Now I Know My ABC’s ~ Ii is for Igloo

 
 

Immi’s Gift by Karin Littlewood

Summary: Immi, and Inuit child, goes ice-fishing and finds a beautiful wooden bird. Day after day she fishes up other beautiful things and decorates her igloo with these items. Her igloo becomes a source of beauty in a white landscape and all the animals come to visit her. When it is time to move on, Immi throws her wooden bear into the fishing hole where a little boy from around the world finds it washed up on the beach. Beautiful illustrations and a sweet story.
ABC Letter Box

     
For our Letter Ii week, we went back to our ABC letter box. I hid various letters and letter Ii objects in the box while the girls searched to find them.

ABC Letter Learning Activities

 
For each letter I’ve created a handwriting/poem sheet. We read the poem together, highlight the letter Ii’s in the poem, and then finger-trace how to make the letters. Then we trace the letters with either a crayon or chunky pencil.

ABC Crafts

    
We used Magic Nuudles to make our letters and to try to build an igloo. These are biodegradable building blocks that stick together when just a little water is added. My kids would wipe the nuudle across a wet sponge and then stick it to another nuudle to make their creations. You could try to do something similar with mini-marshmallows too.

ABC Theme Activities 


 
In the story, Immi find many colorful things in her fishing hole. She uses them to decorate her igloo.

 
We used some cut-outs and fabric flowers to decorate Immi’s igloo (Download available below)

  
We did a little ice-fishing of our own. I printed out Letter Ii word cards from 1+1+1 and mounted them on index cards. Then I placed paperclips on two sides of the index cards. (The picture only shows one paper clip. I added another since my tot was having difficulty catching the cards.) My kids made their own fishing pole by adding a magnet to some yarn and tying it onto the stick.


I scattered the cards on the floor and then the kids went fishing.
 

We also made our own salt-dough necklaces (click for instructions). This was a two-day activity and the girls loved creating a necklace just like Immi.

Other Letter Ii extensions:
While reading Immi’s Gift, I would point out all the letter Ii words:
Short i: Immi, Inuit, igloo, it, in
Long i: ice, icy
This book also presents the opportunity to talk about artic/tropical  or warm/cold. We talked about things that were warm  and cold.  One day we drank a cup of hot chocolate, and the next day we went to get a scoop of ice-cream. If you wanted to add some ice-cream extensions, I have a couple of ice-cream activities that we did last summer available:



Downloads:

For each letter I will be providing several downloadable resources plus a letter planner page. You can find these resources at Spell Outloud’s HSPrintables.

Other ABC Resources:
ABC Printables from Homeschool Creations
Letter of the Week Curriculum from COAH
ABC Flashcards and More from 1+1+1=1
ABC Letter Crafts
Songs for Saplings ABC Verses