Letter of the Week: Bb {Tuesday-Friday}

Whew!  I'm way behind in writing about our Toddler School activities!  It's been a crazy couple weeks with trips out of town, but we've still been doing school.  I just haven't blogged about it!

Here's a recap of some of the activities we did on Tuesday through Friday of Bb week.

Tuesday
1. We reviewed uppercase and lowercase Bb and the sound for Bb.
2. We traced the letter Bb on our tracing page.
3. We made the letter book about Bb.

4. We did the Bb dot page.

For our other activities on Tuesday, we did shaving cream painting (I don't have a picture -sorry!) and then we did a File Folder Puzzle activity that I made.

Wednesday
1. We reviewed the letter Bb and the sound.
2. We traced the letter Bb on our tracing page.
3. We reread our letter Bb book that we made on Tuesday.
4. We rainbow traced Bb.
5. We did the sensory tub letter sort for Bb.

For our other activities on Wednesday, we did some sequencing cards that I bought a few years ago.  I'll take a picture next time!

Thursday
1. We reviewed the letter Bb and the sound.
2. We traced the letter Bb on our tracing page.
3. We reread our letter Bb book that we made on Tuesday.
4. We did our art page for the letter Bb.  We stuck band-aids on the page!  Miss E thought that this was pretty silly!

For our other activity on Thursday, we made a berry smoothie!  Yes, that's blue yogurt!  The only blueberry yogurt I had was a blueberry tube yogurt for kids, which is blue. It added to the fun for sure!

 We also went outside and picked up some fall leaves.  Miss E stuck them onto contact paper for a quick and easy activity.

We didn't do school on Friday because we had a playdate instead!  We had so much fun

Letter of the Week: Aa {Thursday and Friday}

Here's the wrap-up of our week about the letter A!  We ended up not doing school on Friday because we had errands and other things going on.  So, here's what we did Thursday!

1. We reviewed the letter and sound for Aa with the poster.  We talked about our word cards "apple" and "alligator".  She's really good at saying the first sound in those words!

2.  We traced the letter on our tracing book page.  Remember, I'll hole-punch that page and we'll gradually make a letter tracing book to review with each week.

3.  We reread our letter Aa book.

4.  We did some fun art!  I made an art book for Miss E with a blank book I bought in the dollar section at Target.  I put stickers for each letter of the alphabet on each page of the book.  Each week, we'll do a letter-related art activity on each page.  I can't wait to see what it looks like when we finish it!  

For the letter A, we stamped with an apple!  Miss E thought this was funny.  I cut an apple in half and then cut a handle into one half.  Miss E stamped a few times in her art book and then stamped on some paper.

5. We did a letter shark activity.  Somehow I didn't take a picture of it, but I made a shark similar to this post.  Miss E LOVED it!  Our shark ripped, however, so I'll have to reinforce him with some tape before we do this activity again.

My next post is about the letter Bb!

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!

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!