Transition Song: Colors by The Learning Station (See previous week for music. I've added Pink=try to wink, and Gray - say Hooray!)
Materials: Laminated letter C, grocery bag with 4 large baking potatoes (raw, washed).
Vocabulary and Concepts: 1-2-3-4, potato, Who questions, I do/I don't, "Hot" with emphasis to articulate final /t/, cow, cookie, Carrie, carrot, computer.
Pre-literacy: talking about the letter C. We observed how it almost looks like a circle. We practiced drawing the letter C "Put your finger at the top. Draw half a circle and then we stop." Top and Stop are words that rhyme. The Letter C does not look like a letter C when we hold it with the open end up or down. The letter C can have 2 different sounds: /k,s/. What words have that /k/ or /s/ sound in them? Carrie, carrot, cow, computer.
Group activity: I pulled out 4 baking potatoes from a grocery bag.
Some of the children guessed that they were tomatoes. We practiced saying potato. Then we counted them. We talked about how we like to eat potatoes: baked potatoes (with sour cream and butter), mashed (with or without gravy), with cheese on top. Then I taught the children a game called Hot Potato. First we learned the chant to say:
"Hot potato, hot potato, hot, hot, HOT!"
I explained that we would be passing them to the next person, but not throwing them. We were pretending that the potatoes were HOT even though they really weren't. We started passing the potatoes around (all 4 of them were at different points in our circle) while we chanted
"Hot potato, hot potato, hot, hot, HOT!" three times. At the end I called out "Now, STOP!" We looked to see where the potatoes ended up.
"Who has a potato?"
"I do!" (Everyone who did held them up high)
"Who does not have a potato?"
"I don't." (Everyone who did not have a potato held their hands up high)
We started up again. We did this again and again. The children were very excited when they had a potato to hold up when we stopped. Everyone ended up with a potato at one point. After a while, we switched from passing to our left to passing to our right.
At the end of the activity, many of the children asked if we could play this game again soon.
