Another week in Theme: Construction!

Theme: Construction

Using Construction Tools – Students were able to use real construction tools, such a hammers, screwdrivers and wire cutters.  They were well supervised by the teaching mother and another participating mom.  Students wore safety goggles and used tools to manipulate materials, such as hammering nails into board, screwing screwing, and cutting and twisting wire.

Construction/Building Toys – Hands On As We Grow has put together this wonderfully descriptive list of the top ten toys for children who are builders.

Construction Themed Books

These are a few more of our favorite construction themed books:

Reading

Phonemic Awareness Skill: Phoneme Isolation: Final Sound – Students practiced listening for the last sound in words.  Say a word, (preferably a one syllable word), emphasizing the last sound.  For example: Red.  Re/ddd/.  What sound do you hear at the end of the word red?

Phonics: Letter Oo (short sound only) – Students learned to identify the letter Oo and it’s sound.   The participating mom  used color photos beginning with the /o/ sound.  Many photos contained the /o/ sound in the middle of a word, which is much more common.  Examples: ostrich, octopus, fox, dog, lock, etc.  Students practiced saying each picture name, emphasizing the /o/ sound at the beginning and in the middle of the word.

***Note: There are very few words that begin with a true short /o/ sound.  Don’t be temped to use words like “owl” and “orange” to demonstrate the short /o/ sound.

Introduction to Decoding – Now that the students have learned another vowel, they can have more exposure to basic decoding.  Begin by setting out a card with the letter o on it.  Ask for the sound.  (/o/).  Set out the letter n and asked for the sound (/n/).  Then blend the sounds together to say the word “on”.  Continue this procedure, with the letter o and t, then add consonants to the beginning of the word, forming the words, pot, rot, lot, dot, got, and so on.

Math

Sorting and Fitting Nuts and Bolts – Getting Messy with Ms. Jessi has a wonderful post about construction themed activities, but I really liked her idea to use nuts and bolts as a math tools.  Select a large assortment of sizes and have the kiddies match the nut with the correct bolt.  Students can also order these by size, or height.

Number Matching – Preschool Printables offers a small, but very, very cute, selection of construction printables, including a couple for number matching.

Writing

Several activities shared this week can double as writing activities, because of the need of fine motor skills.  Examples are using construction tools, building with blocks, and matching nuts and bolts.

Next Week

• Review of all previously taught phonemic awareness and phonics skills
• construction theme