

The King of Hearts

Called for the tarts,
And beat the Knave full sore;

The Knave of Hearts

Brought back the tarts,
And vowed he'd steal no more.

After the poem we made queens out of the letter "Q" using a tutorial from No Time for Flashcards.

 

The children colored a letter "Q" I printed from  Itty Bitty Bookworms.  I cut the letters out and the children glued them to a piece of construction paper.  Then they glued on a crown, jewels, and wiggly eyes.  They finished the queens by drawing a nose and a mouth.  I think they turned out really cute. 

My son is always excited about our letter each week.  I hang the current letter in the kitchen while all the letters he has made so far are on his bedroom wall.  He loves looking at them.

 

Next, we talked about quarters.   The children had the opportunity to make some quarter rubbings on their paper.  I got the idea from Sarah over at The Fifth Street Academy when she did nickel rubbings.  The children caught on fairly quickly.

 

To go along with our quarter activity I gave each child a laminated 100's chart and asked them to find the number 25.  I helped them circle it with a dry erase marker and then we counted from 1 to 25.

Another "Q" activity we did was to do an action "quickly".  For example, I would call on a child to jump 10 times a quickly as possible.  Another child was asked to clap 10 times quickly.  This was a good counting exercise as well.

 

Finally, we played a shape matching game that I got from my husband's great aunt when she retired from teaching several years ago (What a blessing many of her materials have been over the years.).  The game had a date of 1972 on it and it was from a Scholastic magazine.  Regardless of the date, it was a fun game for the children today.  Each child got a different colored strip with a circle, square, triangle, and rectangle on it.  Then they took turns drawing cards from a stack and either putting them in the right row or giving them to the child who had that color.  This was great for shape recognition and taking turns. 

We had a fun morning learning about the letter "Q".  We will continue our study of the letter "Q" on Wednesday when we will do some quilt activities.

Q is for Queen