Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Letter of the Week: Aa {Tuesday}

We had another great day of school!  Miss E (31 months) and I did more activities about the letter and sound for Aa today, plus a fun color sorting activity!

Like I said yesterday, Miss E already knows her letters and most sounds consistently.  However, it's still relevant to do letter of the week with her for many reasons.  I'm solidifying her knowledge of Aa and the short vowel sound.  She's beginning to understand how to isolate the first sound in a word and correspond it with the letter that makes that sound (letter-sound correspondence).  For example, when we talk about the word cards "apple" and "alligator", I strongly emphasize the beginning sound so she associates the beginning sound with the letter A.

A strong focus of our letter of the week activities is letter formation.  Like I said yesterday, this is an advanced skill and you shouldn't expect perfect letter formation at this age.  That being said, using tactile activities to practice forming letters is a great activity for this age!  Every day, Miss E uses her "magic finger" (pointer finger on dominant hand) to trace the letter.  I also give her the opportunity to trace the letter with a crayon.  You may be amazed at how well the finger tracing helps them learn to write the letters.  I'm already amazed at Miss E's letter writing with crayons, and I know the finger tracing helps!

Anyway, here are Tuesday's activities:

1. Show the letter poster for Aa and the word/picture cards (same as yesterday). She immediately said, "A, /a/ /a/ /a/, apple!", with /a/ meaning she said the short vowel sound for A.

2. Miss E traced the letter Aa in the tracing book with her finger.  On Friday, I'll hole-punch this laminated page and we'll begin making a tracing book.

3. Then, we made the letter Aa book.  This is a short, three-page book that I made for all 26 letters.  I had Miss E spell her name orally so I could write it on the front cover.  We "read" through it together.  For example, on the apple page, I said, "A is for apple."  Then, I gave Miss E the chance to color the book.  Look at the smiley face she made on the apple!  Ha!  Aren't kids amazing? And, look at how well she traced the A and a.  Pretty proud mama here!




4. We did the letter Aa dot page.

5.  For an extra activity today, I had Miss E sort pom-poms by color into these egg-dyeing cups.  I started out having her use some large plastic tweezers, but she became frustrated.  So, I gave her a 1/2 tablespoon measuring spoon instead and she loved it!

Of course, part of life with a toddler is flexibility.  Miss E's train friends joined us for school today.  I'm sure they had a blast!

Stay tuned for Wednesday's letter of the week activities!


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