Letter A

We kicked off our alphabet project with letter A, which happily is what "alphabet" itself begins with. Unhappily, it has quite a few sounds. I told Owen about short A, long A, and the "A" sound in words like "awesome," but we focused mostly on words using short A. Here's what we did:


Pre-Literacy

We reviewed what big and little A look like as well as the sounds A makes. Owen colored a printout with big and little A and practiced tracing the letters in his dry-erase marker notebook:



We decorated big A with fingerprint ants (and then talked about the three different parts of an ant's/insect's body):



Some of the books we read were:

*How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman
*Animals Should Definitely Not Wear Clothing by Judi Barrett (I like it better than Owen--I think he'll enjoy it more in a year or two)
*Animals, Animals by Eric Carle
*Animalia by Graeme Base
Animal Strike at the Zoo by Karma Wilson
The Ant and the Grasshopper (the fable--there's lots of picture book versions)
Alphabet Adventure by Audrey Wood

(asterisks=favorites)


Arts and Crafts

We took advantage of the abundance of apple art projects out there:





Top Left: We each made a fingerprint apple tree.

Top Right: We made prints of apples by cutting them into halves, dipping them in paint, and stamping them onto paper. Next time, I'll try a tip I saw on Make and Takes and put a craft stick into the apples halves to serve as a handle when we dip and stamp. It was pretty difficult for Owen to pull them out of the paint pools.

Bottom: I cut out the trunk and leaves of a tree for Owen to color. He glued them onto paper, and then counted out red puff balls to glue on as apples (idea originally found here)


Cooking

Inspired by How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World, we made an apple pie and took it (and vanilla ice cream) to David's work to share with him and his co-workers. I used a recipe for the filling from here and a recipe for the pie crust from here.




Fun and Games

--We played a old family classic, the Animal Game, where we took turns pretending to be animals while the other person guessed what the animal was.

--We played Animal Mix-Up Legos, found on the blog "I Can Teach My Child" via Pinterest.


Music

We sang The Ants Go Marching and marched around the apartment with musical instruments. And we recited this fingerplay (next time around, I will make felt apples to use with it):

Way up high in the apple tree, (look up high)
Two little apples smiled at me. (shake hands in fists)
I shook that tree as hard as I could-- (pretend to shake the tree)
Down came the apples! (raise your fists and then drop them)
Mmm, they were good. (take a pretend bite and then rub tummy)

Physical Activities/Outings

We visited the airport (to see David come home from a trip to the U.S.) and MEANT to visit the aquarium, but had to reschedule due to sickness (and a pregnant wife with an absent husband).


Science and Nature/Numbers and Math

We used a little abacus to practice counting and do (very) simple math.


Other

Some of our treasure hunt items were: airplane, animal crackers, apple, avocado, alphabet puzzle piece, and abacus. The treat was an Aero chocolate bar (in the U.S., it probably would have been an Almond Joy).