Letter “Z” -Letter of the Week Program

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Welcome to letter “Z” week everyone.  Well done to all the caregivers out there who have provided their daycare children with alphabet activities for the last 26 weeks!  You deserve a pat on the back and recognition for all your hard work and dedication.  I applaud you.

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We read our AlphaTales  letter books and practiced making the sound of letter “Z”.  We turned the letter “Z’ into a zebra this week for our letter craft.  My older daughter glued detailed zebra stripes on her letter “Z” but the preschooler’s letter craft turned out just as cute with haphazard stripes!

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Our toy zebra played a silly game of Simon Says with the children but we called it “Zach Says.”  He had the children zig zagging, zipping, and zooming around the play room.

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I have an alligator zippered pouch that I made into a capital/lowercase letter matching game. I put out a handful of capital letters on the table.  I secretly slipped the lowercase match to one of the letters into the zippered pouch and passed it to a child.  Each child had a chance to unzip the pouch and try to find the match on the table.  Watching each other find a match and helping our friends is all part of the learning process.

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All my daycare children love tactile books even the older ones.  I found a few good alphabet ones at the library this week.

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Our letter review activity involved stamping the alphabet and the letters of our names with this Play Doh Letters’ set.

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We made zucchini muffins for snack one day.  The children love to grate, mix and of course, taste the finished product.

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Zoo starts with the letter “Z” so I got out this wooden zoo set we own.  I had the children listen to each animal name and try to guess what letter it started with.  You could play this game with whatever toy animals you have, it could be a zany zoo of any sort!

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It was a rainy week so we decided to do some singing and dancing.  I used painter’s tape and made each child a letter “Z” on the carpet. We made up a letter “Z” version of the hokey pokey.

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“You put your “Z” in, you take your “Z” out,

You put your “Z” in, and you shake it all about.

You do the hokey pokey and zig, zig, zag.

And that’s what’s it’s all about–Z!”

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When we got to the ‘zig, zig, zag’ part in the song, the children jumped with their feet together in three quick movements along their taped letter “Z”.  Their jumps formed the letter “Z”.  At first I made the taped letter “Z”s too big on the floor. Have a volunteer try one out to make sure they are an easy jump for short legs to master the first time through.

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I had a pipe cleaner activity available one afternoon for those kids who wanted to try making letter “Z”s.

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Here is an attempt to make a letter “Z” with fingers.  They tried with legs and arms but finally worked together and make a letter “Z” using three people.

One of the children’s favourite songs starts with the letter “Z” so we sang it many times this week. It’s a preschool classic, “Zoom, Zoom, Zoom.”

Zoom, Zoom, Zoom,  (brush hands together)

We’re going to the Moon.  (brush hands together)

If you’d like to take a trip,   (walk fingers up arm)

Climb aboard my rocket ship.  (walk fingers up arm)

Zoom, Zoom, Zoom,   (brush hands together)

We’re going to the Moon.  (crouch into a ball)

Five, Four, Three, Two, One,  (show on fingers)

Blast-off!!!  (jump up with arms outstretched)

The actions are hard to describe so here is a YouTube link for you to watch, Zoom Song.

I hope your letter “Z” week is completely zany!