Letter of the Week: Aa {Monday}

Today, Miss E and I started the "toddler school" that I'm working on creating!  It's essentially a letter-of-the-week curriculum with additional activities.  I have plans for working on that week's letter each day of the week, including letter recognition, letter sounds, and letter tracing.  Then, I'm doing 2 or 3 "supplemental" activities in the areas of counting, number recognition, fine motor, art, pre-writing, patterns, size/shape, colors, name recognition, and more!

As a former teacher, I work best when I have a written-down plan that I can follow.  When I taught, I had a template that I filled in each week since we followed the same schedule.  Since that's how I work best, I've done something very similar for toddler school.  I'll finalize my plan template and post it when it's done!

This week's letter is Aa.  Miss E already knows all uppercase and lowercase letters and most of the sounds. She's 31 months old.  The purpose of the toddler school alphabet activities are reinforcing letter and sound knowledge so I can begin teaching her to read!

Here are Monday's activities:

* Introduce the letter and sound for Aa with a letter poster and word/picture cards

* Trace the letter Aa with your finger.  Model this for them first, then help hold your child's finger as they trace, and then finally, let them do it alone.  Encourage all efforts, and don't be too particular.  This is an advanced skill for 2 and 3 year-olds!

* Color the letter Aa coloring page.  I've done tracing and rainbow writing activities with my daughter before, so she naturally traced the letter Aa without me asking her!  She did a really good job, too!

* Other activities:  We did an apple pattern activity (I forgot to take a picture!) and then we made pasta bracelets.  We used dry dyed pasta and pipe cleaners.  

I'm REALLY excited about our new plan for toddler school!  I'll keep posting our activities!