She's a Learning Sponge! :)

Allie girl is such a little sponge right now. Being a teacher- this is exciting for me. I have been trying to take advantage of her willingness to learn and make it purposeful and fun for her. To sit back and just let these teachable opportunities slide by without doing anything makes me cringe- so I've been loving coming up with new ways to teach her. :)  We don't sit down at the table and do workbooks or formal lessons...everything is teachable play, intentional play, and purposeful. I have a reason for every little thing that I do- and while she still has TONS of free play this is one little way I can challenge her and help her to learn new things! She loves it and usually sparks the flame for more learning and other new things. :)  She is a quick learner and it is fun for me as well as her. :) I have a bunch of little things that we have done, and I'll share more as we do them... for now.... here's some of them...


ABC Letters: 

Aa- (July activities -Week or two in length total spent broken into random times)

She knows her ABC's and has has been able to sing the song for quite a while now- so I thought she was ready for the next step. She initiated this on her own and I went with it. She brought me a magnetic letter and said, "Look mommy, an A!" How cool! I was of course ecstatic and praised and praised her. Since it is the first letter of her name, we have told her what it was before, and when we write her name, we always say the letters. Between that, and some of her shows, and other random mentions of it, she knew what it looked like. I asked if she could find any other ones... turns out- we had a ton! :) We talked about the sound that a makes and some words that it also makes. I had these neat little books that you can color for each letter of the alphabet as well, and so we worked on the letter A (big and small a's) and the sound, and words that start with A. We also did a craft and poem with the letter a.  We also looked for the letter in books sometimes when we read them together. :) She's got the letter name, sound, words that start with it and she's made a couple of A's in her drawings too. Usually she makes a cross, but sometimes gets the actual capital A made too! :)

 We did a sorting activity after she found several a's. We put the big ones together, and the small ones together. :) 

 Then we sorted them by colors......

 Working on how the A is made.... She can't do it consistently, and that is more than ok...just learning. :)

 She knows how to make a Jesus cross! :)

 one that mommy and allie made together....

 She's helping George to make one too. :)

 And teaching George what the sound is... :)  (She thought that was fun!):)

 A folder... i drew pictures, she colored, and then I wrote the label for each picture and she found the A's in the word and I highlighted them. :)

 Craft with our poem.... She wasn't into this as much....

 We talked about first, next, and last.  (with the apple craft) Sequencing is a great skill!!!  And... the finished hanging mobile.

Coloring in the Aa book I had. :) 

 Making A's with pretzels.... :)

I started her with this letter (actually she started it all... :)) at the end of July. We are now on the letter C. :)  I'll update with the other letters and other things we've been doing too. :)
Skills introduced- 
Letter recognition, letter sounds, letter formation, sorting, sequencing, fine motor with coloring and making a's, basic word identification (labeling words that start with a and also finding words that have a's in them)