Jazzy Letter J (Alphabet Wall)

We have had fun with the letter J and decided to continue doing J-activities (mostly building Lego Jets) for another week. We have enjoyed eating jelly beans (so fun to guess the flavors), making homemade jam (although it didn’t turn out so well) and painting with jello! 

For the rest of the Alphabet, go HERE! 

 Enjoy this
Jazzy J for
(Seedlings ~ preschool age)...

What we did for the Jazzy Letter J?...

Alphabet Wall:
Jello Jellyfish on the J  ~ I cut out some semi-circles and the boys painted them with glue and then sprinkled jello on them. They then added googley eyes and ribbon on the flat side to turn them into Jello Jellyfish! They actually made a ton of these and then made a bunch of underwater scenes with jellyfish as the center stage sea creature!

*Our original J had jelly beans but as true to all of the letters that we did with edible items, the jelly beans went missing so that is why we switched to the Jello Jelly Fish. Here is the original J though if you think your kiddos can resist eating them. :)

Jelly Bean J  ~ Simple and yummy – just glue some jelly beans down to a J and eat some too!

Books:

*Read Jaguar’s Jungleberry Jamboree  (Alpha Tales book) and The IJ Book (Bob Book Pre-Reader)

*Read some jelly bean books ~ The Giant Jelly Bean Jar by Marci Aboff and The Jellybeans and the Big Art Adventure by Laura Numeroff and Nate Evans

*Read a couple jet books ~ Fighter Jets by Valerie Bodden and The Jet Alphabet by Jerry Pallotta

 Art/Crafts:

*Jello Painting ~ for this we made shamrocks since it is close to St. Patty’s (you can do anything though). The boys painted glue on 3 hearts and a stem and then sprinkled lime jello over the glue. The colors turns darker when it touches the glue and it smells wonderful too. You can put the jello in a shaker or just let them sprinkle with their fingers. Once dry they glued their parts together.

*Lego Jets ~ Kind of a craft/activity combo. We just built different types of jets and talked about them. The boys really love jets...and legos!

Activities:

*Homemade Jam ~ we made two batches of homemade jam (strawberry and mixed berry). This was our first attempt at making jam and it was quite fun! We thought at first we were successful until we put it in the refrigerator - when we took it out the next time it was pretty solid and had lost its spreadability. We just microwave each time or scrape some off when we want to add it to our bread. Tastes delish but we will have to try it again! We used the recipe from SimpleBites.

*Jelly Bean sorting and tasting ~ I gave them each 20 jelly beans and told them to sort them. Roly Poly tried to make a rainbow and Firefly put them in line. I like to let them sort on their own before telling them how to sort them. After they sort on their own you could have them use a jelly bean color sorting sheet like the one from Teacher Creature. We then ate them and talked about the flavors.

 
Letter Formation:

*Made a J with our hands  and our bodies~ I said they just needed to do the hook with their hands but Roly Poly insisted that it needed the top line.They also think the body letters are too fun so they like doing this as well!

*Watercolor J’s   ~ we had watercolors out so the boys practiced writing J’s with watercolors on newspaper.

Music and Movement:

*Sang  “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” ~ go here for lyrics

*Jump rope ~ we just got three jump ropes at a birthday party last weekend! It's like they knew we were on the letter J!

 Snack:

*J-food ~ we made Johnny Cakes (corn bread) with our jam on top and had some jello too! The pic looks a bit blobby but it tasted good!

More ideas…

*Play Jacks

*Jets (make paper airplanes)

Please BRAINSTORM your ideas/suggestions in the COMMENTS below for the Jazzy J!
Happy Teaching!
~Sara