Letter Q is for Quiet!

Today I hosted preschool co-op at my house for the last time before the baby comes. Having some "lasts" to cross off seems to be helping the time go by, a little.

For preschool today we talked about letter Q. At first glance Q seems like a hard letter, but really it's quite easy. It's a great letter to work on opposites with, for example. And today I chose to mostly focus on quiet and loud. I have the book Quiet Loud by Leslie Patricelie. It's a really basic book, probably geared toward babies and young toddlers, but I've found that preschool kids LOVE it. On every page is a quiet thing and a loud thing. So for example..."Fish are quiet." (and when I read this to the preschoolers, I have them make a fish face) "Doggies are loud!" (And then I have them bark like dogs. And so on, for all the pages in the book. They eat it up.)

When I finished reading them the book, we went over to the table and did a quiet/loud sorting activity. I had taken pictures from the book, black and whited them (mostly just to save myself ink), and printed them. The kids had to cut out the pictures and glue them in either the quiet or the loud category on their chart.

Another fun Q opposite to  do with preschoolers is quick and slow. Play a version of red-light-green-light, except have them do certain actions, like hop or crawl, and hold up either a quick or a slow sign, and the kids have to do the action at the speed of the sign you're holding. They love it.

Today we did Q-tip painting as well. I found a cool website that had a couple of templates for Q-tip painting, that had the circles on the pictures (kind of like a do-a-dot sheet, only smaller) so that the kids were encouraged to dot their pictures instead of slide them. It worked well for Q day, it would also be a good activity if you ever studied the artist George Seurat (the one who painted in dots).

We also sang the Five Little Ducks song, because quack, of course, starts with Q. The song goes like this:

Five Little Ducks
Five little ducks went out one day
Over the hills and far away
Mama duck said, "Quack, quack, quack, quack,"
but only four little ducks came waddling back...

Four little ducks went out one day
Over the hills and far away
Mama duck said, "Quack, quack, quack, quack,"
but only three little ducks came waddling back...

Three little ducks went out one day
Over the hills and far away
Mama duck said, "Quack, quack, quack, quack,"
but only two little ducks came waddling back...

Two little ducks went out one day
Over the hills and far away
Mama duck said, "Quack, quack, quack, quack,"
but only one little duck came waddling back...

One little duck went out one day
Over the hills and far away
Mama duck said, "Quack, quack, quack, quack,"
but no little ducks came waddling back...

But when the Daddy duck said, "Quack, quack, quack, quack,"
and all five ducks came waddling back.

I had also planned to do a quarter toss, but the kids were really antsy today. I blame it on the weather and cabin fever. All they really wanted to do was play. So instead of quarter toss, I let them have the last half hour as free play time. They played really well, and seemed to have fun together, so I'm hoping that it was exactly what they needed.