Archive for April 2009
This is a pretty classic letter of the week idea, but my son and I were both so excited about how cute the alligator turned out to be. The foam teeth and googly eyes really helped turn the A into an alligator. Don’t miss the additional activity for more ideas about how to incorporate letters into playtime.
- Gather your materials. You will need 2 pieces of construction paper ( different colors), 2 googly eyes, some white foam or paper will do, glue, scissor and markers.
- Draw a large upper case A on one piece of construction paper. I added two triangles on one side of the A for eyes.
- Give your child the A and have them color it to their liking. We have been talking about inside vs outside a lot this week so I shouted out “Inside the A” and ‘Outside the A” and my son obliged, it made it a little silly but fun.
- While they color cut out some triangles for alligator teeth.
- Cut out the A
- Glue it
on the 2nd piece of paper.
- Add glue to the eyes ( you can see where we had glue all over above the eye, no biggie, just wipe it)
- Add the googly eyes
- Add dots of glue for the teeth
- Add the teeth. Let dry.
Books!
“Alligator Alphabet” by Stella Blackstone and Stephanie Bauer. I was so excited to find this book because just this week my son started pointing out lower case letters in text. This book is a beautifully illustrated book with each letter represented on it’s own page. Pretty standard right? Wrong, although the text below the illustration had both upper and lower case letters, the main illustration is only the lower case letter. This is perfect for children like my son who are just starting to learn their lowercase letters.
“Alligator Baby” by Robert Munsch is a ridiculous story that will have your child laughing and screaming “No no that’s not a people baby!” The story is about a family who brings home the wrong baby, over and over again. Finally the older sister takes things into her own hands and saves the day. Kids love this story, it’s not the best bedtime book though, my son was very very hard to settle down after laughing so hard at this one.
Additional Activity
Cookie Sheet Letter Board
Looks simple doesn’t it? It is. All I did was buy $1 magnetic letters at Wal-mart and grabbed a cookie sheet from my pantry. My son has been playing with this on and off for days. Here are some of the fun things we’ve done.
- All the letters on the sheet- take turns finding a letter and taking it off
- All letter off the sheet, taking turns finding a letter and putting it on
- Grouping the letters by color
- Counting the letters as we put each on , and taking them off again.
Of course we labeled each letter as we did this. It is definitely simple but it was also a lot of fun.
- Gather your materials. I saved up 3 days worth of used coffee grinds from my trusty and much used coffee maker. You will also need a tub, some coffee scoops ( any thing will do) and some mugs. I believe the cups were the trick to connect the coffee grinds to the dramatic play that came about 10 minutes into the exploration. I am so glad I grabbed them.
- Explore! There is no wrong way to do this. My son did a lot of filling and dumping to start with.
- Explore how the grinds feel , my son exclaimed ” cold and softy Mama!”
- Next we played coffee shop, this was completely directed by my son, and here he is handing me my “banana coffee” not my usual soy cappuccino, but I happily took it!
- After our exploration we fed our garden with the coffee grinds.
- Gather your materials. You will need a paper bag, a paper plate, some black rice, glue, yellow and green paint , a marker , scissors, a bath poof or sponge and double stick tape.
- Start by cutting open your grocery bag and drawing a long stem along one edge and multiple petals on the rest of it.
- Cut the stem outline out and have your child paint it green. My son loved using the roller paints for this because it was so easy to make long straight lines. Let dry.
- Paint the petals with the bath poof or sponge. I find that when we are painting a large surface it’s much better to use a big tool that covers easily.
- Paint the bottom of the paper plate with the yellow paint too. Let dry.
- Cut out the stem and petals
- Add glue to the center of the paper plate – more is better so this is a great time to have your child control the glue.
- Add the rice.
My son added a few at first then dumped the whole dish on. Let dry. This actually dried to the touch pretty fast.
- Flip the plate upside down and using the double stick tape tape the petals on.
- Tape the stem on.
- Brighten even the darkest day !
Books!
Additional Activity
” Grow Little Seed!”
However you do it , go big, take your children’s suggestions and have fun!
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If the weather permits I am urging you to go outside and enjoy this beautiful world today. There are so many things we rush past or fail to notice and if we show down, and look at it through our kid’s eyes, we’ll learn something and so will they. Today I want to show my son why we want and need to save our environment by appreciating what we have.
Nature Detectives
It’s amazing when you introduce a simple tool like a magnifying glass how outside time changes.
We looked at bugs.
We looked at weeds
We looked at flowers
If you want you can make a small notebook for your child to record or draw what they saw on their nature walk. I chose to skip that and spend the time talking about it with my son over a picnic lunch. Each time he told me what he found he’d jump up to show me exactly where in our backyard he found it.
Happy Earth Day
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