Letter Matching

For this activity I made a capital and lowercase letter chart in L's workbook:  3 columns and 9 rows.  In each box I wrote the letters in very small writing.  L will match up his letters from the stickers to the letters in the box. 

I also used my small stickers from a previous activity to write the letter sets.  I cut the sheet of stickers in half and used three halves for this activity.  This way he only had 9 letter sets at a time to work with (Aa-Ii, Jj-Rr, and Ss-Zz).

His dinosaur friend kept watch for him.

L working on matching his letters.  In the future I won't write the letters on the paper, but encourage him to figure out which letter comes next.  He still has to sing his ABC's a lot to figure out which letter comes next.  If working with his ABC's has taught him anything, it has at least taught him to say J-K-L-M-N-O-P (before those letters were unrecognizable).

All done!  He worked very hard on this and was proud of his work! 

Make Your Own Sorting Cups

My kids love to eat yogurt! Especially Bunny Yogurt (Trix)! So I decided to reuse them. After washing and drying the cups I took some fun duct tape and cut two inch strips. I placed the strips around the cup with the straight edges of the tape lining the top and bottom of the cups. Since my tape is a design, the polka-dots overlap. But they are still more fun to use!


The finished product! They are great for sorting activities, but L also likes to stack them and build castles!

Make Your Own Letter Tiles

Letter Tiles

Materials:

1) wooden nickels (from craft store)
2) mod podge (regular glue would work, but this dries super fast!)
3) two different colors of punch out letters (I had some on hand from my scrapbooking days, but you could also use letter stickers and skip the glueing-or just write the letters on the tiles)
4) spray acrylic sealer (not pictured)

I had all these materials on hand except for the wooden nickels.


To Make:

1) Glue the letters on using the mod podge
2) Let them dry and then brush over them again with mod podge
3) Let them dry and then spray a couple of coats of acrylic sealer on them (outside), allowing them to dry between each coat

There are many different activities that we will be doing using these letter tiles, so be watching for those. I also plan on making two other color sets so that we can play games with big sister.

Make Your Own CVC Blending Chart

CVC (Consonant Vowel Consonant) Blending Chart

Materials:
1) 3-ring binder
2) 3-hole puncher
3) cardstock (I didn't count how many sheets I used-sorry!)
4) paper cutter

To Make:
1) punch holes in both sides of the cardstock
2) cut the cardstock in half lengthwise
3) cut the cardstock to make 3 stacks


4) write all the consonants on the first stack of cards
5) write the vowels on the middle stack of cards
6) write all the consonants again on the third stack of cards


To Use:
1) pick a vowel and an ending consonant, then flip through all the consonant cards in the first stack as your child sounds out and blends the letters together (there will be lots of nonsense words, but some will real words)
2) change the vowels and consonants to make new blends

This tool will reinforce consonant and vowel recognition, letter sound recognition, blending, and reading.

Domino Addition Game

L is working on his addition skills, number formation, and counting.

We started off this activity by using a game board L made with his Grandma (thanks Grandma!). The game board is made from a file folder, stickers, and window decals. Pick a starting point and ending point, and then make a trail of stickers from one to the other. Laminate for durability.


We also used a set of dominoes to play this game. I store mine in a translucent wipes container that I am no longer using.

To play the game:

1) Turn over all the dominoes.
2) L picks a domino and turns it over.
3) L adds the dots together and moves his marker (he has some Cars character erasers to use as his markers, but they have been played with elsewhere...so he is using a carrot eraser).


Add To It:

1) L turns over the domino.
2) L writes the # from each side of the domino in the boxes I drew on his paper.
3) L adds the #'s together and writes the answer in the last box.
4) L moves his marker.


This activity reinforces counting, number formation, one-to-one correspondence, and addition.

Letter Matching

L is working on matching lower and upper case letters.

Materials:
1) 52 circle magnets
2) garage sale stickers
3) sharpie
4) cookie sheet


To Make:
1) write the upper case letters on one color of sticker and the lower case letters on another color of sticker
2) attach stickers to magnets
3) place magnets on tray

Match away!


L has learned most of the pairs but it helps him to sing the alphabet song as he does it.
This activity reinforces letter recognition and fine motor skills.

(Side note: After making this activity we learned the circle magnets were too strong and would either stick to each other or would flip over. If I were to change this activity I would attach the magnets to a different material-a clothespin or a wooden tile with the letters written on them. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but L got frustrated very easily with the magnets.)