E is for Engine

I wasn't sure how Little Miss was going to like our "E is for Engine" day.  I admit, I think of "Engines" as something that would appeal more to my son.  But she has seen a few Thomas the Train episodes, and she likes the story of the little blue engine in the "The Little Engine That Could", so we had fun on this day, just like the others.

Look at our old copy of this book!  It has been around awhile.  Since I was little and read the same exact copy, actually.  (It's so fun to share books you enjoyed as a child with your own kids).

Our Reading Literacy activity revolves around this old picture book by Watty Piper.  It's a lesson on following directions and it involves a happy little engine.  The engine in our image is supposed to be blue like the one in the story, but our printer was running out color on the day I printed this, and Little Miss's engine turned out pink.  She wasn't bothered by this in the exercise where she is coloring the engine's cars, but...

...as you can see, when we began drawing in the items in the train underneath, she decided to keep it accurate and color her engine blue as it should be in the story.  Haha!  Child directed learning is awesome!

I read the sentences on the bottom and Little Miss drew the lines across.  She was kind of done after two, as you can see here.  So I didn't even try to bring out our building sentences worksheet, which looks like this:

This is a little advanced for Little Miss, but for kindergartners who are working on writing, this is a great activity to begin getting them comfortable with writing small sentences, especially when they have the sentences in the Reading Literacy Activity to use for ideas.

The one last worksheet I want to show off is the one that Little Miss is working on in this picture:

I love giving her manipulatives to use to fill in this Big E and little e, and it reminds her of our Glimmercat story for why E says "eh".  Here, she is using little river rocks to fill in the letters.

Teaching Tip:  For little preschoolers who aren't as comfortable with a pencil yet, this is a great way to let them become used to the letters without requiring writing practice all the time.  

Every one of the worksheets and printables seen here (and in our other days of the week posts) are available here at our Teacher Store:  https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Letter-of-the-Week-E-1981207

To view our other days for the Letter E, check out:

E is for Elephant:  http://glimmercat.blogspot.com/2015/10/e-is-for-elephant.html

E is for Elf:  http://glimmercat.blogspot.com/2015/10/e-is-for-elf-on-shelf.html

E is for Egg:  http://glimmercat.blogspot.com/2015/10/e-is-for-eggs.html