It’s learning letter F week! Are you ready for feathers, farms, firefighters, and frogs?
Monday — F is for Feather
- Writing Practice: write uppercase letter F. Try this printable PDF worksheet from DoozyMoo.
- Book: Lois Ehlert’s Feathers for Lunch is a cute story about a cat who tries to catch birds, but only ends up with feathers to eat for lunch. The illustrations are bright, cheerful, and beautifully complement the story. Preschoolers will love learning the cat’s bell on its collar gives the birds advance warning that the cat is on the prowl, and reading about the birds’ warning chirp system! You should be able to find this at your local library, or you can buy it through Amazon here.
- Activity: Feather Estimating — We have a bag of multi-colored craft feathers, so for our math project, I thought it would be fun to estimate how many feathers tall some of my son’s toys are.
We grabbed 3 toys and set them down in a row. Then we got out the feathers. I asked my son to look at the feathers and look at the toys and guess how many feathers tall the toys are.
Then we placed the feathers next to each toy and counted the number of feathers.
Were your estimates close to the actual number of feathers?
- Song: sing Feathers. It’s a cute little song about a ticklish feather. It’s available on YouTube.
Tuesday — F is for Farm
- STEM: Feather Hunt — Take a walk around your neighborhood (or explore around a duck pond or a park) and look for feathers. We found 2 feathers on our walk! Take a look at the feathers you found: Do you think the feathers are from a big bird or a small bird? Which feather is the biggest? What color(s) are the feathers? Which one is your favorite?
- Air Writing: Ask your child to hold up a hand and trace letter shapes with their finger in the air. I was skeptical of this at first, but my son really got into it and I periodically find him air writing his letters all on his own.
- F is for Farm: Try this Farm I Spy and count the farm pictures and write how many you find of each picture.
- Book: There are so many great farm books available at our library! We read several this week. My son’s favorite was Click, Clack, Peep by Doreen Cronin. We love the “Click Clack” series and both of us giggle over these books. In Click, Clack, Peep a cute, little baby chick can’t sleep. Its little peeps keep all of the farm animals awake. They try everything to get some sleep, but little chick just can’t fall asleep. Finally Duck has an idea — all baby’s fall asleep in the car, so let’s try a tractor ride! The plan works great and baby chick falls asleep. Unfortunately, Duck fell asleep too, resulting in giggle-worthy destruction 🙂 Betsey Lewin’s illustrations are so cute. You and your preschooler will have a great time reading these books. Check you library for this and the others in the “Click Clack” series.
- Rhyme: Read the Hello Farm Animals rhyme with your child.
Wednesday — F is for Firefighter
- Writing Practice: write lowercase f. Try this free, printable PDF worksheet from DoozyMoo.com.
- Books: There are so many great firefighter stories. Two of my son’s favorites are Frank Dormer’s Firefighter Duckies and Norman Bridwell’s Clifford the Firehouse Dog.
Firefighter Duckies is absolutely hilarious!!! You and your child will laugh-out-loud all through this book as the poor firefighter duckies rescue whales in trees and put out a burning chef’s hat fire. Every disaster is super silly, but through it all “they are brave, they are strong, they are….firefighter duckies!”
If you think you are up to laughing this much, then check out Firefighter Duckies from your library, or you can get in on Amazon here.
My son loves Clifford stories and tv show on PBS, so combining Clifford with firefighters was a total win for him! In Clifford the Firehouse Dog, Clifford uses his extreme height to help firefighters rescue people from a tall building and he grabs a water tower and doses the fire with it. I’m always hesitant about firefighter stories that show actual burning buildings because I don’t want to freak kids, but my son did not find this the least bit frightening. My library had firefighters come and read to kids and this is one that they read to preschoolers.
Our library has this Clifford book so hopefully yours will too. You can also buy it on Amazon here.
- Craft: Construction Paper Firetruck — Make a firetruck from some basic shapes. Your child will be so excited to see the firetruck take shape 🙂
Supplies needed are construction paper in red, yellow, white, black, and green, pencil, ruler, scissors, and glue.
Draw the shapes and let your child cut them out. Since the ladder was intricate, an adult should cut it out.
Once everything was cut out, glue them onto a separate piece of paper and then let your craft dry.
- Song: We sang our own version of Wheels on the Bus and called it Wheels on the Firetruck. For our firetruck lyrics we sang:
Wheels on the firetruck go round and round
Ladders on the firetruck go up and down
Hoses on the firetruck go spray, spray, spray
The siren on the firetruck goes whee-eee-o, whee-ee-o, whee-ee-o, the siren on the truck goes whee-ee-o all through the town.
- Firefighter I Spy: practice counting and writing numbers with this fun Firefighter-themed I Spy activity. Count how many of each picture you see and write the number in the box next to the picture.
Thursday — F is for Freeze
- Salt Tray Writing: cover the bottom of a shallow tray or pie tin with table salt. Using one finger, your child can trace letter shapes in the salt. Practice making both uppercase and lowercase letter F.
- Worksheet: Draw a line from the lowercase f to the uppercase F letters. Download your free Recognizing Letter F worksheet.
- Song: F is for Freeze so we had to do the Freeze Dance! It is available on YouTube. My son and I do the freeze dance a lot — it is super fun 🙂
Friday — F is for Frog
- Writing Practice: write both uppercase and lowercase letter F f.
K5 Learning offers free handwriting worksheets for letter F: https://www.k5learning.com/worksheets/kindergarten/tracing-letters-f.pdf
- Book: so many frog books to choose from — there’s Jonathan London’s Froggy series (which is so funny), an amazing pop-up picture book called The Wide Mouthed Frog by Keith Faulkner, the Frog and Toad series by Arnold Lobel, and A Prince of a Frog by Jack Urbanovic. Honestly, we own all of these (I love frog books!).
Since my son is a preschooler, and the target audience, I asked him to chose. While he enjoys all of these books, he picked Frog and Toad by Lobel and one that I had forgotten about, Leap Back Home to Me by Lauren Thompson. I’m not sure how this one slipped my mind because we’ve read so many times!
I remember reading Frog and Toad stories when I was a kid, and I’m thrilled that my son loves them. These 2 characters are timeless and their adventures are still relevant to today’s kids. They are gentle stories featuring a strong, true friendship.
Leap Back Home to Me is the sweetest book! In this soothing, rhythmic story about letting little ones have freedom to explore. Mommy frog continuously assures her little that she will always be there. The pictures are lovely and the parent-child bond depicted is absolutely precious!
- Craft: make a Toilet Paper Roll Frog. Supplies needed are an empty toilet paper roll, green paint and a paint brush, green and red paper, stapler (optional), glue, googly eyes, pencil, and scissors. Click on the link to the get to the craft page to get the full how-to instructions: https://imaginationsrunningwild.com/frog-toilet-paper-roll-craft/
- Song: sing Five Green and Speckled Frogs by Raffi.
THANK YOU!
Thank you for learning letter F with us! We hope you enjoyed the stories and activities as much as we did. Please check your public library for the stories we recommended. I also included links to purchase them on Amazon if you so chose. I joined Amazon’s Affiliate program, so I may earn a small commission from purchases through my links (at no additional cost to you) that will help support this website. Thank you for your support! Happy Reading 🙂