Tuesday Teachings - Learning the Letters

When a child is learning the alphabet, it is not enough to merely show them the alphabet and expect them to learn it. A child has to be shown something in several different contexts in order to retain it. Before you can even teach them the alphabet, you should teach them the sounds of lettes. This lets the child understand that letters make sounds, sounds make words, words make sentences and sentences make stories. It is a natural transition. When you move onto naming letters, be sure to restate the sound each letter makes.

They need to see it, feel it, taste it, explore it. That can be intimidating for parents but there is no reason to worry. Just be sure to teach your child in a variety of ways. Don't panic, there are several ways to teach letters that are inexpensive and not overly time consuming.

First, you can show them a printed letter. Do not just show a flashcard, show them the printed letter in a variety of ways. Some examples, the aforementioned flashcard, a magazine, a street sign, etc.

Next, let them write the letter using hand over hand. If you have an easel, this is a great way to work on the letter. Put the chalk into your child's hand and then put your hand over their hand, now write your letter. If you have the easel chalkboard, this is great to work on wrist strength and an important skill for your child. After writing on the easel, you can also practice writing on a pad of paper on a table. This works the child's muscles differently and is also important to their development.

Now, pull out the play dough. Teach him how to roll out a "snake" and then work on forming the letter with your play dough snake. At my house, we have the "Roll-A-Dough Letters" from Handwriting Without Tears. This is a great product and we love it, but it is not necessary. This can easily be done at home. Our kit involves a tray, letter cards and dough. My favorite thing about the kit is that it shows you with an arrow, where to start making your letter. My least favorite thing about the kit is that the dough crumbles when you try to make it into a snake. We usually just use regular play dough.

Another tool that we use frequently is our Sandpaper Letters. You can purchase these online for around $30-$40 or you can check out Momtessori for directions on making your own sandpaper letters. She uses foam board for her background and then uses a die cut machine to cut the letters out of sandpaper. I have also seen them made with sand sprinkled over glue and with glitter glue or puffy paint. The thing I love about our Sandpaper letters is that there is a hole punched in the sandpaper to show you where to start tracing your letter. This can be done when you make them at home, or you could draw arrows with numbers, showing the direction to trace/write.

We also use our alphabet cookie cutters a lot. I do not bake a lot of cookies, but I use the cutters for anything. If my son wants cheese and sandwich meat (think homemade Lunchables), then I use cookie cutters to cut out the food. I also use them for cutting fruit or anything else. Cookies cutters are not just for cookies!

Another fun thing that we did is go around the house and take pictures of people and/or toys for each letter of the alphabet. I then assembled the pictures in an album and put the first letter of each word in the sleeve with each picture. This helps with the phonological awareness, as he already knows how to pronounce all of the items that I have taken pictures of.

Lima Bean Literacy

I had a bag of dried large Lima beans in my pantry for quite sometime and I knew they would never get used. I am the only one in the family that eats Lima beans so I was trying to figure out what to do with them when I thought - Alphabet! Doesn't everyone look at Lima beans as a learning opportunity?

The only supplies you need are beans and a permanent marker. You can also use a sealer if you think the beans will be used frequently but I did not bother since they are quick and easy to make. I took 26 beans and wrote one capital letter per bean. I then took another 26 beans and wrote one lowercase letter per bean.

We reviewed our letters with the beans and then we started playing. The first game we played is a version of Memory. We flipped all of the capital beans over and mixed them up. We also mixed up the lowercase letters but left them face up. As he picked up a capital letter he would name the letter and then find the matching lowercase letter and put them to the side.

Next we worked on spelling, using upper and lowercase letters. Once you start spelling you will have to make multiples of your bean letters but like I said, it is quick and easy.

Tuesday Teaching - Letter Search

It is important to review letters with young children on a daily basis to keep them fresh. As school is getting closer it is time to really step up those efforts. I have created a letter search for you to use.

This covers the letters A, B, C, D and E in both upper and lower case. We use this sheet with a dot marker. I ask my son to find all of the letter As on the page. He marks the upper case A with one color and the lower case a with another color. This verifies to me that he knows the letters, and he knows the upper and lowercase versions. Once that is complete, we move on to the letter B, then C, D, and E.

Feel free to download your copy.


I will work on getting all of the other letters completed also and may move on to the numbers.

In addition to doing this worksheet, take every opportunity to have your child point out letters to you. We point out letters on street signs, on vehicles, on mailboxes and everywhere else we can find them.

Tuesday Teachings - Alphabet Soup

Recently I was in a "big box" store and found some colored ping pong balls in the toy section. They are actually a game called Trick Pong Balls. I purchased two boxes since there are only 20 per box (they were about $5.00 each) with plans on using them for educational purposes. It is not necessary to but the sames ones I bought, plain white ping pong balls are probably cheaper but these come in bright colors. Once I got them home, I dug through my box of stickers and found the black foam alphabet stickers.

I put an uppercase sticker on one side of each ball and the matching lowercase letter on the other side. That obviously used up 26 of the 40 balls I had purchased. I took the next ten balls and put a number from 1-10 on each ball. On the

My son and I went through the alphabet balls. He would recite the ones he knew, along with the sound of the letter. The ones he did not know, I would tell him and we would recite the sound together. As we recited the letters, we would put each ball that we finished into my big pasta pot.

Once all of the letter balls had been added to the pot, I gave my son a soup spoon and he would scoop out one letter at a time and tell me the name of the letter and the sound of the letter. He enjoyed this tremendously for several reasons: 1) He LOVES to play with balls. 2) Each time he put the spoon in to scoop out a new letter, the spoon made great sounds for him. (Metal on metal).

After we learn all of the names and sounds of the letter I am planning on extending this game a bit. When he can name all of the letters and tell me the sounds, then he will also have to find an item in the house that begins with the letter of the ball he scooped out. We played this game for the first time on Saturday morning, since then we have played it at least twice a day. He loves it and sometimes he will even come to me with his chef hat on and ask to make letter soup.

Using things that interest your child (balls) to teach them skills they need give you your best chance for success.

Learning our Shapes - A felt board game

This is a felt board that I work on with my son. I cut this out at least 1.5 years ago so I do not remember the website I used as a model for my monster. If anyone knows, please comment so I can give proper credit. If you wanted to recreate this it would be easy to just cut out any style monster.

Once the monster was cut out, I then just cut out a variety of shapes in different colors of felt. The reason I used different colors was to also work on our color recognition. Since I took this picture though, I have also cut out all of the pictures in just yellow. This makes it a bit more difficult since I am not giving hints to my son by saying the monster wants to eat the green rectangle for lunch.

When we pull out this felt board set, I recite/sing this little song I made up to keep his attention:

"Yummy, Yummy put that green rectangle in Monster's tummy!" Once my son puts the rectangle on the monster's tummy, I remove it and say: "That was tasty but Monster is still hungry!" and then I pick the next shape and start the phrase over again. I have been considering cutting out all of the letters in capital and lowercase to use with the monster too. We really enjoy this felt board and hope you enjoy it too!

Salt Box

I have seen these in shops for $20 or more but decided I could make one inexpensively at home. The theory is to give the child a sensory activity to go along with writing a word. I know that the more activities that I do with my son, the more he retains the information.

I went to Hobby Lobby and bought a cheap little wooden box with a sliding top for just a couple of dollars. Once I got home, I painted the inside of the box with a flat black craft paint and the outside of the box was painted in an apple green color. Once it all dried, I just poured in a layer of salt. You do not want too much salt or it is too difficult to clear a path and see the black contrast on the bottom of the box.

Now ask your child to use their finger to draw letters or shapes in the salt layer. This is a great resource for teaching but trust me when I say you want to watch your child using this. Trust me on this, salt is hard to clean up and gets everywhere if you do not watch them. Also trust me that just because it has a lid, it is not spill proof! If your child is not proficient with letters yet, you can write the letters on index cards for them to look at as they "write".

I was able to make this activity, even purchasing the paint for less than $5.00.

Have fun learning!

Tuesday Teachings - The Letter U

As you can imagine, the letter U was a little harder to think of activities to go along with. Not to mention that my child brought home a cold last week so he was not in much of a mood for crafting or learning. Some weeks are easier than others.

You can download your letter U here.

Words that start with letter U: unload, unlock, umbrella, unicorn, unhappy, uncle & unicycle.

For our crafts this week we focused on Undersea and Umpire.

First up, we colored a background page and added fish and bubble stickers to is. This was then cut out and taped to the back of the letter U to resemble a fish tank. For those wondering about the texture of the colored U, I bought an inexpensive sheet of plastic canvas at the craft store and I use it for my son to do rubbings on. He enjoys the texture and the feel of the plastic canvas under the pressure of his crayons.

Next, we cut out a letter U and made black lines on it like an Umpire's shirt. For the face we cut a circle out of craft foam and used crayons draw the face.

Foods that start with U: Ugli Fruit, Udon Noodles, Unsalted butter & Upside down cake.

We did not make a snack this week due to the illness in our household but we were going to make Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes from Family Fun Magazine.

Tuesday Teachings - The Letter T

Another week, another letter. This week we are learning about the letter T.

You can download your letter T here.

Words that start with the letter T: Tell, Tale, Tip, Tongue, Toes, Top, Train, Track, Tree, Trip and Tumble.

For our crafts we focused on Tiger, Turkey and Time.

Our first craft was the Tiger. We colored the letter T with the orange marker then made black lines on it. Next we cut out a tiger tail and ears from orange craft foam and glued them on.

Our second craft was a Turkey. We colored the letter T with brown marker, drew on the face and glued feathers along the top of the T.

Since daylight savings time was this past weekend, I decided for our last craft we would focus on Time. I could then explain daylight savings to my son and teach him about the letter T. I found some clip art which you can print here.

Foods that start with T: Tuna, Toast, Taco, Tamale, Turnip, Tomatoes & Tangerines. For our snack, we focused on Turkey.

We made the cutest Turkey cookies. I am not sure who to credit these too as I have seen them all over the web. We used sugar cookies as the base/body and attached candy corn tail feathers and Reese Pieces eyes with chocolate icing. We then used red gel icing for the legs and black gel icing for the eye pupils.

We had lots of fun making these cookies and plan on making them again for an upcoming bake sale.

Have fun with the letter T.

Tuesday Teachings - The Letter S

This week's letter was lots of fun but a bit of a challenge to think of an activity to do that I do not see all over blog world already.

Download your letter S here.

Words that start with the letter S: Sun, Sand, Sail, Sailboat, Splatter, Spill, Speak, Sing, Song, Steamboat and Stars.

For our crafts we focused on Snake, Sponge and Snow.

I know, I know, everyone does a snake for the letter S but he is so cool looking and the perfect shape so we made a snake also. We used markers to color the letter S, then we cut it out and glued a red tongue to the back.

Our next craft was Snow. We used a pencil eraser dipped in white paint to make the snow on the blue paper and the blue S. My son really enjoyed this as he never gets to use that end of the pencil!

We will probably follow this up later in the week by making a snowman activity.

Lastly, we did some Sponge painting. This was by far the most fun in our house. I used a regular kitchen sponge and cut a strip from the short end. I then cut that strip into thirds and picked out three clothespins to use as the handles. We clipped the sponges into the clothespins (good fine motor practice).

We then dipped the sponge into paint and painted the letter S. This was a double activity as the sponge side that was dipped was a Square so we discussed squares versus other shapes. My son loved this and every time the sponge touched the paper he screamed, Bop, Bop, Bop! We will definitely be doing this more!

Foods that start with S: Squid, Sausage, Smoked Sausage, Sandwich, Salt, Salmon, Sponge Cake, Spaghetti and Stuffing.

For our food we made a Snake Stromboli. It was quite tasty. I used a store bought pizza crust, put some pizza sauce, cheese and pepperoni down the middle and then we folded over the sides. Once the sides were pulled over, seal the seams and lay the Stromboli, seam side down.

Next we put a little milk in two separate bowls and I mixed blue food coloring in one bowl and red food coloring in the other. We used pastry brushes to paint red and blue stripes in the "Snake". Once we completed the stripes, we mixed the red and blue together to get purple. I made two indentions in the head of the snake with the end of the pastry brush and we put some purple in each indention for the eyes.

We then baked as directed on the pizza crust. This was delicious and my son loves to help in the kitchen. When we sat down to eat he kept saying, "I do, I do".

Math with the Letter R

I decided that we needed more math skills in our home so as a way to continue the letter R lesson, I made us a Rabbit game.

Supplies:
Die
Construction Paper
Glue
Laminator (optional)

I cut out a large circle for the rabbits head and then I cut out pieces for the eyes, nose, mouth and ears. When I made the ears, I glued pink inside the white ears. I have regular dice in our home but they are a little small for my three year old. I decided to make a die that was a little bigger for him. We have some cube manipulatives that I purchased in the Target Dollar Spot so I used one of the cubes and a black marker to make the dots on the sides.

The last thing I made for the game was a sheet showing the die values next to the rabbit part that you get to put on for the game.

Now to play the game. Lay the rabbit's head on the table and Then child rolls the die. The child then counts the number that came up on the die and finds the same number on the sheet and then puts on the corresponding face part.

My son loved this game and we have played it numerous times. I am even going to make some more games up with different faces.

Tuesday Teachings - The Letter R

Another week, another fun letter of the alphabet. This week we will focus on the letter R. You can download the letter R here.

Words that start with R: Run, Race, Read, Racket, Robin, Rose, Rip, Rice and Road

For our activities we focused on Rose, Rabbit and Red.

First, we went out and picked some of the last miniature Roses off of our rose bush and glued them onto a letter R.

Next, we colored a letter R Red and then we glued it to a Red piece of construction paper.

Our last craft was my favorite. We turned the letter R upside down and turned it into a Rabbit by gluing ears, a nose and an eye to it.

For our snack we decided to follow the Rabbit theme and make Rabbit cookies.

We used a roll of sugar cookie dough and cut it into slices about 1/2" thick.

The slice was then cut into half. We then took one of those slices and cut it onto half also. We now have three sections for each slice.

The biggest section was rolled into a ball to use as the Rabbit's head and then each of the smaller sections were rolled into ear shapes. We baked the cookies based on the package directions.

Once they were removed from the oven, we put chocolate chips on the head for eyes and a nose. The cookies spread more than I thought they would but they still resemble Rabbits and they were tasty.

Have a great week.

Tuesday Teachings - The Letter Q

Another week, another letter. You can print your letter Q here.

I was very nervous about this week as the letter Q seems like a difficult letter to do a craft with but things turned out pretty cute.

Words that start with Q: Quiet, Quit, Quest & Queen.

For our activities we focused on: Questions, Quarters, Quail & Quilt

First we printed out the Q and my son glued papers that I had drawn different colors of Question marks on. We also discussed his great Questioning skills. He loves to ask "Why?"

Next my son glued different colors of construction paper to a page and once it dried, I cut out a letter Q. Once our Quilt was complete, we went through the house looking at the Quilts his Great Grandmother had made for us.

The next activity involves Quarters. We slid a Quarter under the Q printout and used crayons to make a rubbing of the Quarter with different colors all over the Q. We also did a Quarter Toss by trying to toss the Quarter into cups. My son is only three so he was not very successful at this game but he did enjoy playing.

Our last craft was a Quail. We painted the Q with brown paint using Q-tips. He really enjoyed using the Q-tips to paint. Once the Quail was dry, we glued on the legs and the head.

The snack was very difficult for me. I could not think of a single food that start with Q, I just froze up! Finally, I decided to make Quesadillas to redeem myself.