This lesson was a little boy's dream! Dinosaurs, jumping over "hot lava," watching volcanos explode... he loved it! In the middle of all of this fun, we were practicing letter formation, correctly holding his pencil, letter recognition, and he learned some of the science behind how volcanos work.
Introduction to the Letter V
I like starting each lesson with one of these printouts. You can get the free download for the whole alphabet here. We start by talking about the letter "V," tracing it, thinking of other words that start with v, just some of the basics.
Pre-Writing Printout
Then he worked through this worksheet. I realized that since he's so new to letters, we needed to work on the names of the lines. Through this lesson, he's starting to learn the difference between slanted lines and vertical lines.
We practiced slanted lines going in two different directions, then drawing circles, then the letter "c," and then we put it all together to write the word volcano.
Click here to get the free printable!
Gross-Motor Skills + Letter Recognition
Next, we played the classic game of Don't Touch the Lava! I put pillows in a circle and then spread out cards with letters and numbers. I told him the carpet was hot lava, and he had to make sure he stayed on the pillows to stay safe. But his numbers and letters needed to be saved! I would call out a letter or a number, and he would have to find it, jump on the pillows to get it, and then grab it and hand it to me.
I loved that this combined gross-motor skills (carefully jumping from pillow to pillow and keeping track that his feet and hands were safe) with letter/number recognition! We worked on the numbers 11-15 and the letters Q-V, but you can change it to whichever numbers/letters you're working on.
Volcano Science
I didn't get pictures of this one, but we learned a little bit about the science of volcanos next. We first paused and watched some volcano eruption videos on YouTube (Aaron absolutely loved watching it!).
While he was watching, I set up a large vase filled with cold water. Then, I filled a small jar with rocks on the bottom (to weight it), hot water, and red and yellow food coloring.
I had him come to the table to watch how a volcano works. We dropped the jar with hot "lava" water into the cold water, and instantly the orange colored water rose up like a volcano and dispersed out into the cold water.
Then, it was time to make our own volcano!
I had set up this play dough activity box a couple of weeks ago, and it worked perfectly for this!
Set Up:
activity tray that's deep or a plastic box like this one
small snack cup on the bottom filled with baking soda
disposable cup flipped upside down and the bottom cut out
use play dough to cover the cups to form the volcano and leave out so that the play dough dries out
add dinosaurs, rocks, small plants to create the scene
fill squeeze bottles with vinegar (yes, those bottles are from the hospital after giving birth, but they're now clean and the perfect size!)
before exploding the volcano, add food coloring to the baking soda to make the "lava" orange
Hand the bottles of vinegar to your kiddos, and let them squirt it into the cup with the baking soda. They LOVED seeing the "lava" pour out of the volcano! They sprayed their vinegar until the baking soda was all used up, and then Aaron kept playing with the dinosaurs for a long time.
Volcano Smoke Letters
We practiced slanted lines on the paper with pencil, and I wanted to reinforce it in a different medium. A great way to practice letter formation is with shaving cream, and just to tie it into our theme, I make it look like volcano smoke!
Aaron loved mixing the food coloring into the shaving cream, and once it was all mixed, we started writing letters. As a note, I added too much shaving cream this time. That amount is great to play with the texture but a little too poofy for letter writing. But Aaron loved it all the same!
Volcano Craft
And since I had cut out a volcano mountain anyway, I decided to finish up the lesson with this volcano craft. I traced his hands in three fiery colors, cut them out, and then he glued them together. I love that the top of the mountain can make a v-shape to tie the whole lesson together. I used a chalk marker to add the words, and this is now up on our fridge to remind him of our lesson.
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