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This Reading Mama

O is for Octopus: FREE Printables Included

By thisreadingmama 4 Comments

Last week, NJoy worked on his favorite letter…O!  It has been a favorite letter of his for over a year.  I think it was the first letter he recognized.  We did O is for Octopus (and ocean) and had FUN, FUN, FUN!

Letter O Fun

O do-a-dot

O Tracing

O Poke Page

O Cut & Paste Alphabet Sheet–(I added the octagon to his)

Octopus Fun

Octopus Numbers 10-20 (FREE DOWNLOAD-2 pages)

To prepare this game, I printed off numbers 10-20 (on 2nd page of download) and paper clipped them to the fish template from 2 Teaching Mommies.  I put them in a bowl.

He fished out a number using a fishing pole from our ABSeas game,

then found the matching number on the octopus and used do-a-dot paint to color in the number.  You could also use bingo chips or simply cross off the numbers as you go.

Octopus Print Awareness Activity (FREE DOWNLOAD)

He drew an octopus, then we glued down the sentence.

Octopus Play Dough Mat (FREE DOWNLOAD)

The boy loves to play play dough.  We do it each Friday after taking ALuv to a homeschool co-cop.  It’s our ritual.  I usually don’t plan out anything for him to do with the play dough, but I saw a play dough activity online the other day with toothpicks and I adapted it for our octopus purposes.  (I honestly can’t remember where I saw the idea.  I guess I do need Pinterest after all…just to keep me better organized.)

He balled up the play dough, put in on the matching color, then stuck 8 toothpicks in each ball (for the octopus’ tentacles).  He really enjoyed this and stuck with it much longer than I thought he would.

MBug began asking for the play dough that matched each color.

Here she is saying, “No” when she mismatched the play dough.

This gave me an idea.  I’ve been saving the smaller Play-doh tops for over a year and have done nothing with them.

I handed a few to her and she got to work matching the colors.

The light green one confused her a bit.  She kept picking it up and trying to find another spot for it.

Octopus Coloring Page (color by number)

Octopus Coloring Page (from COAH)

Octopus Puzzle-He’s doing SO much better with these!  He can now do them independently.

O is for Ocean (and some fishing, too!)

11-20 Ocean Puzzle

What’s Different-Ocean style

Ocean Rhyming

Ocean/Land Animal Sorting

ABSeas (Discovery Toys)

Wooden Fishing Puzzle (similar to this one)

24-Piece Ocean Puzzle (I think I got this one at Wal-Mart for CHEAP!)-these are GREAT starter puzzles when your child has moved past the simpler wooden puzzles.  We have several of them.

Craft

I took this fun and simple idea from Jessica @ The Preschool Experiment.   (The printable is from Making Learning Fun.)

We enjoyed our O week!  Hopefully, I’ll soon get caught up on the Word Wall pictures and I’ll get it posted here! 🙂

This post was linked to Show and Share Saturday @ I Can Teach My Child.

And if you haven’t already joined me by subscribing by RSS Feed, Facebook, Twitter, or email, I would appreciate it if you’d take the time to do so.  Thanks and God bless!

~Becky

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Filed Under: Alphabet Activities, Phonics and Word Study

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Comments

  1. Susan Syddall says

    June 23, 2012 at 5:51 pm

    Love all these ideas! I’m definitely going to use them with my boys. Thanks for sharing.

    Reply
    • thisreadingmama says

      June 23, 2012 at 9:45 pm

      Thanks for the encouraging word. I’m so glad you can use them with your boys! 🙂

      Reply
  2. Kristi says

    October 31, 2014 at 11:24 am

    Every link that I clicked on says “Forbidden” or “Link not valid.”

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Tot School - Letter O | Wildflower Ramblings says:
    August 17, 2013 at 5:01 am

    […] legs and little shoes for the octopus too.  This activity focuses on print awareness and is from This Reading Mama.  I love this idea — to teach a child that words make a sentence.  Though I never asked him […]

    Reply

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Hi! I’m Becky, a homeschooling mama with 4 blessings who keep me on my toes {and knees}. Before homeschooling, I was a classroom teacher (M.Ed.) and reading tutor. Read more about me here.

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