ABC Fun - Letter E

Sweet Girl had a lot of fun with our alphabet review last week (click here to see more), but now it's back to the letters.  This week is all about letter E and it's sound.

Alphabet Sensory Bin

I always like to start with the sensory bin so we can talk about the letter and it's sound.  In our bin this week we have lots of capital and lowercase E/e's, some elephants, an Eskimo, an eel and the number 8.

Hide and Seek Puzzles

I pulled out our stash of Easter eggs and used an old egg carton to make this hide and seek puzzle game.  I printed off six pictures that begin with the "e" sound (egg, elephant, Elmo, envelope, elf, eight), cut them in half and placed one half in an egg. I put the like pieces in the same colored egg (the two halves of the elephant are in the blue eggs).  I think Sweet Girl will enjoy this one!!

E is for...Elmo

E is for...Elephant

Letter E patterning

I found this neat "letter E" patterning sheet at Making Learning Fun and thought Sweet Girl would enjoy it since we have been working on patterning a lot lately.  I pulled out the correct patterning pieces to make it a little easier for her.

Be sure to check back at the end of the week to see our fun letter E crafts!!!

ABC Fun - ABCD Letter Review

Instead of starting a new letter this week, I decided to do a "review" of A, B, C and D.  Sweet Girl is pretty good at recognizing the letters and usually knows their sound, but I wanted to put together some activities for us to do just to reinforce what she has already learned.

Alphabet Soup

This muffin mold is perfect for our letter review since it has four different columns.  Sweet Girl used the spoon to "ladle" the letters from the bowl to the muffin mold.  I left the top row completed so she could see where the additional letters were supposed to go.

Sweet Girl had fun doing this and loved spooning the letters into the muffin mold.

Letter matching with colored alphabet stickers

What a great letter recognition and matching activity!  These alphabet stickers are from the Creatology section of Michaels and have been a great purchase so far!

For the next activity, I decided to have Sweet Girl match up the different objects with the correct letter and sound.  I only had her do two letters at a time (A,B and C,D). 

A and B object sorting

C and D object sorting

I had to give her lots of sound clues ("Here is a "c-c-c-cupcake") initially, but each time we practiced it got easier and easier for her.

Sweet Girl also played with this great ABC puzzle I picked up at Target for a $1.  It's a little tricky because you really have to look at the letter to figure out where it goes. 

Check back on Friday to see our alphabet review crafts!!

ABC Fun - Letter D

Our letter this week is letter D and it's all about DINOSAURS! 

Alphabet Sensory Bin

I like to start with our alphabet bin because we can talk about the letter and it's sound.  Our sensory bin this week is full of capital D, a dolphin, a dinosaur and a duck.

Dinosaur Hunt Sensory Bin

I also put together a quick dinosaur sensory bin for Sweet Girl.

Here's what in our dinosaur bin:

3 bags of decorative sand

one large dinosaur (from the dollar store)

mini dinosaurs (these were all in one pack...also from the dollar store)

6 easter eggs with mini dinosaurs inside (eggs from Easter last year)

2 dinosaur fossils Sweet Girl made at an art class a few weeks ago

2 paint brushes

Doesn't it look like so much fun?

Dinosaur shape matching

I saw this at Yellow Mums and thought it would be perfect since our week is all about shapes!!

Heads and Tails Matching

This is from the dinosaur tot pack at 1+1+1+1=1.

Check back at the end of the week to see our letter D crafts!!

Momma made...Quiet Book

I started working on a quiet book for my kiddos when I was still pregnant with Little Man.  I am very much a novice when it comes to sewing, but I have always wanted to make one.  And, leave it to me to decide to start with the ENTIRE ALPHABET.  What was I thinking?  It was definitely an involved project, but I loved every minute of it (and am planning on making more too)!  I hand stitched each page, but did use my sewing machine to sew the pages together.

I found an awesome pattern for an ABC Quiet Book at this etsy site and decided to give it a go.  The site has amazing options for quiet books and the directions for making the books are very detailed and instructional (even for a beginner like me). 

Here are some of my favorite pages:

The dog is a finger puppet and the dog food comes in and out of the bowl.

The mailbox opens and closes and there is a little letter in the mailbox.  This is Sweet Girl's favorite page...she loves the letter (and calls it "email")!

The bows untie and you can play with the hair.  (Sweet Girl doesn't know this yet!!).  And the yellow square for the ice cream is actually a pocket where all the ice cream scoops and cones are stored.

The eyes around the buttons can be removed and the owl's wings open and close.

And here is the amazing cover!!  I have to give all the credit to Shelley from Shelley Wallace Designs, though!  I wasn't able to sew all the pages together with my sewing machine and I was terrified I would mess it up if I tried to hand stitch it together, so I contacted her and she graciously offered to do it for me!  She is so talented!!

What about you???  Have you ever thought about making a quiet book for your little ones??

I'm linking up to....

Handmade Tuesday, Too Cute Tuesday, Get Your Craft On and Show and Tell

ABC Fun - Letter C

We are working on letter "C" and it's sound this week!! 

Here is our Alphabet Sensory Bin.  It's full of colored alphabet pasta, lots of uppercase and lowercase letter c's, two cupcakes, a piece of cake, a crab and a card. 

I also made a cupcake matching/memory game over Christmas that fits perfect with this week's letter!  They were so fun to make!!

Sweet Girl is using them as a matching game this year, but I plan on pulling them out once she is a little older and trying a memory game.

We have lots of "C" crafts and activities planned this week as well!!  Check back at the end of the week to see the fun!

ABC Fun - Letter B

We are working on the letter B and it's sound this week.  Just like for letter A, I started with our Alphabet Sensory Bin full of everything "B,b".  Then we matched up the letters A,B,C,D to the letter flashcards.  Sweet Girl is getting pretty good at this!!  I might have to add a few more letters just to keep it challenging!!  I also made up a bean bag game which was really fun!!

Alphabet Sensory Bin - Letter B

(Included in the bin are several bears, a banana, capital/lowercase "B,b", several balls, a basket, a bucket, a button and a baby).

B is for....bean bags

I stitched up some bean bags for Sweet Girl.  She had lots of fun throwing them around!

We played a fun bean bag game too!  I labeled four buckets with the letters A, B, C, D.  I would call out a letter and she had to try and throw the bean bag into the right bucket!!  Kinda like a baby corn hole game!

Learning is fun!

Check back at the end of the week to see our letter B crafts!



ABC Fun - Letter A

This week starts the beginning of our alphabet learning!!!  Sweet Girl knows most of her letters and some of their sounds thanks to the Leap Frog Letter Factory (which is a great educational DVD, by the way!).  I've decided to start with "A" and work our way through to "Z".  That way we can correlate with all our books and the Letter Factory.

Here's how we are learning our letters and their sounds:

Alphabet Sensory Bin

I put together a small sensory bin using dyed alphabet pasta.  I got this great idea from here and plan on using it to introduce all of our letters.  Then I went on a search and found all the letter "A,a"'s in our house, as well as any object that starts with the letter 'a'.  Sweet girl loved playing around in the pasta.

Here's what we have in our alphabet bin.

(Variety of capital and lowercase a's, apples, astronaut, alligator, acorn)

We talked about what was in the bin ("A is for apple") and what sound 'a' makes ("The a says 'ah').

Then I lined up these cards on the floor and we played a little game.  I would call the letter and she had to find it and jump on it.  

Next we played a little matching game and she had to match the foam letter with the correct card.  Sweet Girl was able to match the letters, but still needed some help naming the actual letter. 

Then we took all our objects that begin with the letter 'a' and lined them up underneath the letter card.

Here Sweet Girl is playing with the mini alligator.

After our games, we read through these books and looked at all the 'a' pictures and letters. 

Stay tuned for more....

I have some fun "A is for..." activities planned for this week!