Glimmercat Education: Letter of the Week for O

The letter of the week packet for O is up!

Now, one quickie on the letter O here:

When it comes to teaching preschoolers the vowels' sounds, I try to stick with just one sound. That's pretty standard for preschool: Most folks start with the short vowels sounds, and later on they will learn the long sounds for the vowels. So, I tried hard to stick to short sounds for this letter of the week packet. But I am mentioning here, that there is one craft and picture which often doesn't get pronounced with the short O sound. That is "Owl".

Usually, we think of "OW" as having its own blended sound. But when you make the short o sound (as in Otter) and then say the W sound, you end up creating an "ow" blended sound.

I wanted to mention this here, because you CAN teach "Owl" as a short o. Our language is so full of "funny" words that were once pronounced so differently than they are now. I will often tell my son, "This is one of those funny words, that we say a little different than how we sound it out." He rolls with that explanation just fine.

And as for our little Owl craft, it was one of the favorites, so I'll start with it. A toilet paper tube and our printable, is almost all that's needed, besides glue and markers. I made the brightly colored little guy above as an example craft first, and my son decided to recreate it, if he could.

First, he colored the pieces and then cut them out.

Then, he pushed down the top of the toilet paper tube. This was tricky for him, and I helped.

Next, all the pieces went on...

And the day's little play-things were all done. My two kids loved these owls.

So, this craft was big winner with my kids. Yay! (I love those kind the best!)

Next, we did "O is for Otter".

We created an Otter Puzzle, an Otter craft and an additional Otter "Color by letter" activity. So, we needed to start out with a fun video of otters to show the kids exactly what an otter is.

First, there's this cute 14 second long one, showing an Otter chewing on ice while laying on her back:

Then, another one from Monterey Bay Aquarium, this one shows otters playing and munching on colored ice:

Those two videos are great introductions to otters and their fun, playful little ways. Now, we're ready for the craft.

A little cutting, a little shape matching, and this fun Otter craft comes together...

And he's holding an O, just like the otters in the video held their icy treats. Too cute! For follow up, we have a Color Match page that ends up looking like this:

Now, "Octopus" is usually the critter of choice for the letter O, and we have a craft for him, too:

I especially like the look of the Cheerios underneath his tentacles, because after children have seen a video like this, where an octopus grabs this guy's camera with his tentacles, they'll know a bit more about the underneath parts of an octopus:

Now, before you watch it with your children, watch it yourself. It is a little freaky when the octopus first grabs the camera. Then it's boring for a minute, but the guy who uploaded the video explains what's going on in subtitles. And then it ends in a very fun way where the guy gets his camera back and gives the octopus a ride through the ocean.

What O packet would be complete without the Ostrich craft?

This is some tricky cutting, so I'd recommend helping with the scissors on this one (let them take on the outside of the O, and you will probably want to do the rest yourself).

But I think the item in our Letter O packet that I'm most excited about is our Reading Literacy activity which goes along with the book "Ox-Cart Man" by Donald Hall.

When I first read this book, I wondered if my kids would think it was boring. The book covers the way a man from the 1700's might buy and sell, with these pictures that look as though they were painted in the same time period.

But when I read it to my son, he was fascinated. And I let him try out this activity that I created:

And he happily cut out each of the coins, and I acted as a store-keeper while he chose which items he wanted to "buy". And do you know he wore me out with this pretend play?
Months later, he asked if I could print him out another copy and play this "game" again.

For a lot more O activities, both printables, reading literacy activities, flash cards and a Letter O Matching Game, head over to our teacher store here.

Letter of the Week for Y

Letter of the Week for Z

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Letter of the Week for O

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