D

D is for 'd d d d' like beating a drum.
Letter trace - http://www.first-school.ws/t/alpha_tracers_zb1/d.htm

Teaching preschool when your baby is screaming is kind of hard. So I was a bit scatterbrained, didn't take pictures I wanted to, and forgot one of the activities that my kid loved best. Let alone all my lesson plans were deleted one hour before it started, but everything worked out!

We made our own drums. I kept my spaghetti sauce and soup cans then cut paper to size and they decorated the paper for their drum then taped it on. Some remembered patterns from our last class to make some very cool drums.

We talked about different kinds of drums and what drums are used for.

• In parades they help keep the beat. They practiced keeping a beat and copying my beat. I let each of them make a beat and we had to copy them. We played to the beat in the song "Hear the Beat" from Janeen Brady's Watch Me Sing CD.
• Drum signals are used in things like war and by indians to tell people things when they can't hear. You can show them a few commands on this youtube video. Talk how they can be used to call people, warn people, announce something, etc

- I made some signals for them (stand up-one tap, sit down-2 taps, spin around-fast taps) and they got to make their own signals then give them as we listened and did what they meant. You could also have them make up signals for happy, sad, scared, etc.
-Last we practiced patterns a little more. I would make a pattern in my beat and they would have to tell me what to play next. (In the youtube video you could have them listen for patterns).

I read the book Little Clancy's New Drum by Tony Kerins which is about a turtle who gets a new drum and plays it, but everyone thinks it's too loud. So they take it away, he gets different items to play on when eventually they take away his drumsticks. He begins to cry, which is the loudest of all, so they decide to give him his drum back and they all play together in a little parade
-I asked the kids what other things he used after they took his drum away
-What are some other things we could make a drum out of?
-After they took his drumsticks, what are some other things he could have used?
We gathered items around the house to let them practice hitting drums out of different objects and different drumsticks (boxes, pots, cans, jars, stones - pencils, sticks, spoons,)

We had our own little parade and marched, playing our drums to "Marching Feet" also on the Watch Me Sing CD.

Next we talked about Dancing. We learned some different dance moves to Yo Gabba -
Mini Spinney, Puppet Master, Razzle Dazzle, Peanut Butter Stomp.

We let them each show off their own dance moves as we danced to "I Like to Dance" subbing in the kids' names.

Last I reviewed the letter "S" by holding still. Our last dance activity was "Hold Still" and they got to dance during the Wiggle section.

For snack, aka Dessert we had Donuts! (It was one of the other teacher's birthdays so we got to sing together).

This lesson required very little planning, but they still walked away very confident in the letter sound. It was a lot of fun for the kids and went by very fast! :)