The letter "A"

Well as everyone went back to school this year and I did not, and I felt the urge to TEACH... This is the first year in 9 years I have not been apart of the first day of school....and I MISSED IT....(no worries, I am returning after Labor Day...I have maternity leave this year because of our sweet Toni)

Waylon started going to Brandy's on most of his normal days and I am enjoying some one on one time with Toni on those 2 days as well. However, one of the goals I have made for Waylon this year is number and letter recognition. Waylon can say all of his ABC's and knows how to count up to 13...BUT has not one clue what these numbers and letters look like.

I came across a blog that had a link for a preschool curriculum and I loved it...It had all kinds of activities to do with each of the letters. So I thought I would just work with Waylon on a letter or so a week and see how it goes. The website offered a sneak peek at letter A so we tried that last week and Waylon really liked working on. A few days he "wanted" to sit down and work on the letter A. Awesome!

Here are some of the things and activities we did last week with the letter A.

1) The picture at the top of the blog was one of the first things we did..I traced the letter out and Waylon glued pasta shells on the letter to form his own big and little A's. (this was fun, because we used Wacky Mac which is always super cheap or free and we have tons of it...and he also wanted to sort them out into groups before we did the gluing)

We also did a matching game with big and little A...this was great too because it reviews colors too. Waylon did this without any problems at all, another great review for A in a few weeks for him too.

2) Another day we did an e book on the web page and it introduced words that started with the letter A...we then glued those to a page and read the words a few times together. (we reviewed this week and he remember almost all the words/pictures too) On the backside there was a cute space/planet activity that he liked finding the letter A and coloring it. This fit PERFECTLY because the same day we did this Grandma and Papa came over to bring some presents from there trip in California and they brought him Space stuff...COOL!

Then one of my favorite and Waylon's too is the tracing. We have our good days and not so good days with this activity and you need some patience when doing it, but I love the idea. I printed of the practice pages for big and small A. Then I put it into a large plastic bag and gave him a dry erase marker to practice tracing the letter with.

This works out well but a few tips...

1) erase soon after otherwise it will stay on the plastic and makes it hard to erase.

2) have them trace with their fingers first and then give them the marker, huge reward and they love it.

3) put the practice letters in the same bag, one side is big and the other small.

The best part about all of this is that the blog I found this curriculum on was doing a give away...So I posted a comment and was one of two winners... I won this awesome curriculum for a year! I am so excited and we have already started working with B...Another great find here at our house!

Happy Beginning of the School Year Everyone!