Today, we conquered the letter "T." I was planning to do trucks in general - going through fire trucks, dump trucks, pick up trucks, all the different kinds - but then I thought it would be so fun to focus on a book this week! There are lots of resources on Little Blue Truck, one of our favorites over here, so I just couldn't resist!
I referenced a couple of other blogs to get some free printables. These are what I used:
Little Blue Truck Dot Paint Printables - This one is so fun to practice both upper and lower case T, the sounds animals make, and the first letter sound of each animal. I also printed a second copy of one of the worksheets, cut out the animals, and glued them to cardboard to use for the craft project of this lesson.
How to make a Little Blue Truck - This is so cute to act out the story with toy animals, or in my case, with cardboard cutouts. It's a great skill for little ones to practice retelling a story in their own words. If you want to make your own Little Blue Truck, start by printing out this: Make Your Own Little Blue Truck Printable
Story Reading with Characters
Aaron had a lot of fun grabbing each character cut-out as we read the story. It made the book feel fresh and exciting!
Letters & Colors with Dot Paint
Next up, we talked about big "T" and little "t" and the colors of the two trucks. He loves using the dot paint, and it's great practice for his fine-motor skills.
Today, I asked him to unscrew and screw back on the cap, which he can do super well! Teaching him that kind of independence is really helpful to prepare him for a classroom when a teacher is helping a whole room of kids at once.
The printables included other good practice using the dot paint. Aaron loved it! Since he's so new to his letter, I asked him, "Is this a goat, a coat, or a poat?" He thought it was hilarious and didn't want it to end!
Does it Belong or Not?
We did two different versions of this game. The first one was, Was this character in the story or not? I gave him a handful of animal toys, and he had to put all of the animals that were in the story in the blue bowl, and any animals that didn't belong in the white bowl.
Then we did it with letter sounds. Does this start with a "t" sound? All of the t-items went in the blue bowl, and anything starting with a different letter went in the white bowl.
He really liked this one, and we ended up playing it a second time!
Little Blue Truck Craft
This craft is linked above! It's a good one to keep practicing the fine motor skills of coloring or painting, cutting if your preschooler is older, and gluing.
Once it was done, we practiced retelling and acting out the story.
Counting Practice
Our last activity was number recognition and counting. I got the printable from here. I used the Annie's fruit snacks and was hoping to get the farm ones, but they were out. So bunnies it was! We counted the bunnies, and Aaron was the one who took it to the next step of dividing them by color. He put only orange bunnies on the odd numbers and only red bunnies on the even numbers.
This was a really fun lesson to do with him, and I loved that it refreshed one of our favorite books!
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