Play Dough and Stamps

I put together a fun little play dough activity for Anna the other day and it turned out to be a hit.  Who knew that stamps work so well with play dough?  We pulled out our homemade play dough and all of our stamps and went to town!

Our lowercase alphabet stamps were lots of fun and Anna loved spelling out her name (over and over and over again).

I also worked with her on some of the words she knows, as well as some beginning sight words.

Then we pulled out our princess stamps and made some pretty pictures.  She also liked using a pencil to make little dots all over the play dough.

The images were pretty cool.  Try it!

Letter D: Lots of Dots

Anna and I are making an ABC book this year to continue practicing letters and their sounds. 

For letter D, we made lots of dots!!

Anna used my circle punches to make large and small dots.

Cool confetti!!

Then we added some glue to our paper and glued down all our dots!

ABC Pizza Craft

This fun little activity is from No Time For Flashcards!

It was a great learning activity to do while my little guy took a good afternoon nap. 

We didn't have a pizza box handy so I cut a circle from one of the many cardboard boxes we have lying around.

Anna added some "sauce" with her red crayon.

Then we added some glue and put on our letter "pepperonis".  We talked about each letter and it's sound as she was putting it on our pizza.

Then we added our "cheese" and "green peppers".....

Yum!!

Letter A: Fun with Apples

Last year, I introduced Anna to the letters of the alphabet using fun little methods and crafts.  Click here to be taken to all of our alphabet activities and crafts.

Since she is pretty familiar with each letter and it's sound, I am planning on going back through the alphabet, but am focusing on pre-writing and writing of each letter and the letter sound in the word (a- for apple).  

We are also making an alphabet book which I will share more of as we complete the pages.

Here's what we did for letter A...

I drew some random apple shapes on some paper and Anna colored them and I cut them out.  Then we worked on sorting by color...

And patterning...

And writing the uppercase and lowercase A/a.

We also did patterning by uppercase and lowercase letters, which was a little tricky since it wasn't always a red/green combination.

Then we made a large apple tree from a brown paper bag, colored it and added our apples to the apple tree!

The tree already has me craving Fall!!  

Name Recognition

Sweet Girl knows how to recognize and spell her name but I thought it would be fun to use our cookie cutters to spell out her name. 

Here we used Model Magic, but you could also use playdough or clay for this fun little activity.

After she cut out her name with the cookie cutters and put the letters in the correct order, she used some beans just to trace each letter.

Then she painted them (again...we used Model Magic).

And added lots of sprinkles.

Once they were dry we played around with the letters.  I would mix up the letters and she would have to put them in the correct order (luckily for her she has a super easy name).  I also did a couple little games where I would take one letter away and she would have to tell me what letter was missing. 

Matching Mittens

To go along with our Goodnight Moon and letter M week I cut out some mittens from felt.  Sweet Girl carried them around, played with them, matched them and hung them up to "dry".  We haven't tried any activities recently using clothespins so I was shocked to see how easily she was able to hang them up on our drying rack.

ABC Fun - Letter M

We've started back our ABC fun, but have changed it up a little.  Sweet Girl is really loving sitting and completing activities and tasks so I tried to add some more challenging things for her.  I'm also trying to correlate our activities to a book that we will read throughout the week. 

This week we worked on letter M using the book Goodnight Moon.

I printed off some Goodnight Moon activities from here.

Coloring balloons

Practicing writing the letter M

Finger painting a picture of a moon

Cutting practice

I really think Sweet Girl is loving this set up.  She definitely loves to cut, color and write.  I'm hoping to continue this in addition to our tot trays, but I will likely only make trays once a month.  Since they are only used when Little Man is down for his nap, I figured we could keep them out for a longer period rather than changing them out each week.

Alphabet Box

I wanted to share our alphabet box today!!  The majority of the objects I use for our weekly letter sensory bin are from this box!  I had so much fun hunting for objects...and I'm actually still on the hunt for a few things!!  I found about half of our objects in the drawers, toy boxes and baskets in our house.  The rest I picked up at either the dollar store or the craft store!!

All of our objects are stored alphabetically in a hardware box I found at Lowes.  I used some alphabet stickers I already had on the front of each drawer. 

The hardware box is great because the drawers can be easily removed.

Here are our letter A and letter B objects.

Right now, I keep the box stored in a closet.  Eventually, I hope I can keep this box accessible to Sweet Girl so she can play with and sort the objects.  She loves playing with it!!  But I know if I left it out now, she would just hoard them all in her purse never to be returned!!

Mari-Ann at Counting Coconuts wrote several awesome posts about her alphabet box!!  Be sure to check those out for more detailed information!

Tot Activities

We were off visiting my family most of last week so I'm keeping the same tot trays from last week out for Sweet Girl to play with.  In addition to those, I decided to add some more "fun stuff" too!!

Tracing lines

I made up this simple little sheet connecting the princess to their "pal".  I laminated them and have included a dry erase marker and little eraser with the sheet. 

(And if anyone wants a copy of this sheet, just leave me a comment with your email address or send me an email and I will forward it to ya!)

Placing stickers on letter A/a

We typically use our Do-A-Dot markers with these sheets, but I thought it would be fun to mix it up a little.  The apple sheet is from 1+1+1=1 and the lowercase 'a' is from Making Learning Fun.

See & Spell puzzles

This is a new puzzle for us so I'm only presenting two words at a time.  It looks a little overwhelming if there are more than two words showing.

Drawing on the Buddha Board

This is just for fun!  I'm addicted to this thing!!

Hope everyone has a great week!!

Alphabet Learning Fun

This is a fun activity I have planned for this week.  It's another one of my fabulous finds on Pinterest (addicted!!).  Sweet Girl loves playing with these alphabet puzzles in our busy boxes so I know she will enjoy this too.

I mixed up all of the alphabet letters in the alphabet pasta from our sensory bins.

I added numbers 1-4 because....well...because I'm anal like that!!  I just couldn't leave it "unfinished" looking!!

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Activity

I'll admit it.....I think I need a PIN-TERVENTION!!  Is anyone else completely and utterly addicted to Pinterest?  I am!!  I have it on my computer, but I also have it on my iPad which I LOOOOOOOVE.  There are so many neat things on there!!  I just can't stop!  (Which is probably one reason why my blog posts seem a little less frequent....told you I needed an intervention!).

Anyhoo....I came across this fabulous activity for the book ChicKa Chicka Boom Boom over at I Heart Crafty Things.  We love Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and Sweet Girl giggles everytime we see the band-aid on letter "f" so I knew this would be a hit!!  Like all of our activities, it was super simple to put together! 

All you need is a cookie sheet, some construction paper for making a coconut tree and some lowercase letters.

This is a great activity because it uses lowercase letters.  First, we put the letters in alphabetical order.  Then I would read the book and Sweet Girl would find the letters and "walk" them up the coconut tree.  Once the letters were ready to "fall", we shook the board and letters went everywhere!!!  It's a fun little activity and we've done it multiple times this week!! 

ABC Fun - Letter L

We're up to letter L now!!  We are going to finish up with letters I,J,K,L review next week and then we are planning on taking a little "tot school" break during the summer!!  The pool is calling our names!!  I still have lots of fun stuff planned for us though...just not as much planning and organizing on my part!  (Momma needs a summer break too!!)

Alphabet Sensory Bin

Here's our letter L sensory bin for this week!! 

Ladybug magnet page

This is from COAH.  Sweet Girl always enjoys using the magnets.  I just tape the laminated sheet to an old cookie sheet and set the magnets out with it!  This is usually completed several times during each week.

Letter L picture matching

We did something similar to this during our letter J week and Sweet Girl really enjoyed it!  She completed the letter J picture matching independently so I will just leave this one out for her to complete on her own.  I love finding things that she can accomplish all my herself.

(Click here if you want to download your own copy)

Ladybug counting cards

And to finish up our letter L week, I plan on pulling out our ladybug counting cards!  Sweet Girl loves these and we haven't played with them in a while! 

(Click here if you want to download your own copy)

ABC Fun - Letter K

We had a lot of fun learning letter J last week!  Sweet Girl's favorite part was "jumping over the J's" and now we do that almost every time we're outside playing with chalk!!

I've planned lots of fun things for letter K this week! 

Alphabet Sensory Bin

First up is our letter K sensory bin.  I couldn't find too many letter K objects other than a key and a koala so I printed off some objects/things that begin with the letter K and added them to our bin.  We always use our bin first so we can talk about the letter and it's sound!

Making letter K/k with play-doh

This is from Homeschool Creations.

Counting keys

I drew several large keys and gathered up all our extra keys for this simple counting activity.

Kite pattern

And since our week is all about the beach, I thought this kite pattern would fit perfectly!!  This is from letter K over at COAH!

Kicking "K"

I love to find ways to make learning interactive and fun!  Since jumping over "J" was so much fun last week, I decided to do "kicking the K" this week.  The big inflatable balls are a huge hit at our house so I know Sweet Girl will love this one!