C Week ~ Day 1

This week is a short one for us. The girls will be leaving Thursday afternoon to go to Minnesota with their bio dad for a week. That also means next week will NOT be D week. And since I start training for my new job the following week, it looks as though we may be putting some of this on hold for a bit. So sad that summer is coming to an abrupt stop a few weeks earlier than I planned!

That being said, I'm so glad it's C week, since so many of my favorite words/things begin with C! (Caleb, Chrzanowski, coffee, cuddling. . . )

Today we focused on the fact that C makes two distinct sounds: the hard sound (which sounds like K) and the soft sound (which sounds like S). In order to help the girls see and hear the difference, we made 2 Cs this morning. The first was a cardboard C for the hard C sounds (I made this out of a Diet Coke case, so I was limited in size, but I wish I had used something larger. We thought of so many more words that we could not fit on the C!) I also made a soft C out of a blanket with circles on it. (This I made way too big. There aren't many words that begin with the soft C sound. It is more often found at the end or middle of words, as in acid or fence.) I talked about the CH sound with Abby, and we may make a list for those words, too, but I felt it was too confusing for the younger girls, especially all at the same time. We went for a walk after we made these, and as we walked, we continued to come up with more words to try to squeeze on the hard C.

Soft C and Hard C

Faith is cutting out face circles. My righty cuts with her left.

The girls were very excited about the fact that both coloring and crafts begin with C, and they would be happy if I let them do that all week long! So imagine how excited Faith was when she realized that CUT begins with C! This morning I let her cut out circles. We talked again about the difference between the soft C of circle and the hard C of cut. This template is easy to make yourself, or you can print the one I used. Circle Cutting Template



Lunch today was all C words (although only Abby knew about the CH portion of lunch). The girls love when their food fits with the theme in some way.

Circle sandwich, carrots, C of ranch, cheddar goldfish

After lunch Faith and Lily colored a page with different shapes. The shapes with capital Cs were to be colored pink and the the shapes with the lowercase Cs were to be colored black. The picture it makes is a C.

The rest of our day was spent doing non-C related things (like returning library books, going to the beach--although we did COOL off, playing in the slip and slide and eating dinner). But before bed, the girls played with shaving cream. While it is just fun to play with, it is a great way to help early writers learn to make letters. The girls practiced writing Cs and then writing their names and other fun things. (Abby practiced cursive in her shaving cream, so it's fun even for older kids.) And while Caleb really loved playing in it (and asked to play in it again), after a couple of minutes it went straight to his mouth.

And for an after dinner treat, the girls ate COLD CIRCLE COOKIES (Thin Mints out of the freezer). Those are some yummy Cs!

After the girls picked out their books for story time, they had to wait on me for a few minutes. They instinctually started pointing out all the Cs. So while I finished switching over some laundry, I had them each take a book and look for as many Cs as they could find.

Tomorrow we have some plans with friends, but I'm hoping we can do some more C activities. One of our favorites from years past is the egg carton caterpillar. We probably won't do it again because the girls still have the ones they made several years ago, but it's fun and so cute!