Brainstorm in Bloom: Unbelieveable Letter U (Alphabet ~ Single Stem Post)

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Unbelieveable Letter U (Alphabet ~ Single Stem Post)

U week has been unbelievably and utterly fun! I didn’t have much planned for this week and kinda just winged it but we ended up doing some fun activities with umbrellas and had a blast doing things upside down!

For the rest of the Alphabet, go HERE!

Enjoy this
Unbelievable U for
(Seedlings ~ preschool age)...

What we did for the Unbelievable Letter U?...

Alphabet Wall:
*Umbrellas on the U ~ Open up these fun little drink umbrellas (you can get them at party or kitchen stores). When they were opened we pushed near the top to make them flat (they are made with cheapo wood so they just flatten up for the most part). We then put glue on our U and stuck them on.

Books:

*Read Umbrellabird’s Umbrella (Alpha Tales book) and The STU Book (Bob Book Pre-Reader)

*Read some Umbrella books ~ The Umbrella by Ingrid and Dieter Schuebert was a fun book that followed the dog and umbrellas journey – the boys really loved seeing where the umbrella traveled!. The Umbrella by Jan Brett had beautiful pictures and was a cool story about different rainforest animals coming to visit the umbrella. The Umbrella Queen by Shirin Yim Bridges was a great story that reminded me of The Story of Noodles when we did the letter U!

Art/Crafts:

*Umbrella Art ~ We started off by watercolor painting an ocean and beach. For the ocean we sprinkled salt on the wet paint. For the beach we let the paint dry and then put glue and sand on top of our beach. We then rolled a piece of play dough in a ball. We put a dot of glue on the sand, pushed our ball on it and then poked a small umbrella into the middle (it really did hold the umbrella vertical even after the play dough dried). As an afterthought we also glued some sponge sea creatures down – it would be fun to cut some sea creatures out of paper and glue them down. It was a great multi-step and 3-dimensional project!

*Upside Down Drawing ~ I have been wanting to have the boys do this for a while and they loved it! When I taught art I had my 4-5^th graders paint upside down but decided to have my kiddos start with marker drawing so that they wouldn’t get drips all over them. I just put a board across some sawhorses (under a table or chair would work fine as well), taped some paper to the underside, gave them markers and let them draw away. I liked listening to their conversations while they were working on their drawings – they often commented on how each other was doing and it was fun to hear!

Activities:

*What Can We Do Upside Down? ~ We tried to think of fun things that we could do upside down! This was so much fun and the kiddos loved being silly and keep trying to think of new things.

Letter Formation:

*U with Hand and Body ~ U’s are easy to make with curling a hand up and also fun to make with laying down and pointing hands and feet both up.

*U on Whiteboard ~ Roly Poly practiced his U's and then turned them into underwater U's (his idea)!

Music and Movement:

*Upside Down Song by Jack Johnson ~ we watched and danced to a cute YouTube video!

Snack:

*Udon Noodles ~ I really wanted to have Ugli fruit but it was out of season when we did our U (look for it when you do the U because it if really cool). We had Udon noodles and they were NOT a hit. The boys thought they smelled fishy and then still wouldn’t eat them even after I rinsed them off. I ended up eating a lot of noodles that day! Give them a try though! Let me know of any U snacks that you have tried that had a better reaction.