(cheerful music) - Hi friends, it's me, Ms. Southern.

Can you say hi, Ms. Southern?

I'm so glad to be back with you again.

Today we have some fun things!

We're gonna be playing with dough, so if you have dough at home go run and get it really quick, but before you do, let's put on our thinking caps.

Chick!

Lock 'em in, click, and type in ♪ Ready to learn ♪ All right, you know, I came in today and again, I was so silly, (hand slapping) I cannot find my letter of the day, but you know what?

I remember, it's in a white bag with, hm, red question marks.

Can you help me find them?

I've been looking everywhere.

I think I left it, oh, hey, this is red and white, but is this a bag?

No, but this is fun for pointing.

Hm, where else could it be?

What's that?

On the board?

Ah, uh, there it is, (hands thumping) thank you so much, you're always helpful.

Here it is, our little bag with the letter of the day in it.

Let's see.

I'm gonna look inside, are you ready for the letter of the day?

All right, let's look at some clues we have.

I'm gonna give you some clues.

I know what the letter of the day is.

Okay, the first thing in the bag, let's see.

Oh, this is fun.

What do you think this is?

Uh-huh, someone said a feather.

Can you say feather?

Yeah, and where do you find feathers?

Mm-hm, on a bird.

Yes, birds have feathers.

Do we have feathers?

No, we have skin, but this is always fun and (laughing) it tickles your nose sometimes.

Feather, say feather.

Ooh, we know what this is!

What do you think that is?

A fork, and what do you do with this?

What do you use this for?

That's right, eating, like spaghetti or noodles.

(gulping) Mm, fork.

Can you say fork?

Nice.

Oh, we know what this is!

What is that?

Football!

Go long!

(laughing) Oh, you caught it?

Good job.

Football.

Can you say football?

And what color is this football?

Brown and white.

Who out there has ever played football before?

Good job, boys and girls.

All right.

Oh, look what we have!

(gasping) A little fish.

Say fish.

Look at him and fishes live where?

That's right, fishes live in the ocean and some of us have fishes as pets and their habitat is the ocean.

Say ocean.

That's their habitat.

Habitat's a big, fun word.

Ooh, I have one more thing, what do you think it is?

(bag rattling) Oh, it's another fish.

Look at him.

Look at him, they look different.

It's okay to be different.

Look, he's a fish, he's a fish and they are different but they're both fish.

Wow, and look at this.

This is a, what?

A fan!

That's right, a fan.

Fans keep you what?

Cool, especially in the summer heat here.

Oh, my goodness, we all need one of these, a fan.

So, thinking about all the things we had in our question bag what do you think the letter is?

Everything made a ff sound.

Can you do that?

Ff, ff.

Yep, ah, someone said F and you know what?

You're right!

Now, hey, is this the letter F?

No, but you know what?

You can make the letter F out of this.

I have one big line and two little lines.

Can you make it with me on the board?

All right, so first we need the big line and we always start our letters at the top.

We always start our letters at the bottom!

No, sorry, sorry, sorry, okay.

We always start our letters in the middle!

(finger tapping) No, okay.

♪ We always start our letters at the top, top, top ♪ ♪ We always start our letters at the top ♪ and I put a little smiley face there to help me know where to start the letter and then we need our two little lines.

So, I'm gonna put our two lines, one at the top and then right underneath it, give it a little bit of space, 'cause everybody needs their own space, and we put it there.

This is the letter F. Can you say F?

F, this is the letter F and I had a little pen there, but you know what?

We're just gonna use our imaginations and we're gonna draw the letter F in the air.

Ready?

Starting at the top, straight line down, err, jump back up to the top and across and across.

That is the letter F. Let's do it again.

Ready?

Start our letter at the top, straight line down, jump back up, across and across, the letter F for all the things that we had in our bag, football and fish and feather.

So, now we're gonna jump outside to do a little hide and seek.

Are you guys ready?

Okay, on the count of three, we're gonna clap our hands and then maybe we'll wind up outside to play hide and seek.

1-2-3!

(hands clapping) We're gonna play a game of hide and seek!

Have you ever seen a place like this?

It's called a playground.

(cheerful music) That's right.

You can see a playground at a school or at a park.

Let's play hide and seek with these letters.

This is the letter B, the letter S, the letter F, the letter C and the letter M. So, let's look for the letter C. Can you find the letter C?

That's right, it's right here by the bush.

C stands for ca-ca, cat.

All right, here's the next letter.

The letter M. Can you spot the letter M?

That's right!

Right here up in the tree, like a mu-mu monkey.

All right, what about the letter B?

Yes, B for bird!

Sometimes you'll see birds sitting on a fence.

What about the letter S?

Hey, that's my special letter.

Yep, right there going off onto the playground and lastly, the letter F. It's kinda tricky to find.

You're right, right there in the tree.

Okay, now they're on the playground.

See if you can find the letter C. That's right, the C is right under the play structure.

Let's find the next letter.

I'm looking for the letter mm-mm, M. (gasping) Oh no!

M is way up high on the play structure.

Be careful letter M, don't fall.

Here's the letter B, can you point to it?

If you said the letter B is on the horsey, you're correct.

All right, let's look for our next letter.

That's my special letter, letter S sliding down the slide and now the letter F. Can you point to the letter F?

That's right, the letter F is going up the stairs one by one, being careful.

Now let's find all of our letter friends.

The letter C is under the play structure with his friend, letter M, and letter B.

Can you say letter B?

And the letter S is getting ready to go down the slide again and there's the letter F. These letters are enjoying their self on the playground.

Let's jump over to another part of the school, the library!

Have you ever been to the library?

Can you find the letter C?

The letter M?

The letter B by the bookshelf?

Good job.

The letter S is sitting next to the chair!

Good job.

And the letter F, where is that?

There he is!

Right by the flag.

Time to head back to the classroom.

Whoa!

And now that we're back inside, we're gonna head over and do some fun with a little bit of dough.

That was so fun!

Raise your hand if you had a fun time playing hide and seek with the letter F. Amazing.

Let's head over and we're gonna do some fine motor skills.

♪ Say fine motor skills ♪ (hands clapping) All right, head on over.

So, we're gonna come to our area and first we're gonna warm up our hands, okay?

It's so important that we build our muscles nice and strong so we can be excellent writers!

So, first we're gonna start off with warming up our hands.

Can you warm up your hands?

Ready?

We're gonna count to 10 by opening and closing our hands.

Ready?

Count to 10 with me.

1-2, good job!

3-4-5-6 7-8-9-10.

All right, now we're gonna have our dough.

If you don't have any dough with you, you can just pretend or if you do have some, go run and get it.

Okay, we're going to go back and forth with the dough.

Okay, ready?

Count to 10.

1-2, oh, my goodness, 3-4-5 (laughing) 6-7-8-9-10.

Now we're gonna play the piano, but before that, we need it to be nice and flat.

So, we're gonna just take our hands and squish it back and forth.

Make sure you press really hard.

(laughing) Do you eat your veggies at dinner time?

If you do this should be easy, peasy, lemon squeezy.

Okay, I'm pressing it and now it's like a flat shape.

What shape is this?

Who knows?

Yes, if you said circle, you're right.

We're gonna play the piano.

Ready?

Get those fingers warmed up.

Here we go, one, ♪ Do-dah-do-dah-do ♪ ♪ Do-dah-do-dah-do ♪ ♪ Do-dah-do-dah-do-dah-do ♪ ♪ Dah-do-dah-do-do ♪ Switch!

Ready?

(dough slapping) ♪ Do-dah-do-dah-do ♪ ♪ Do-dah-do-dah-do ♪ ♪ Do-dah-do-dah-do-dah-do ♪ ♪ Dah-do-dah-do-do ♪ Switch!

(dough slapping) ♪ Bom-bom-bom-bom ♪ ♪ Bah-bom-bah-bom-bah-bom ♪ ♪ Bah-bah-bom-bah-bom ♪ Switch!

(dough slapping) Good job!

(laughing) ♪ Bom-bom, bom-bom-bom ♪ ♪ Bah-bom-bah-bom-bom ♪ ♪ Bah-bom-bah-bom-bah-bom-bah-bom-bom ♪ Good job!

All right, now let's roll it.

I want to make some, like, kind of, like, little snakes or worms so I'm gonna just peel this apart, I'm using my fingers pulling and now I'm gonna rub my hands like this, back and forth or you can use the table.

Make sure your area is clear.

Here, like this on it, and I'm gonna go back and forth with this hand.

Ready?

Let's sing ♪ Row, row, row your boat ♪ ♪ Gently down the stream ♪ ♪ Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily ♪ ♪ Life is but a dream ♪ Switch!

♪ Row, row, row your boat ♪ ♪ Gently down the stream ♪ ♪ Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily ♪ ♪ Life is but a dream ♪ Together now!

(hands clapping) Ready?

♪ Row, row, row your boat ♪ ♪ Gently down the stream ♪ ♪ Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily ♪ ♪ Life is but a dream ♪ All right, so now we have that and you know what?

I can make, let's see if I can make this.

I can make a little heart.

What shape can you make?

There's my heart, I don't know.

Can you make a shape?

All right.

So, now that we've warmed up our hands, let's do a little, let's make some letters here.

Over here I have my little letter tray.

Hey, you know what letter this is!

This is the letter A, right?

This is the famous letter, it starts the alphabet.

So, you start at the top, top, top, you go down, jump back up, down and across.

How many lines do we need to make the letter A?

1-2-3.

If you said three, you're amazing.

Let's make that with our Play-Doh.

So, to make this, I need to break off a few pieces.

So, I break that off like a little tiny circle, just like that and I'm gonna roll it in my hands.

Remember we warmed our hands up, so those hands should be ready to go and then I'm just gonna go back and forth like this.

♪ Back and forth, back and forth ♪ ♪ Bah-dah-dah-dah-dah ♪ ♪ Back and forth, back and forth ♪ ♪ Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah ♪ All right.

This one should go right on the letter A.

Now I gotta make another one, so I need to make another ball of clay, right, I mean dough here and we're gonna roll it and now we're gonna go back and forth.

Say it with me.

♪ Back and forth, back and forth ♪ ♪ Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah ♪ ♪ Back and forth, back and forth ♪ ♪ Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah ♪ All right, there's my second big line.

Now done!

No, I am not done.

Sometimes we yell done so fast that we don't even understand that we still have more to go.

We wanna take our time and make that we're doing our best work.

All right, let's do our last one.

Ready?

Sing it with me.

♪ Back and forth, back and forth ♪ ♪ Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah ♪ ♪ Back and forth, back and forth ♪ ♪ Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah ♪ Okay, here we go, right in the middle.

Now we're done!

Kiss your brain, good job, brain!

All right, so this is like our letters here.

So, this is what we can do.

Now guess what I wanna do.

Look at our last letter of the alphabet, This is the letter Z.

That's right!

So, we have A and Z, So we need to sing our ♪ Back and forth, back and forth ♪ ♪ Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah ♪ ♪ Back and forth, back and forth ♪ ♪ Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah ♪ but I need a big long one.

Ready, go!

♪ Back and forth, back and forth ♪ ♪ Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah ♪ ♪ Back and forth, back and forth ♪ ♪ Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah ♪ Okay, there's Z. Uh-oh, I didn't start my letter at the top!

Oh!

You know what?

That's a easy fix.

Let's take that one off, put it there, we'll save that one for later 'cause we always start our letters at the top.

So, I'm just gonna use a little one 'cause it's a little line right here at the top corner.

Ready, go.

♪ Back and forth, back and forth ♪ ♪ Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah ♪ ♪ Back and forth, back and forth ♪ ♪ Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah ♪ That's there, now we can add that middle one.

Woo!

Silly, silly, Ms. Southern.

Okay, and the last one is the bottom one.

Last one, sing it with me.

♪ Back and forth, back and forth ♪ ♪ Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah ♪ ♪ Back and forth, back and forth ♪ ♪ Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah ♪ All right.

Oh, I dropped it there.

So, now let's look at our two letters.

Both of these letters needed three, three lines to make it.

Wow.

And you know what?

You can do anything with your dough.

I'm gonna set those here and I'm gonna show you something super cool that you can do with blocks.

Do you have these at home?

Yes, and you can always find those at the store where everything costs a dollar and you can buy those.

So, we're gonna roll our dough like this and then we're gonna press it out and you know what?

If you have little tools, I have a basket of tools here that I'm just so excited that I have and let's see, hm, here's my little basket.

So, I have this, like, little rolly thing that I already have some dough on it from last time and I'm just gonna roll and press 'cause I wanna make sure my fingers are working and warmed up like that and then I can make a print.

Can you say print?

Look, watch this.

I'm gonna show you and you can press it down.

Whoa!

That's, like, pretty cool, and then if you can press it again.

Let's see, how many times did I press it?

Count, 1-2-3.

That's so cool!

Now I'm gonna flip it over 'cause I wanna show you guys something.

If I got a long block and two short blocks, what letter could I make?

You guessed it, the letter F, watch.

We press it like that and then, watch, one, did I make the letter F?

Hope it's not backwards on the screen but I did, look at that!

Oh, my goodness!

You can do anything with dough to help your muscles get stronger.

So, I don't wanna mess up my great work, so I'm just gonna set that there.

I still have more dough to work with, so I'm gonna roll it.

Roll it, big circle.

I'm gonna press this down with my fingers.

I love pressing it with my fingers, you know why?

It's making my fingers strong so when I write my name, it'll be perfect and so I also have something super cool.

This is like a cookie cutout.

You might see these around Christmas time but I'm just gonna press it right there and I can make a friend.

Can you say friend?

Yes, look, a little friend!

The word friend, say friend, friend starts with the letter F. Friend.

Can you say friend?

All right!

These are my cool creations and I wanna show you one more thing.

My students love, love this and shout out to my students at Thomas Elementary, Ms. Southern cannot wait to say hi.

I'm gonna just press it.

I put the Play-Doh on there and then I press really hard, let me see you press your fingers really hard if you're pretending with us!

Good job, friend!

And then when I open it, ah, what did it make?

A little turtle!

Ah, say turtle, turtle.

Look at that.

Nice!

He also can join our Play-Doh, our dough creation down here.

Dink!

All right, that was so much fun, playing dough with all of us.

All right, we're gonna put this to the side and I have one more quick activity that I wanna work with you guys on and this is to help, now whenever you're using scissors, make sure you ask an adult first.

Now, is anybody here watching this in fashion school?

No, maybe one day you'll probably be in fashion school, so we don't use scissors now, right now to cut clothes.

No, you're not in fashion school just yet but maybe one day you'll be a fashionista or fashionisto.

Are we a barber shop school?

No, we go to a regular school or we do learning at home.

We never use scissors to cut our hair unless you're at the barbershop or the salon or your mom or dad is helping you cut your hair.

So, today we're only using our scissors to cut paper.

Can you say paper?

So I have a little tiny friend here, it's an alligator.

Say hello, Mr. Alligator, and he loves, loves paper.

Okay, we wanna see what kind of food he likes.

So, in order to use this, we need our thumb, show me your thumb.

Gimme a thumbs up!

Okay, and you're gonna put your thumb in the hole there and then you're gonna use your other fingers, say hello, and you're gonna put it in the bigger hole there.

Okay?

So, our alligator loves to cut, cut, cut paper, okay?

So, let's see, we have a few things on our chart, let's see if the alligator likes cookies, pizza, ice cream or apples.

Upside down, oopsie!

So, if he cuts straight across, he likes it.

If he kinda goes off the line, he doesn't like it.

You guys ready to cut with me?

If you don't have scissors and a paper, you can just go like this to practice.

Okay?

All right, let's see, does our alligator like apples?

Cut, cut, cut, he's munching it!

Munch, munch, munch, munch, munch, munch, munch, munch, munch, munch, munch!

Does he like apples?

Yes, he likes apples!

All right.

Let's do ice cream, let's see if he likes ice cream.

Ready?

Mm, mm, cut, cut, keep cutting!

Keep open, close, open, close, open, close!

Does he like ice cream?

Yes, he likes ice cream!

All right, look, open, close, open, close, open, close.

Can you try that at home?

Open, close.

Let's see if he likes pizza!

I love pizza, I just had some today.

Open, close, open, close, open, close, open close, open close, open, close.

Does he like pizza?

Yes, he likes pizza!

What about cookies?

Oh, open close, open, close, open, close, Oh, my God, look at this.

Does he like cookies?

Yes, he likes cookies.

All right, let's do one more, socks.

Let's see if you likes socks!

All right, let's see.

Open, close, open close, oh, uh, uh, eh-eh, open.

close.

Oh, I don't think alligators like dirty socks.

No, say no.

What about fish?

Do alligators like fish?

Open, close, open, close, open, close, open, close, open, close, open, close!

Does he like fish?

Yes, alligators love fish!

What about bread?

Does alli, do you like bread, alligator?

Let's see.

Open, close, open, close, open close, open, close.

Oh my, does he like bread?

Yes, he likes bread.

Now, what about pencils?

Oh, do alligators like pencils?

Let's see.

We're cutting, we're following, we're trying to follow the line and it's just not working.

Do alligators like pencils?

No, we didn't stay on the line.

So, that's a fun little game you can play at home with your parent and that is scissor practice.

Well, friends, (hands clapping) I had such an amazing time with you.

You are so smart, but before we go let's do our affirmation.

Repeat after me, say I'm brave, I'm smart, no one could tell me different.

When you look at me, you see the future.

Well, friends, I'm so proud of you and until next time don't let anyone tell you different.

You're so smart and I'm glad you joined us.

Don't forget to do your letter F practice, don't forget to do your cutting practice, don't forget to do your dough practice and work those fine motor skills.

Love you, bye!

(cheerful music)