Preschool Story Time- Letter of the Month is A

I decided to start something new in my story time this month. I thought I would try to do something that would bring my story times together, allowing me to bring back some favorite stories, flannel boards, and songs. So, I decided to start a 'Letter of the Month' story time for the first week of every month to see how it goes.  I might stop this by summer, but it will be a great exercise.

Check out my mailbag. I made it myself with fleece, felt, and a lot of hot-glue (See my Flannel Friday Post about this bag).  I also made lots of felt envelopes to use with it.  We introduce story time with the mailbag and wonder what 'letter' is inside it for us!  I will call up volunteers to peek inside the envelopes and tell me what is inside.  Today we had the letter A and 4 items that begin with A....Ant, Astronaut, Alligator, Apple (my Ant isn't in the photo).


Thanks to Kay Leigh for sharing her idea to felt the Animals in this book: Animals in Underwear by Todd Parr.  I literally ran out to the store, bought the book, and felted all of the animals that weekend.  Now I get to introduce the book and share a new animal in their underwear every week!  Yay!

Here are some of my animals...Squee!!!

After our mailbag offerings, I sang a new song with my ukulele.  I played Old MacDonald Had a Farm with these lyrics:
Our Librarian has a book - E-I-E-I-O
And in that book there were some As - E-I-E-I-O
With an A - A - here and an A-A there, here an A, there an A, everywhere an A-A
Our Librarian has a book - E-I-E-I-O
(for this letter, we repeated this verse with long and short A sounds)

For our Every Child Ready to Read fans, we talked about pointing to letters in books, starting with the first letter in their name, to get children excited about reading.  Simple repetition of pointing to the A and letting them feel successful, makes them excited of learning.  Songs like the one above are familiar, yet teaches sounds in a fun new way....just like they learned animal sounds with that song, they learn alphabet sounds.


Our first book was The Very Boring Alligator by Jean Gralley.

The alligator JUST WON'T GO!  This book shows kids how to take control of playtime and get rid of anything standing in the way of their fun.

Then we did the AlphaGator Poem.  Not sure who to credit for the poem, but my Alligator is made with scrapbook paper and a felt belly so the letters can stick while I read the poem.   The kids liked this!

Once there was an Alpha-Gator

Who absolutely adored the alphabet.

He ate the letters and had sweet

Alphabet dreams all night long.

On Monday, he ate the letters ABCDEF.

Then he closed his eyes to get some sleep.

But the pointy part of the A kept poking him in his tummy.

And he couldn’t sleep a wink all night long!

On Tuesday, he ate the letters GHIJK.

Then he closed his eyes to get some sleep.

But H and I made a word and said it over and over- HI, HI, HI!

And he couldn’t sleep a wink all night long!

On Wednesday, he ate the letters LMNOP.

Then he closed his eyes to get some sleep.

But the O kept rolling back and forth in his tummy-

And he couldn’t sleep a wink all night long!

On Thursday, he ate the letters QRSTUV.

Then he closed his eyes to get some sleep.

But the S kept saying SSSSS and playing snake in his tummy

And he couldn’t sleep a wink all night long!

On Friday, he ate the letters WXYZ.

Then he closed his eyes to get some sleep.

And he dreamed sweet Z’s all night.

Then the Ant and the Grasshopper fable retold by Mark White.  The kids decided this ant was too mean, and they would have helped their neighbor.  There were some strong opinions here - the moms even said that the Ant should have seen it coming and had a talk with the grasshopper sooner.  Wow.  I guess the discussion was a good thing on this one, but it cracks me up too that it was such a hot issue.  After all, it IS a fable with a moral to it.


After halftime and our usual Popcorn Dance, I told the story called That Apple is Mine by Katya Arnold.

You'll have to see my FLANNEL FRIDAY POST about this Story board set I made last fall.  This story is a hit every time I tell it.  There is a surprise ending that the parents really enjoy too.


Finally Animals Should Definitely NOT Wear Clothing by Judi Barrett.

Another book that delighted both the kids and parents.  What would happen if Animals DID wear clothing?  Funny book!

My craft was an Alligator made from the letter A.

And THAT'S the Letter of the Month!!  We had a really great story time this week and I am already looking forward to the next one! Hope you enjoyed it, and thanks for stopping by!