The Letter A

Here we go! Here are some Letter A activities that we've been working on. First, we did "A is for Ants." I went to our library and found some books on ants and ant colonies. Our librarians are incredible, people. Do you know your local librarians? I think they are such fantastic resources and so willing to help out. Mine even printed out information from the internet on how to make your own ant farm! I haven't attempted that yet, but I'd like to try something like this.

I found this idea to make ants with your fingerprints in black paint, crawling over a hill that is the letter A. And for some reason, I only took this one, very unhelpful picture. I had some extra kids over that day:

But they ended up looking something like this:

 Moments of Mommyhood

While they crafted, I read the books about ants and we talked about it a bit. I also played the video clip on YouTube for the Letter A from Sesame Street. We love these videos. 

And that was all we did that week.

Then we went to Kauai. Without our children.

A different kind of activity time.

 

 

It was incredible. Need I say more?

Then we came home. 

*Sigh.

And we started back in with A is for Alligators! My kids have LOVED talking about alligators. I don't know why. Edison might really believe there is one living under his bed. 

Thanks to this great book:

There's an Alligator Under My Bed

I cut out giant letter A's out of green paper and lots of teeth out of white paper.

 Then I cut out the shape of the eyes (bottom of above pic) where we glued googly eyes. Nice and simple people; do you see a theme here? (Source for this idea found here.)

 Ed glued the teeth all over the A and I was just happy he was participating!

And not eating the glue stick.

 The next day, it was raining so I decided to do some more activities with our alligators. I hid the two that they made in different spots and we played this game I threw together using things I had around the house.

 My kids love the song "Five Little Monkeys" where they tease Mr. Alligator. I had this tree my oldest daughter made for a family night activity, so I put five pom-pons in the tree, representing monkeys. This activity is not meant to impress anyone.

Had I prepared a little more, I could have printed out five pictures of actual monkeys and colored them, or laminated them.

I like the pom-poms.

 I colored a clothes-pin with a green marker and we sang our song and they got to SNATCH that monkey right out of that tree! They loved it.

Then I got really quiet and told them that there were two REAL alligators hiding in our house.

And they believed me.

'Cause I'm the mom and I hold that much power.

They searched around until they found their alligators from the day before. Then they made those alligators eat the pom-pom monkeys out of the tree and we sang the song a few more times.

(Do you like the mixed-matched half-gone pajamas we have on here??)

That afternoon, my Eloise was bored and STILL wanted more alligators in our house, so we made a very simple craft using a paper plate, green paint, white paper teeth, and googly eyes. She did most of it on her own ("More teeth please mom!).

Run with it! Email me your crafts. I'll share them and praise you for your hard work.

Know you're doing a good job, whatever you're doing with your kids.

These are just ideas if you need them.

Don't stress.

You're amazing.

Toddler Activities for the Letter A

We have been busy little bees around here in the Phipps' house. I've been doing my best to stick to my new routine and some days have been successful and others, not so much. But I've decided not to beat myself up about it too much. We're doing our best. We did start over with our letter of the week activities, which I'm directing mostly toward my three year old. As mentioned in my last post, we've started reading the BOB series with my four year old and we're seeing some real progress; I highly recommend them if you're looking for a good series to start with.

Here's what we did with the Letter "A":

We do try to make it to the library on Tuesdays to find books that coincide with our letter of the week. Here's some that I found this time:

(sorry for the blurry photo) 

I really love finding a few books on specific animals that start with the letter we're studying. The girls always love learning some new facts about animals and I enjoy it too!

For our craft, we got our fingers dirty and painted an "anthill" in the shape of the letter "A" in green paint. Then we dipped our fingers in brown paint and added little ants, crossing over the top of the anthill. Short and simple. She did end up adding some flowers and a blue sky...

For a snack, we made ants on a log with celery, peanut butter, and currants (which I've been a bit addicted to lately).



I also printed out some coloring pages and letter tracing pages for her to work on.My four year old requested a koala coloring page and activity, so I printed both for them to work on together.



  Keep it simple! And have fun!

Fall Activities for Toddlers and Preschoolers: Acorn Necklaces

I found this idea on the Family Fun website and filed it away in my mind as a "back-up" activity for a rainy day. Honestly, it looked too difficult. First of all, where do you find acorns? For some reason, in my mind they were akin to fireflies--one of those rare and random things that you can't just find in your backyard (I really thought fireflies were fake until I moved to Georgia and saw them for myself). So one day we were out for a walk and my daughter stopped and picked up something from the ground and said, "Look Mom! An acorn!" Turns out that acorns come from oak trees, which are everywhere. Where have I been? Thus, this activity really happened and it was easier and more fun than I thought.

Materials:

Capped acorns
yarn
scissors
hot glue or tacky glue
marker
googly eyes (optional)

Step One:
Draw a face on your acorn. OR you can glue googly eyes onto them and just draw a mouth. I use hot glue b/c it dries fast.

Step Two:
Glue on the hair, made out of small pieces of yarn.

Step Three:
Glue on the top of the acorn (the "hat")

Step Four:
Wrap a long piece of yarn (the necklace) around the top of the acorn (if there's a stem) and secure it in place with more glue. If there's no stem, you can glue the long piece on under the hat.


I LOVED this activity because it was simple and unique and my daughter was very happy with the outcome!