Letter of the Week (LOTW)

There are a wide variety of resources that I use in my JK literacy program, but here are a few mainstays or anchors that I absolutely love!

 We generally focus on one letter a week (with a few review weeks thrown in for good measure). 

Last year, I primarily used the Jolly Phonics program, as well as the animal alphabet friends cards from Abeka. The Jolly Phonics program is a great multi-sensory approach to teaching literacy. Each week, we learn the Jolly Phonics songs and actions and slowly build up our repertoire of phonics sounds. We are blending and making words in no time! 

The animal alphabet cards are a resource that I used when I homeschooled my own children for preschool and kindergarten. 

I introduce the children to a new animal friend with each new letter of the alphabet. Each card has wonderful stories full of non-fiction information about each animal as well as comprehension questions.

This year, I've also added a fun new resource from Scholastic that the kids and I are truly enjoying. It is an ABC sing-along flip chart with a CD that has an entertaining and catchy song for every letter.

On Fridays, children have the opportunity to bring in an item from home for show and tell that begins with our LOTW.  This gives me more time to reinforce the letter sounds and gives the children a fantastic chance to practice speaking in front of a group as well as share something special from home. This past week, we looked at the letter "Ss" and children brought in a snake (a toy one), a spiderman costume, a snow-plow and some sunglasses. 

We also play our "In My Name/Not In My Name" pocket chart game to work on our name and letter recognition skills. The game goes as follows: I have an extra set of name flashcards, randomly pick a card, children identify their own name, and then place their name on the appropriate side of the pocket chart. If they have the LOTW in their name, they put their name on the "in my name" side. I always give the children an opportunity to guess which side is going to win before we even begin.  They get rather excited about this one......something about seeing your name in print!!! :)

For our handwriting curriculum, I use the Handwriting Without Tears (HWT) program which has fabulous tools and activities to help the children as they learn how to form the letters. The HWT program involves the use of a variety of hands-on materials (wooden letter pieces, magnetic stamp & see screens, roll-a-dough letters, etc.) The children make use of these tools to practice forming their letters even before they put a pencil to paper. 

To top off our LOTW activities, we also learn a Bible verse for each letter.

You can find the memory verse resource HERE.