Letter Activities

After our week of apple activities, I was eager to do more theme planning for Jaden and Cody. I loved having a list of activities ready to pull out at the mommy moments when I was most tired. The boys seemed to appreciate some variety to our daily activities as well. After talking with my sister, I found out that she was also doing theme planning for Ryan based on letters of the alphabet. Kim brilliantly suggested that the two of us combine forces and share planning duties. What a lovely idea! 

For the past month now, Kim and I have been alternating weeks with a letter of the alphabet, searching Pinterest and compiling a list of activities for our kiddos to do based on that letter. It's been working out quite nicely! So far, Jaden and Cody have been enjoying themselves, and that's the most important thing! I'm not able to get pictures of all that we do, based on how much the boys need my assistance, but these pics will give you a glimpse of our latest adventures with letters...

For each letter, we've been making a tactile letter page that we'll eventually assemble into an alphabet book. (Kim did this with Ian when he was younger.) Our T page was created with toothpicks.

I didn't give any guidance on this page, other than covering the T with glue. Can you tell that one of my boys (Jaden) is a bit more particular and likes things nice and orderly, while my other son (Cody) doesn't mind things being a little more haphazard and creative? Their final products made me laugh!

Another day, we painted a picture of a tooth using old toothbrushes. Jaden and Cody thought this process was "so silly"! We actually did this project just a few days before their first-ever dentist appointment. Both boys were wonderful dentist patients!

For F week, we did a little science observation with white flowers. Jaden and Cody were disappointed when nothing happened immediately after putting the carnations in the colored water, but over time they enjoyed seeing the flowers change color.

One morning for snack time, we graphed our goldfish according to color. We practiced using words like "more, less, most, and fewest" to describe our colored fish.

We found out that the bags of goldfish definitely favor the yellow and orange colors!

Another F activity was some fine motor practice with this easy-to-make frog.

Cody and Jaden's job was to feed the frog pom poms using just their tweezers. This activity didn't hold their interest for too long. These efficient boys knew the job could be done much more quickly by scooping up handfuls of pom poms without the tweezers! :)

On E week, we lined up pictures of numbered nests along the floor. Jaden and Cody counted out an appropriate number of eggs for each nest.

I was curious to see how Jaden and Cody would do with this elephant size sort since we had never really done an activity like it. They seemed to catch on right away and completed the line-up much more quickly than I thought.

Another one of my favorite E week activities (thanks to Kim for finding all these!) was measuring objects with egg carton pieces. We cut our egg carton into 3 piece lengths, and then used these pieces as our "ruler" to measure. This Little People airport was exactly three egg carton pieces long.

Jaden was quite interested in this activity and kept measuring for nearly 20 minutes (Cody was done after measuring only two objects). I loved hearing Jaden estimate how long he thought the object would be. What great math skills for this little guy!

For D week, my favorite activity was doing this dinosaur freeze. One day after naptime, I told the boys that we had a BIG problem. Two of their dinosaurs had climbed into the freezer and had gotten stuck in the ice!

The boys were quite worried for their animals! So, in order to save the dinosaurs, we used a warm salt water solution and these pipettes to melt the ice that was entrapping these poor creatures.

Cody and Jaden, apparently, are all about finding more efficient strategies. (Either that, or they're not big on the fine-motor skills practice!) Soon, one of them suggested dumping the whole cupful of water on his dinosaur.

Then, both boys walked back and forth from the bathroom to the kitchen to fill their glasses with warm water and dump it into their dinosaur container. Jaden and Cody were ecstatic when their dinosaurs were finally freed! Mommy was also quite excited that this activity entertained the boys for 30-40 minutes!

Another D activity was creating dogs out of paper plates. The dogs' ears were made from Jaden and Cody's footprints, and the spots on the dogs were supposed to be the boys' fingerprints. Our dogs' spots turned out to be more like large clumps of paint. But, we all had fun! :)

Our tactile letter D page was made with colored dot stickers. Once our D letter was full of spots, Jaden and Cody thought it would be fun to decorate the rest of our house with dots too!

Every one of our dining room chairs had exactly one sticker on the back. What a colorful display. :)

More letter adventures to come in the weeks ahead... :)