In the school district I am completing my student teaching in North Carolina, they follow a program for phonics called LetterLand. In this phonics program, every letter is assigned a character name and they each have a story to go along with them. Once the class had learned about every character, we had to have a celebration, of course! We started by allowing each student to dress up as their favorite LetterLand character (we had extra accessories for those who might not have things at home). I had to dress up as Annie Apple, because Miss A!

Once students arrived at school, they began to realize that OH NO the LetterLander’s were all mixed up and it was up to them to find them all on a scavenger hunt so that they can all go back to LetterLand! They each got a passport and were able to check the characters off once they saw them all around the school.

 

After this, students got to come back to the classroom and have an engineering challenge where I laid out a variety of different materials (pipe cleaners, toilet paper rolls, paper, straws, stickers, etc) and they were to make any letter that they thought of. This was a good way to challenge their creativity and let their imagination shine. They loved having this freedom!