Last week was the letter ‘Aa’. I chose Royal Baloo’s Ambulance Packet, Confessions of A Homeschooler dot marker Aa, and an alphabet clip upper to lower case activity from Making Learning Fun. Of course I had my own sensory activities which included an ‘Aa’ objects and letters sensory bin with alphabet pasta, shaving cream pre-writing, and shaving cream alphabet hide, seek, identify. Some activities went better than others and some worksheets we never looked at! Some sensory activities weren’t as long-lived as I hoped! This is a work in progress so it will be interesting to see how everything changes over the summer with likes and dislikes! My goal is to Teach A Happy Alphabet!
Here’s how we did. We started the week with the alphabet sensory bin and letter objects and finished with the shaving cream sensory play. Since Liam does go to school for three hours every day and has in-home therapy, we don’t always have a lot of time to do all the activities I plan for and I don’t push it either.
Great before and after shots. Yes, he did play with this one quite a bit as you can see!
Here are some of the worksheets he and I did together. Gluing, cutting and counting are favorites. Gems and dot markers are good too! He is also did a couple pre-writing sheets which were tracing diagonal lines and matching from one side of the page to the other and also a color recognition sheet. He never chooses to color so I do try to encourage a coloring sheet with a goal and for this one he had to color each ambulance a specific color. He did it, but it took a lot of redirection and motivation to get him to complete it. He actually holds the marker well and colors nicely. As you can see, the activities where he needs more rom me, there are few to no pictures. Haha!
Our final activity of the week was shaving cream. LOL, he saw me use it in the shower and asked to play with it! Sometimes he is into it and sometimes the consistency bothers him. I put a cookie sheet out with some shaving cream on it and tried to encourage him to trace my lines and my A’s with me. I am not sure that was a big hit 😉 Next I put some of his A objects on the cookie sheet. He loves his big apple! I went a bit further to engage him by getting out some alphabet plastic tiles and we tiled the apple and worked on letter recognition at the same time. I just barely had him with this one, but we rallied and pulled through.
All in all, I learned a lot about our ‘Aa’ week to carry into our next letter of the week. Since I am writing this after the next week has begun, I have decided to skip around a bit with the letters. The letter ‘Ff’ seems to be a challenge for him and I still have my water beads in a bowl and a great package of frogs. So…. this week is a frog theme! Can’t wait to see where this alphabet adventure takes us!
Find more awesome learning resources:
Amy @Wildflower Ramblings
I love Royal Baloo’s truck packs!! I will be using them the next ABC go-around 🙂 And shaving cream is awesome — will have to pull it out again — this time outside with a hose to wash him off 🙂
littlebins
Shaving cream is great and it cleans up my table really nicely. Liam is super careful and doesn’t like to get crazy messy but I wish he would!
Vanessa @ See Vanessa Craft
How fun! Thanks so much for linking up to Tot School Tuesday!
littlebins
Thanks! Glad I could join.
Lisa @ Farm Fresh Adventures
Oooh—I didn’t know about Royal Baloo’s truck packs! Need to check those out!
I have a question–I love the idea of sensory bins…but how do you find so many things that work for each letter? haha. I like think of what letter I’d want—but then come up with only like 4 things…lame. hahahah! Suggestions?
littlebins
Well I thought that way too for a long time. First I think about the sound of the letter that I want him to learn so sometimes that eliminates items! Like A for example no acorns! I don’t have a lot of variety in his A bin. There are many repeats of ambulance and alligator and apple. I had an ant too. I love the toobs from craft stores with all the items and then I break apart other sets of things we have and just try and remember where to put everything like puzzle pieces! Flash cards, magnets, dollar store finds are great. I go to used children’s stores and look for little items as well as thrift stores. Sometimes I buy lots on ebay of misc items. Some letters will be really tough so that week may be a theme I am thinking. This week for F it was a frog/fish pond theme all around but I still want to do fire truck! I may put together an F bin this weekend just for fun! The letter I might be a theme too haha but those toobs have an arctic one with an igloo in it 😉
Samantha @ Stir the Wonder
Shaving cream is great! I just posted an outdoor shaving cream activity that we did last summer! So much fun!
littlebins
Very cool car wash! We did an animal wash that was very similar. My little guy is not a big fan of getting messy though!
Rebecca
Looks like a fun and messy week!
Thanks for joining in The Sunday Showcase
Mary Catherine
Thanks so much for sharing this at Stress-Free Sunday last week! I’m featuring it this week. I hope you’re able to pop by and link up again. 🙂
Ashley
Oh I remember our first experience with trying to write letters in shaving cream! No letters were written, but my kitchen, and both of my girls were covered! lol Great activities; thanks for sharing at Mom’s Library!
Hannah
Great “A” activities! Especially like the dot markers for making letters! Thanks for sharing with us at Eco-Kids Tuesday! Hope you stop by again! http://likemamalikedaughter.blogspot.com/2013/05/eco-kids-tuesday_21.html
Carrie
Looks like a great week! Thank you for sharing at Sharing Saturday!!