For those of you who don't know me, I am a bit of a girly girl. I don't really love being messy or playing with creepy crawlies, but I have a son, whom I love very much. Last week my wonderful day care provider (no sarcasm there, she really is wonderful and I am thankful to have her) got the kids bug houses and nets. They had a bug hunt at day care and got to bring everything home at the end of the week.
Well, Xander fell in love with the activity, so we went on a bug hunt of our own. He was SO funny walking around the back yard with his little net saying "bug bug bug." He would bend over and inspect the grass. Of course, he didn't actually catch anything. That's where Mommy came in. With my help, we ended up catching a ton of crickets, a couple rollie pollies, a slug, and a moth. I even added some grass and fruit so he could keep them as pets (outside). However, he has a thing for opening the bug house and shaking them all out, then asking me to catch more. Maybe it is more the process than the result...
I am so excited to share what I have been working on all summer that I decided to give you a sneak peak! We are finally going to get to the alphabet! I delayed because I have been teaching Xander to read using whole word approaches and did not want to confuse him by throwing letter names in. That left me with lots of time to think about how I wanted to present them. Mommy & Me ABCs is where I ended up.
Now I know there are tons of great alphabet resources online so I could have just used some of those, but none of them was quite what I wanted. I am a huge control freak particular, so making my own seemed like the way to go. Since the vast majority of text is lower case, I really wanted to make sure that was a big part of the focus, which is how I came up with "Mommy and Me." I will be working on "Mommy" letters and "baby" letters. It seems like so many toys, books, and educational materials focus on the capital letters, which are really the exception to the rule when kids are reading. I also really wanted real images rather than cartoons. Xander is still pretty young and cartoons are kind of an abstract concept. Photographs are just a better way to convey accurate information. Also, because I plan on spending two weeks per letter, I wanted a large variety of activities. I also included activities of varying degrees of difficulty. We will be using these materials for over a year, and didn't want him to get too bored. Having a wide variety of activities will hopefully also allow my blog followers to find something that works for their toddler.
Here are some of the pages that will be featured! (Most letters have about 20 pages, but some have fewer, depending on the images I could find). I purchased the images so that I can share them with you as we complete each letter.
As I mentioned last week, we are currently doing quick and simple mini themes for Tot School. This past week we did a Farm Theme and Xander had a great time.
Here were some of the extra farm related toys on his shelves. He has a piggy bank, his musical farm, and his animal sounds tractor. That tractor has been such a huge hit since he got it for Christmas. Pushing on the little spaces where the animals go makes their sound. He particularly loves the farmer and carried him around frequently.
One of our boxes had his magnetic farm book. He really likes sorting through the magnets.
This box had his Leapfrog Fridge Farm. He loves it, I just wish he didn't insist on turning the volume up to the highest setting.
This box had his farm sound blocks. I actually picked them up months ago when Michaels had a 50% off coupon, but hadn't given them to him yet. He really likes them, but has trouble understanding where the front and back of each animal go.
I printed some mommy and baby cards from Counting Coconuts. I have never actually taught him the baby names, but it was fun to match them up together.
One box had Xander's magnetic farm (50 cent garage sale find!). He had a lot of fun sticking the magnets to the pages.
This box had some farm animals from his Simple Word Puzzles. He hasn't seemed to figure out that the colors go together too, he mainly focuses on the word and picture, which makes me very happy!
Notice the farmer is next to him.
This week's puzzle was a mom and baby farm puzzle we have had forever.
This box had some printables from 1+1+1=1. I cut apart her 3 part cards to make a matching game. I think this is one of the activities we did most this week. However, for some reason he had a slight obsession with the farmer and the barn. For instance, I would show him the word dog, he would say "dog" (one of the few words he can read that he can actually say), and then he would put it on the barn. I would show him the word cow, he would moo, then put it on the barn. Oh well, I was just happy he got some extra reading practice.
Since Xander can't actually say most of the words I am teaching him to read, I am always trying to find fun ways for him to tell me what he can read. This week I wrote some words on the driveway and he would jump on the correct word as I called it out. He thought it was hilarious if I played with him.
Since he had fun with the farm words, I threw in some review shape and color words.
No farm theme would be complete without a trip to see some tractors! I took him back to the John Deere Pavillion and he had a ball climbing the tractors!
They had cylinders with different kinds of seeds for us to explore. He is pointing out the watermelon seeds.
Hard to see, but he is actually up there in the cab of the combine.
As I have been hinting, I have been hard at work on our materials for the alphabet. As part of that, I made Xander some sandpaper letters. However, I made them a little bit differently than the normal Montessori style. In addition to tracing his finger over the shapes of the letters, I also plan on using them as flash cards. Since we flash at high speeds, I wanted a really sharp color contrast, so I chose black letters on bright card stock. I also think it will make them look cheerful as they sit for display each week on his shelf!
Since I was a wee bit excited to start our alphabet themes, I made some extra sandpaper letters for one of my blog followers. I made two sets from which to choose, so you can either choose the blue and green or the pink and green. (Keep in mind these are hand made, so they look hand made rather than machine perfect.) The giveaway is open to anyone in the US. Good luck!
