A is for...

I decided I wanted to do some type of “home school” with Haydee. She’s a pretty smart cookie but I wanted to get into things a little more. Her letters and numbers would be the main target. I also wanted to add some fine motor skills since hers aren’t the best.

I went on to look for ideas on pinterest. I even made 2 different boards for them, “Alphabets” and “my little genius”. Anyone who has a pinterst knows that it can be suppper overwhelming. There’s so many great ideas on there but sometimes its just too much. I end up pinning everything and doing nothing. I was determined, so I got a few things I liked and went to work.

I wasn’t sure with what letter to start her with since she knows a lot of them but I decided I would just start from the beginning and go in order doing 1 letter a week and see how it goes from there.

I introduced her to the letter Aa (both upper and lower case). I wrote it down on our white board so she can see it next to our index card that I put up. I grabbed her hand and traced the letter Aa with my hand then let her do it by herself. I think she did pretty good for not tracing anything before.

I printed out the letter A and had her put little pom poms in the circles I made inside the letter (not sure if you can see my penciled in circles?). Ive seen kids use some tiny tweezers to do this for better fine motor skills but I haven’t found some yet. I then just let her color it in whatever color she wanted.

I found this worksheet - here - your supposed to find the specific letter. Its like a word search for toddlers (only its not words..) She actually did a lot better than I thought. I bought those dot markers just for this activity! I’ve seen them around for a while and have been waiting for an excuse to buy them haha..

I also bought this little container that has all the letters and numbers with holes in them so you can lace through a shoelace (I bought quite a few things for this “home school” project actually..not sure if it was a good idea but now that just means I havee to keep up with it! lol)

This website actually has a bunchhh of neat stuff for her to learn through play. One of them was matching the amount of apple seeds to the actual number. I first tried this with haydee and since she doesn’t really know her numbers she didn’t understand it. I kept trying to play with her during the week and she didn’t want anything to do with it. (she doesn’t like to be wrong). I changed it up a bit and printed an extra set of just the pictures of the apples with the seeds. I then told her to match them together and count how many seeds were in each. She did great!

 

From some teacher website - here - I found a game with the matching apple theme. You have to match the upper and lower case Aa letters to the correct buckets. This was too easy for her I think. She did it in seconds!

We also did letter crafts. A for alligator. a for apple.

For the alligator, I cut up green construction paper squares and glued the backs. I had her put them on the letter. At first she didn’t get that she was supposed to go inside the lines, but I helped. Same with the teeth, but by the time she did one row she started getting bored and I had to finish. I let her color the eyes and glue them on to the letter.

For the lower case a I wanted her to paint with a real apple (Ive seen it done a few times), but it was too big for her to grab so I gave up on it. What a waste of an apple.. We then went on to using the paintbrush, which that didn’t last too long either. She colored the letter a, stem, leaf, and seeds. I glued them together.

We also went to the library! Haydee lovess to be read too. I was actually really happy because in circle time while the lady was reading to the kids Haydee wanted to leave from sitting next to me to go sit on the floor with the other kids. If you know my daughter she isn’t one to go and do stuff by herself. She’s alwaysss with me (or someone she knows). So I think that’s a pretty major step from being a bit more independent. Haydee got her very first library card, which is totally awesome and princess themed. Who knew that having a library card can be soo cool!? We also got some books for next week…

We had soo much fun keeping busy and not being lazy this week, I hope I can stick to it!

Until next time,
Your favorite Mommy! =]