Letter of the Week - Letter N

So we've completed over half the alphabet and we are on the downhill slope.  Wow, that's amazing to think.  I'm so thankful Addilyn is still enjoying our time together and that she is still so excited to learn.  Here is our curriculum for letter N week as well as pictures from a few of the fun activities we did.

On the first day of our letter we always start out with handwriting practice and letter introduction worksheets.  Addi is becoming better with handwriting.  Don't get me wrong, it's still pretty atrocious, but she is trying and that's all that matters!

N is for Noodles!  We had a great time gluing different types of noodles on our Capital N.

Next, we played with our noodle sensory box.  I mixed spaghetti, penne, elbows, and shells together and through in a few alphabet letters.  I asked Addi to find all the letters by searching through the noodles and then place the letters on their correct spot on the chart.  Josiah enjoyed this activity a lot too.  Afterwards, Addi got to practice her sweeping skills while cleaning up the mess they made when they started throwing the noodles.  

Addi still loves this busy bag that she got months ago.  She made several noodle bracelets from the dyed pasta and pipe cleaners.

I also thought we could make noodle necklaces and let Addi begin learning the skill of threading (in hopes she'll be able to sew one day).  Josiah, obviously too little for this one, played the good 'ole noodle punch game.  This was one of Addi's favorites when she was his age.  All you do is punch a few holes in any empty card board box and let your child push penne pasta though the holes.  It doesn't have to be dyed, but we used ours for all sorts of projects and I dyed them a long time ago.

N is for Nest.  We went hunting for nests in trees but did not find any and we walked down to the nature center near our house.  They were closed on the day we went so we just made our own nest from a coffee filter and some easter grass.  

 N is for Name.  We made a name train this week.  Addi is learning how to spell her name (and then hopefully by this summer she can write it) so I have planned several activities over the next few weeks on games to help her learn it a little better.

N is for numbers!  Addi and a friend decorated their lowercase n with some number stickers.

 We played with the number wheel (another busy bag from a long time ago), which she has gotten so much better at!

We played this fun fun game called number wiggles.  Usually if I find an idea online I link to it on our curriculum, but for some reason I didn't do that on this game and I really regret it because I can not for the life of me remember which blog I read about this game.  If it is your idea, please leave a comment and I would love to give you the credit you deserve!  Anyway, Addi got to roll the die and then count the dots to see how many times she had to preform the action word she drew.  For example, here she is blinking 4 times.

 This round she had to clap six times.

 Jumping 5 times.

N is for Nose.  My sweet husband was home one day while we were doing our lessons and he was playing around with the camera taking pictures of us.  I'm not sure why he wanted some in black and white, but there you have it.  I drew a bunch of faces on paper and included the eyes and mouth but I left off the nose.  We went around the house and picked out things that we could glue on the paper to give each of the faces a nose.  We found everything from a cotton ball,to buttons, and beads.  Addi even found a black bean on the floor that I had missed from when we had dinner the night before.  May seem gross to use food that fell on the floor, but I went with it and tried not to stifle her creativity. 

I don't own sensory bottles, but as we were learning about the nose I really wanted to utilize the opportunity to do a sensory activity on smelling.  I got three medicine cups and put vanilla extract in one, mint extract in another, and lemon juice in the third.  I covered Addi's eyes and had her smell the cup and told her what it was.  After two times of telling her what each smell was I had her cover her eyes and guess with one I was holding up to her nose.  She got it right every time.  I was so proud of her.  Next time I'll have to make it a little more difficult.

And last but not least, here are a few books we read this week!

Read more »

Letter of the Week - Letter M

Letter M week was full of all sorts of fun!  Addi learned about everything from monkeys, to mountains, to magnets, and much much more!  Here is our curriculum for the week and a few pictures from some of the activities we did.

I forgot to take a picture of a bunch of the books we had borrowed from the library.  Here are the ones we had left when I finally remembered to pull out my camera.

Handwriting practice.

One day we made capital M Mountains.

Another day we made capital M Mosaics.

We made a lowercase m with marshmallows and ate a few for a snack too.

We played with magnets.  This was one of the 6-7 games we played with magnets.  Addi thinks they are just the neatest thing ever.

I love how in this picture you can see her sounding out the letter m.

We did lots of little monkey activities.  Her was a mask she made.

We also played some matching games.  For this particular one, I gave Addilyn a set of children's playing cards with the numbers 1 though 13 (pretty convenient since our number of the week is 13) and had her match the characters on the cards.

I also made another matching game from scrapbook paper and had Addi match the mittens together.

Addi painted a mouse.

And then we made a mouse.

Addi painted on a mirror with shaving cream which was also really fun.  Well, it was fun after I found her a paint brush.  She didn't like the feeling of the shaving cream on her fingers today.

We did a little marble painting. Thank you Pinterest for the idea on this one!

And least, but not least, we took out letters from letter l week and we learned about the mail.  Addi matched the letters with their correct envelope.  We addressed the letters, put a stamp on them, and then took them to the post office.  I wanted to see if we could get a tour of the mail center so the kids could see the process, but you have to contact the local postmaster several weeks in advance to do that.  Maybe next year!

Read more »

Letter of the Week - Letter L

Oh, man did we have a great week!  Here is the curriculum I came up with and some pictures of our fun.  Click on the picture of the curriculum to see a larger version.

Letter L handwriting time.  Addi said the little l was easy.  Ha, I wonder why?

I have been giving Addilyn word search pages from an old book we were given and she uses her Do a Dot markers to color the letter for that week.  This week she was so excited because it had the capital L and the lowercase l (actually the capital letter I).  It's so funny what little things will make a 2 year old so happy.

L is for Lion.  These are a few of our Lion books and our capital L Lion we made.  I think the lions turned out so funny.  They look like they have mohawks and beards.  The felt doesn't look like a mane at all.  Oh, well.

 We wrote letters to grandmothers for letter L week.  Next week for Letter M week we will have to mail them. ;)

L is for Laundry!  I pulled out the clothes line busy bag and let Addi pretend to hang up the laundry.  Then I had her really help me sort the laundry.  She did a great job sorting and helping put items in the washing machine.  Oh, I can't wait for the day when she can help fold more than just rags!

 Here are some of the books we found on lady bugs and laundry.  I had not heard of the Ladybug Girl book series, but they are really cute.  Addi called them her, "very favorite books ever."  I think we read each one about 10 times and some of them are pretty long.  I think I can quote a few of them.  ;)

Here are our lowercase ls made of leaves and ladybugs.

We made paper plate lady bugs with wings that actually moved.  All the kids went around the house chasing one another with their flying lady bugs.  Funny kiddos!

Here was our strawberry cream cheese ladybug bagel we had for breakfast one morning.  Since that morning, Addi has wanted raisins with her bagel every morning that we've had bagels.  Who knew?

Okay, this little game turned out so much better than I could have imagined.  I had Addilyn roll the dice and then place each of the die on either side of the lady bug's head.  The she took the spots and placed the correct number on the lady bug wings.  She even started placing them on in the same shape as the black dots on the dice.  Since our number for the week was 12 this worked out great!!!

Another math game we played this week included matching the right number of lady bugs (pom poms) on to the correct daisy according to the number written on the middle.  Easy to make and great hands on counting activity for Miss Priss.

 We made a toilet paper lady bug, but Addi was disappointed that it's wings didn't move like the paper plate lady bug we had made earlier that week.

 Last but not least, we made lady bugs from soda bottle caps.  Then we went outside and I hid them all around the yard.  Addi had to find all of them and then we counted to see how many there were.  How about that, there were 12 (our special number for the week)!

Read more »