Wacky Mac

Thursday is our last day of school for the week. By this day everyone, including me, has grown tired and a little cranky, and none of us really felt like doing lessons today. While the kids had free play time in their playroom, I thought and thought about what we could do that was a little different, but really just felt like calling it an early weekend. Flipping through my Twitter feed I came across this great link posted by Nuture Store, one of the Early Childhood accounts I follow:

http://rainbowswithinreach.blogspot.com/2012/01/letter-recongition-fine-motor.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

I thought the name plates were cute, but the Professors are sick of cutting. I kept scrolling and saw Macaroni letters. I left the post, then came back to it. Then I thought, that's it! We can letter practice, and have an art craft all in one, then call it a day after story time! I already knew I had all the ingredients: Mac, glue and paper, so I finished my coffee and got to work setting up the school table.

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Wacky Mac

I bought this twisty Macaroni literally years ago, to use in what turned out to be a very complicated children's recipe. Being pregnant and having small twin babies toddling around Masha' Allah, it never got made, but I held onto it hoping to use it for an art project one day. Today was the day!

Setting Up

I made sure everything was fully set up before calling the Professors for lessons. Because we could not use glue sticks for this project, we wore smocks. Taking a tip from our good friend Ms. Anna, I filled baby jars with glue and had them use Q tips to spread the glue. That worked really well, and was considerably less mess, the only snag was that the Q tips seemed to absorb the glue, so we used some extra to complete the project. 

 I decided to do Arabic letters today because this is what we really need practice on. We did only the  9 letters we are currently working with. The two depicted here are the Tha (on purple) which makes the Th sound in English, and the Jeem (on yellow) which makes a J sound in English. 

Getting Started

Masha' Allah, it was Professor #1's idea to give everyone piles of Macaroni to work with. After getting his smock on, he went around and gave everyone a few handfuls of noodles, whether they liked it or not ; ) Professor #3 thought he needed a little more than he was given.

Professor #3 also wanted to dig right in, and had begun dipping his Q tip into the glue, and spreading it across the paper before he got his smock on, or even sat down. 

Once we officially got started Professor #2 and #3 were not real sure about the glue, but did excellent with sticking the noodles

Here are two of the letters they worked on. The letter Ba (on orange), which makes the B sound in English, and the letter Tha (on purple), which makes the Th sound in English. 

Masha' Allah Professor #1 dug in and went straight to work, gluing and sticking his noodles on his own. I did not help him at all, except on his first letter, for which he took alot of glue. Here is his work on the letter Jeem which makes the J sound in English

Each Professor worked on 3 or 4 letters each. Afterward, I let them make a creation of their own. 

Professor #3 really could not concentrate on this. He did excellent with his letters Masha' Allah, but seemed lost when it came to doing something himself. We tried a couple of different ideas, such as grouping the noodles by color, but he just wasn't interested, and pretty much ran off to play

Here is our completed letters and projects drying in the school room while the Professors nap. I plan to hang the letters in the school room, and let them hang their art work in their room, insha' Allah. 

And, in case you were wondering, Baby Professor joined in with some work of his own Masha' Allah, on his lap top, and with a touch and feel book and magnify glass.

That's it for us this week. I'm not even planning on getting out the playdough this afternoon. Insha' Allah its time to relax, and get ready for the weekend!   Insha' Allah see everyone back next Monday. Have a great weekend! : )