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Join us this week as we continue our Letter of the Week Series with Letter X!
Each week for 26 weeks I created a new printable activity pack all about the focus letter of the week. The corresponding posts include book lists, a list of animals that start with the letter of the week and play ideas or activities relating to each letter.
If you’re just joining us, make sure to check out the other posts in this series on our Letter of the Week Page.
Letter X Notebook
The Letter X Notebook includes:
- Uppercase & Lowercase Letter Mazes
- Dot-to-dots
- Circle the letter X’s page
- X is for X Marks the Spot & Xylophone Crafts with cut out templates
- Coloring Pages
- Do-a-Dot Pages
- 3 Types of Puzzles
Letter X Book List
Fox in Socks by Dr. Seuss
This book is perfect for giving kids examples of the ‘ks’ sound for x. And, it is full of phonetic rhymes and fantastic tongue twisters that kids will love.
Xavier Ox’s Xylophone Experiment (Animal Antics A-Z) by Barbara DeRubertis
This story is part of a set of 26 titles, each featuring a student from Mrs. Alpha Betty’s classroom and a letter sound. This book focuses on the sounds of letter X.
Jessica’s X-Ray by Pat Zonta
Jessica breaks her arm and goes to the hospital to get x-rays and a cast. This book uses Jessica’s story to teach children about different types of x-rays and includes x-ray images.
XO, OX: A Love Story by Adam Rex
Ox is in love with gazelle and writes her letters to tell her how he feels.
My Mom Has X-Ray Vision by Angela McAllister
Matthew’s mom always seems to know what he’s up to. His conclusion is that she must have x-ray vision!
Letter X Animals
X-Ray Tetra Fish
X-Ray Tetra Fish Facts & Photos
Amazing Facts about the X-Ray Tetra Fish
Xenops
Slender-Billed Xenops Facts, photos, and an audio file of this bird’s song from Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Plain Xenops Facts, photos, and audio file of this bird’s song
Xerus
Cape Ground Squirrel (Xerus) Facts & Photos from Kruger National Park Africa
Letter X Play
DIY Xylophone
Making DIY instruments is a fun and frugal project for kids. This week, why not try to make your own paper Xylophone?
I found this simple to follow DIY Xylophone video from Scholastic to help you make your own.
DIY X-Rays
My daughter and I had fun this week making some DIY X-Rays. We started with some black construction paper and white chalk. She traced her hand to make an outline. And then, she looked at an image of a hand and arm x-ray to draw in the bones.
We also used our homemade light table to make some DIY X-Rays. This was purely impromptu and we worked with the materials we had on hand. And, through a little trial and error, we came up with some cute hand-drawn x-ray images for her to play with.
I would suggest using tracing paper for this, but we didn’t have any, so we just used plain white printer paper. We looked up x-rays online and found some animals my daughter was interested in drawing. And, ended up with a lizard and a frog skeleton.
We used a pencil, shading in the dark areas of the x-ray image and leaving the bone white. Then, we went over our images with a black colored pencil to make them darker. Next time we do this I’m going to try a marker or charcoal to make it even darker. Or I may actually print some of the x-ray images we used for our drawings.
When we first placed the images on the light table they didn’t look quite right and my daughter had the great idea of taping the second piece of paper on top of the first. And, this made the image appear fuzzier, like an actual x-ray.
I also added a black construction paper outline around the frog to make the contrast stand out more. But, it was time-consuming so I wouldn’t recommend it. Instead, I would just color around the image in black marker to provide the contrast.
No matter how you do it, if you try this project you’ll have some great conversations with your kiddos. Like why doctors use x-rays, how there are so many bones in our bodies and the differences between our skeletons and the skeletons of animals.
Have fun learning about Letter X this week!
Heidi
