Yes, I definitely played "Under the Sea" from the Little Mermaid on repeat during this lesson! This lesson was dedicated to spatial words like under and over, left and right, up and down. We also wrote letters in the "beach" sand, played an alphabet game with seashells, counted using star fish, and of courses ate some goldfish snacks!
Writing Letters in the Sand
I got this sand tray + alphabet cards at Target in the dollar section! It's such a cute and helpful little set for only $3! I got it recently, so maybe if you look online you might find it still. If you don't have this, you can make your own with sand or salt and your own set of alphabet cards. I found a bag of sand at the dollar store, so I made a big version of this for Olivia to play with while Aaron was doing his lesson.
Contact Paper Wall - Practicing Spatial Words
Since this week was dedicated to "Under the Sea," we weren't really talking about an object but more about spatial awareness. What goes under the sea vs. over the sea? I printed up a few pairs of opposites I wanted him to practice like above vs below, right vs left, and up vs down. I read the word out loud to him and asked him to place the word where it belonged. This is how it looked when he was done with this part:
Then, we added animals and objects to create an ocean scene. With each piece of paper, he told me what it was and then placed it where it belonged, either over the sea or under the sea. I also asked him to not overlap the pieces of paper as an extra challenge. He had to really pay attention to spatial awareness and think ahead of time: "Does this fish fit here? Is it too big? Is there a spot where it fits better?" Here's his finished ocean scene!
If you want to do this activity too, click here for the free printable:
Upper & Lower Case Alphabet Matching Game
I printed out these alphabet seashells on cardstock and "laminated" them by using contact paper. We haven't practiced upper & lower case very much, so we did a very simple game together. I spread out alphabet tiles that showed both the upper & lower case letter. I had the stack of lower case letters, and Aaron had the stack of upper case letters. We raced each other to see who could get rid of their stack first! Once he gets the hang of it, there are so many ways to use matching cards like this! I'll definitely be using these all summer!
Click here for the free printable!
Starfish Counting Craft
I was planning to do this just as a craft, but I realized we could turn this into a fun math game! Aaron can count to 10 and recognize the numbers really well, so I wanted to challenge his number awareness. I had four starfish, and I added a number to each counting by 5's. We talked about how the starfish has five "fingers" just like us. We have 10 fingers, and I can count to ten by 1's, or I can count to 10 really fast by 5's! We practiced that concept with our hands (counting to 10) and then with the 4 starfish (counting to 20).
We then glued on 5 cheerios onto the first starfish, easy and simple. Then I asked him to put 10 cheerios on the next one. Before he started, I asked him what would happen if he put 2 cheerios on each "finger." Would that get us to 10? He added the cheerios and was excited that, yes, that gave us 10! Then for the next starfish, I asked him if putting 3 cheerios on each "finger" would get us to 15? And it did! We did the same with 4 cheerios on each "finger" to get to 20. He thought it was so magical to see the number pattern working out each time!
Once all of the cheerios were glued on, we looked at how simple the 5 starfish looked and felt how light it was. Then we picked up the 20 starfish and both saw and felt how big the number 20 is compared to the number 5.
These kinds of activities then open up plenty of conversations I didn't plan. For some reason, Aaron thought that 16 is the biggest number ever, so we talked about how 16 is only 1 more than 15 and 4 less than 20. It was great that he could see and feel that 20 is the biggest number.
10 Frame Math with Goldfish
All of this number talk led us straight into our last activity: 10 Frame Math. This was the first time we had done this, so we kept it very simple and did more demonstrating than asking him questions.
I filled in the top 10 frame with his Goldfish. I took one away and asked him, "How many do you think are left?" His instinct is to count them one-by-one to find out, but before he could, I asked him to guess. His guess was usually something like 16 or 19, so we had some good conversations about only guessing between 1-10. Then, I said the last fishy (the one covering the 9) thinks he knows... slide him down to see what he thinks the answer is! Aaron slid it down and said "9" excitedly! I asked him to count to see if the fishy was right. He counted 1-9 and was so excited that the fishy was right! How did he know?! We did that a few times to show him the pattern.
I explained that you can count so much faster if you can down 1 or 2 instead of always starting at 1 and counting up. It's still a very new concept to him and we'll be practicing it a lot, but it's a really good first step in number awareness.
I had Aaron take away as many fish as he wanted and I would answer him how many were left really fast to demonstrate how quickly counting can be once you've mastered this skill. It was so sweet to watch his face as he was shocked how fast I could do it!
Click here for the free printable if you want to try this with your little one!
I'm leaving out the 10 frame counting, the sand tray, and the seashell matching cards to keep practicing these concepts this week!
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