The Letter Factory

When looking for a new dramatic play center, ideas or inspirations can come from just about anywhere. Our "Fancy Tea Party" came from a need to re-inforce manners, while the Gingerbread Bakery came from reading books and going on a field trip.  This time, we were asked to think about what we would like to see our dramatic play centre turn into.  Animal Doctor, Race Track, Ninja Training Dojo and Tree House were some of our first ideas. We kept talking and making suggestions until the idea of creating our own Letter Factory was suggested.  Finally, we had the "Spark" or idea we had been waiting for! Creating our own Kindergarten Letter Factory would be our next big adventure!

Week 1 - Making the Conveyor Belt

The great thing about The Letter Factory, is that we are already familiar with the letters and the sounds they make. What we didn't know was, what would need to make a working factory.  To help inspire us, we were introduced to the "Sticky Letters." Sticky letters are vowels and make the other letters stick together to form words.

                          

After seeing how the sticky letters traveled along a conveyor belt, it was decided that we needed to build one for our factory. The morning class took on the challenge and collected and tested out different materials found in the classroom.

The afternoon students continued the building process. With more exploring, experimentation and cooperation, we had our first moving conveyor belt!  

For the next two days, we worked together to make our conveyor belt stronger and more functional.   During an indoor recess, a few grade 5 students helped us really get the conveyor belt working smoothly. 

                  

In order to make a Letter Factory, we were going to need lots of letters. During a discovery activity, we noticed that it was difficult to find a specific letter when the letters were all together in a big pile. Someone suggested that we should count all the letters in the alphabet and sort them into boxes.

















Week 2 - Planning, prepping and playing  

There was still a lot of work to be done to get our letter factory up and running.  We practiced singing the Letter Factory song, and then got to work!!


            



To help get us ready to work in the factory, each day we practise making words. When we try to write a word, we are learning to say the word out loud slowly so we can hear the sounds.  Good writers in kindergarten listen carefully so they can write down all the sounds that they hear!

Last week we started sorting our letters, but soon realized that the boxes we had were not going to be big enough.  Instead, we used circle cushions and placemats as sorting mats. All of the different kinds of letters (magnet, rocks, tile, big wooden letters) were spread out on the floor ready to be sorted. Each class was in charge of 13 letters.  It was a big job, but we worked together and the job was done in no time!

After the sorting was complete, it was time to do an Inventory of all of the letters. Everyone got a letter card and had to sort, count and record all the different kinds.  

                  

After all the sorting and counting, it was finally time to start working and playing in the factory!! 

The Kindergarten Letter Factory

Conveyor Belt

    

Pullies

    

The Zip Line

                                         

The Shop Vac with Mrs. Mitchell

The Sand Pit

Cranes/Fishing

Tubes

Gears

Week 3 - Working in the Letter Factory

After exploring and playing in the factory all last week, everyone was ready and very eager to start building words!  With pencils and clip board in hand, we started recording words on the  "Quality Check" recording sheet.  After we completed the sheet, we were given a star punch on our punch card to help keep track of our work.

               

Our first day of making words was a huge success!!

After some group reflecting about how we felt the first day in the factory went, we made a few minor changes.  We decided we needed more space to display the words and we added a bell to ring for each completed word! We really liked ringing the bell, which then motivated us to work even harder  to create more words in the factory!!

     

On Wednesday, we were given a new challenge in the factory.  We had to work with a partner!  This proved to be somewhat challenging for some workers.  We not only had to make words, but we had to communicate with our partner and share the jobs. 

            

                  

                                 

Our factory not only has us learning about letters, sounds and words, we have also been experimenting with different ways to make things move.  In this section of the factory, we take a big breath of air and blow into party blowers.  This is a super fun way to move the letters down the factory line.

             

The following day, we had more partner work and another addition to the factory.  A giant keyboard was added to "swat' or type out words.  One person would swat the letters, while their partner watched carefully and recorded the letters on the whiteboard.

     

Finally, one last area was added to our Kindergarten Letter Factory.  We created another line using ping pong balls with letters, blocks and cups. After building our word, we try our best to aim and carefully hit the balls down the factory line and into a cup.

If anyone needs helps making a word, be sure to stop by our Letter Factory.  

We have the best word makers around!!