Category: Alphabet

Alphabet Hop…Run, Baseball

We’ve been focusing sporadically on Br’s (4 y/o) letter & phoneme (letter sounds) recognition, as seen here and here.  We do “talk” about them a lot- trying to help Br isolate beginning sounds & rhyming games/songs, but generally pretty casually and as it organically comes up.

Today while we were in our backyard and I was trying to beat the dust out of our door mat*, Br pulled out some sidewalk chalk and started coloring on our pavers.  I remembered reading this idea of Teach Mama’s this summer, and thought “hmm, can I throw some sneaky alphabet practice into this?” My door mat abuse could wait… Continue reading “Alphabet Hop…Run, Baseball”

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S is for “Stilts”

We are actually visiting family in the San Diego area right now (nice, huh?), and I am crazy behind on posting. We’ve continued with our letter activities. As you may have noticed, we aren’t going anywhere close to alphabetical… I’ve let Br (3 3/4) pick what letter he wanted to work on next, usually by having him try to identify the first letter sound of something we are talking about.

The other day, we did “Letter S” for our letter of the day. Br found his phonics cards for the letter “S”, and watched the requisite related YouTube videos (“Letter S” songs and Snowplows, this time :) ).  Then we did our “memorable event”: this time, a craft that doubles as a cool gross motor activity.  And it’s cheap, quick, & Br LOVED it. (Yeah, the kid craft trifecta!)  Drum roll, please….. Continue reading “S is for “Stilts””

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M is for “Mache”

We’ve been working a bit with Br( 3 3/4) on letter sounds on a very casual level, but I decided we needed to get a little more serious.  In wondering the blogosphere I’ve found some awesome suggestions by fellow mommy-bloggers HERE  and HERE and HERE, for example, to make it a whole letter smorgasbord!  One of the general ideas I found most appealing was creating a “memorable event” related to the letter.

The process has been more sporadic, and not as organized or as thorough as I hoped. Br mostly associates our “letter of the day” with getting to watch YouTube videos, which I can’t say was my hope.  :)

I let Br choose our “letter of the day”.  We’ve started with finding the respective letter card in 2 different sets of phonics cards we got at the dollar store or garage sale (with a picture of the letter & various pictures of things that start with that letter) and putting them up on our easel.  Then Br suckered me into asked to watch some videos- “Letter” songs, machines (though I require he come up with a machine that starts with the letter of the day for this to happen- that’s motivation for ya!)

It took us a couple days before we managed to do our “activity”.  I’d seen this idea for a Fabric Mâché bowl over at Red Ted Art.  Ours didn’t come out quite as cute as Red Ted’s, but it was still a memorable hands-on activity for the Letter M! Continue reading “M is for “Mache””

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