The Letter "O" Activities

I have been thinking a lot lately about how I need to be doing more activities with my younger kids to get my 4 year old ready for preschool next year.  I have been looking for ideas on the internet to see what there is, and I have come up with some activities soon to come.  The activities will probably be random...ranging from letters of the alphabet to numbers to shapes and so on. 
Today I started with the letter "O".  I printed off this "O" worksheet from HERE.

I talked to my kids about the short o sound and talked about the 4 pictures from the bottom of the page.  The kids then colored the pictures, cut out the squares (with help from me) and glued them to a piece of paper.  Then they practiced writing the letter "O".

Next we made our snack.  We had octopus (using hotdogs and spaghetti noodles).  This is the before: 

I cut a couple hotdogs into 1/3 pieces and then broke a handful of uncooked spaghetti noodles in half.  First I talked to the kids about how many legs people have, then how many legs dogs have and then we talked about how octopuses have 8 legs.  I gave my kids the noodles and let them slide the noodles through the hotdog slices. 

Then they helped me drop the octopus into the water (just like where they live!)  After about 10 minutes, we had our snack of octopus and orange juice served in an orange cup.  I personally wasn't tempted to dive into today's snack, but my kids sure thought it was yummy.  If only I could make vegetables look as fun! 

(I saw the octopus idea at Plum Pudding.)
I ended our "O" day by reading the book The Great Swimming Race (By:  Ann Bryant and Peter Kavanagh)  I wanted to read a fun children's book about an octopus and this is what I could find at my local library.  It was an easy read, but after a busy afternoon my kids didn't seem to mind. 

The kids were really entertained and loved all the activities!  I can't wait to do more fun things like this with them!!

Some More O Ideas:
Art Project:
Make an octopus - Cover a small styrofoam ball with cloth and tie it with enough ribbons to make eight legs.

Sport/Game:
Build a simple obstacle course for your child to play on. Another game to play could be to help your child think of opposites. You say the word "off" and your child must reply with "on".

Math:
Octagon - point out the shape in everyday objects such as a stop sign. Draw and color one.

ABC & 123 also has some great finds for the letter "O".

Handwriting Help

Looking for a way to help your kid(s) with their handwriting? This site allows you to type in the words that you want your child to practice, up to 10 words. You can also choose between print and cursive, the size of font and how you want the lines the words are on to look. How cool is that? Anyway, thought I would share.

What To Do With Those Plastic Easter Eggs

I was trying to think up some ideas of ways you could use plastic Easter eggs in an educational way. After Easter, it seems that those eggs get stored away until the following year when they can again be used for another egg hunt. Well here are some ideas I came up with. If you are a teacher, I was thinking that some of these ideas could be used as centers.

Fill an Easter basket with an assortment of eggs split apart. The students have to find the correct match up, connect the egg and place the complete egg in an egg carton. If you are trying this activity on older kids, try to mix up the colors so the answer isn't so easy to find. (Like a pink top with a green bottom.)
Math problem to answer match up - Write the problem on one half of the egg and the answer on the other half. Depending on the age level of the kids, you could do anything from simple addition to division.
Upper and Lower Case Match Up - Find an upper case letter and its matching lower case letter and connect the eggs.
Cursive to Print - Have the kids try to match up the correct cursive letter to the same letter in print. The could be a good activity when just introducing cursive, especially since cursive can feel like a whole new language to kids! :)
Dots to Numeral - For younger kids, have the them match up the number of dots on half the egg, with the correct numeral on the other half. (four dots = 4)
Numeral to Number Word - Four to 4
Word to Definition - This could be applied to spelling, vocabulary lesson, etc. On this particular activity, have the eggs whole and have the students place the correct definition to the word (typed out on a piece of paper by you) in an egg with the correct word.
If you have any suggestions that could go along with this, or other ideas for reusing those plastic Easter eggs, I would love to know what you are thinking!