Letter T and other Learning Activities!

This week we learned the letter T.  Allie continues to love the slide shows for the letters. They are so great because they are colorful and keep her interest- while teaching her! Plus, they review at the end the weeks before. It is a great way to keep those things fresh! :)  She asks to do them often!  We do them at least five times a week- sometimes more. I also like to hop over to st.ar.fall to see their slides on the letter we are learning/review the ones we've done. She loves those as well

This week we went to ses.eme.street 's sight to play some of their games too. She tells me what choices to make and I control the mouse and move the things where they need to go for her. She LOVES this! :)  

Surprisingly, we didn't do much extra with the letter T- except twinkle twinkle little star. We made a star wand and sang the song. She sings it well. 

Here are some of the other things we did. 

Her name puzzle. She has the yellow one as a model and has green letters to match with it. She has a hard time when the letters get flipped over making them go the right way, but overall does really well. She knows how to spell (by saying outloud) her name. :) She is also recognizing it in print now! :) I'm working on 1-1 matching with her- pointing to the letters as she spells it. She knows most of the letters (what they look like) in her name- but not quite all of them yet. Some- the n and the i are still a little tricky. 

 We also pulled out her alphabet train. We hadn't done this for a couple weeks, so we did that this week... :) She does good at matching them. If she gets stuck, we sing the song, and she knows what comes next. :)

 Finding letter tiles in the box of beans. She thought this was fun.  I told her there were three t's buried in the box. I asked her to find them. She did pretty good. The last one she got tripped up on, but with some help she found it. :) I had other letter mixed in with the t's.

 I don't think this is a complete set. It was on the give away table at school one spring.

 Practicing her cutting skills. She now has the hold of the scissors down without help. :) She LOVES to cut! :) Check out her tongue...hard at work concentrating!

 Cracks me up! :)

 Her twinkle wand for our song. ;) We made it with glitter!: )

We also did her Tt folder and coloring book.  (and the Ll ones we forgot last week). 

The ABC train....and our 1-1 matching of the letters as we sing. :)  Gracie distracts at the end barking at something... :)

Letter L and other learning activities

Our letter of focus last week was the Letter L.  We did the slide shows and some other fun stuff for the letter L.  We also threw in some other learning activities.  :) 

 This tree was an instant fall in love thing for me. I saw it and new we HAD to do it. :) It is one of those projects that I'll be keeping forever. :)  I love the little hand/arm and finger tip leaves. :)  And it fit perfectly with our letter of the week and the season! :)   It was messy- but purposeful messy projects are the  best!!!!

Other L stuff:

 Making a lollipop craft. :)  Notice her tongue... :) 

And some other learning activities we did.... These were items in her drawers. :)
Shapes and patterns. These shapes were in the dollar bin at tar-get. :)

 I made these little cards for her to use with them. We did them together.

 And then- she dumped the drawer on her head... LOL.... silly little girl. Whatever works for you! :)

 Yep- she knows she's a turkey! :)

 A princess memory game. SHE is GOOOOOOOOD at memory!!!! :) Amazes me!

 Back to the blocks....building a tower.  We built pattern towers.

 And in the last drawer she had marbles (she calls it green gold).  We got the bucket balance (garage sale find- for a DOLLAR!-score!) out and did a little bit with balancing. She also just played with the "gold" putting it from one cup to another and carrying it around. :)

 Her table with her drawers. :) Getting her princess game out to play.  She also has (in the basket) animal cards she plays with. They are kind of like flash cards- but we dont' use them that way at all. She likes to look at the animals and tell us what they are. She also likes to ask about them if she doesn't know them.  She was looking at them and found an Alligator and commented that it started with A! :) Awesome! :)

She also learned the number one, and the word SEE this week. :)  We made the word with the magnetic letters and I asked her about it often. I even had her put the letters in the right order one time (with the magnetic letters).  She did it!  :) She even made them all face the correct direction- without any prompting or help! :) Amazing!!!

An Alphabet Craft

We've been a little lax with our preschool stuff lately. Not sure why, but we're still working some little bits in here and there. This week I've picked back up and have been doing more like I should be.  I had started going through the ABC's from the beginning.  I was going through finding stuff for each letter and working on it throughout the times she asked to do "abc stuff". Yeah- she actually asks to do stuff. :) Kind of neat! 

Awhile ago,I had found this site that had power point slide shows for each letter. She had one that you could demo but the other letters you had to buy her membership. I had a gift card from a student with the exact amount left on it, and so I decided to use it for that. Why re-create the wheel- right? I had tried to do it weeks ago, but long story short- just ordered the membership officially this week. I am SO GLAD I DID!  She has a different order to her letters than we did, and so we are essentially starting over....kind of. Her slides are neat because they include a letter, number, color, shape, bible verse and sight word. There are also tons of other vocabulary introductions in the slides as well. WELL WORTH the fifteen dollars. She also has other slides and activities for her members. I usually don't pay for stuff like this....I like to make my own, and find the free stuff online...(especially now that we are on one income!) but this one is worth it. Plus, the money she "makes" goes to support her family- which is a missionary family and that is one of their incomes. I'm ok with that! :) And, the membership is a one time thing- not a yearly thing. Pay once and download her stuff and you're good for life. She keeps adding things too.... :) 

The site is one  I've mentioned before.... 1+1+1=1.  Click HERE if you are interested. :) Let me know what you think if you go for it. Allie LOVES it! :) 

Anyways- here is what we did with the ABC's we knew already.... Just a painting activity- Allie loves to paint... :)  I used painters tape to make the letters. I was going to take the tape off- leaving the tan part unpainted underneath, but it started tearing the paper.... so I decided to leave the tape on. I like the blue contrast too. I thought about hanging them on the wall in her playroom- kind of like an alphabet wall- and art display.  We only did these letters so far. She did most of the painting, but I helped too! :)  

 She wanted to make a dog on the D. I was impressed she knew that dog started with d. I thought that might help her remember... and the dog kind of ended up looking more like a cat, but oh well. She was happy with it. :)

New Improved Calendar!

So Allie's calendar that I made just wasn't working well. It kept falling apart, and just was so big and combersome. I kept her going with it for most of the month of September, and then we just kept forgetting to do it. So I made her a new one, and hopefully it is better... :)  It seems easier  than the other one so far- as far as durablity.  I had used velcro on the other one, and it wasn't the peel and stick kind- but I used hot glue.  It kept coming off and the velcro wasn't sticking. Then the scrap paper that I had on the backdrop kept coming off too. So much for that.  So I used these little closepin clips I had- and twine, and made new days of the week and months of the year tags. I also made a new calendar and laminated it....so now we can use dry erase markers on it. (that was the other thing- the shapes kept falling off of the other calendar for each date...what a mess!) (Live and learn I guess. :) ) I used an old bulletin board that I had in my room growing up, and staples. 

So- here is the revised version.... I like it so much better! 

 Letter and number review for the letters and numbers we are working on. 

 Months of the year- for the calendar, and our month of the year song.... also her Bible verse she is learning.... and her season part. The picture is an old calendar that I had that shows fall leaves - and a Gracie puppy.

 New improved weather. The old one had just Monday thru Friday on it. I found it on line somewhere. This one- I made so it included the weekend. When we didn't do calendar on the weekend, we got out of routine, and I think that was our downfall for the slide at the end of September.  These are still velcro.

 Recalling what we did....focusing on remembering skill, and past events.  This is laminated and we now have dry erase markers, so we are using those instead... much easier!!!!! (the yellow is just sticky notes before we got the dry erase markers!)

 Days of the week- with yesterday, today and tomorrow tags that move with the handy clips... :)

 The calendar- that also is now written in dry erase..... with the clippy for the month that it is. The markers still allow for colors to be used for patterns....Again- so much easier! (again- the picture was taken before the dry erase markers)

 And the year- written in numbers and words.

It is all about trial and error right? :) Loving this so much better! :) And it still is purposeful and eye catching and something she asks to do! :) All the better! :)