Letter E.  E is for Elephants.  

To print off an animal for every letter go HERE.  I printed mine on card stock.  Annie's artful letters are being hung in the toy room.  They look beautiful together.  I'll take a picture soon to show you.

For a cute elephant color by number go HERE.  The Confessions of a Homeschooler blog is the first place I always go, print what I want, and get extras from other places.  Jodi, so glad to here these ideas are helpful. 

Letter of the week.  Letter D.  

 I printed off some things from here that I liked again.  To avoid any confusion, when you want to print stuff off her blog, click on what you want from the alphabet page, click on the blue button labeled "download now", wait the 20 sec, then click on "download file now" (not Click here), open it, and then print.  The "click here" button takes you somewhere weird when all you want to do is print.

 D is for...Dots

 ...DECORATE then DELIVER.  We decorated the cupcakes left over from Apollo's party and then Annie and I took them to our neighbors. 

 ...DRESS UP.   She loves to dress up.  I got out my makeup too-what girl doesn't love jewelry, makeup, and dresses? (I guess I don't sometimes).

 ...DRESS UP DOLL. 

 

 ... and DINOSAUR PUZZLES.

 

 Go here to get letter searches for all the alphabet letters. 

Letter C.

This week I needed to prep Apollo's party, so making Cookies killed two birds with one stone.

Incredible sugar cookies (you can roll these out too, cut, and cook for about the same amount of time):

1 C (2 sticks) butter, softened

1 1/2 C granulated sugar

1 egg

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp almond extract

2 3/4 C all-purpose flour

1 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350. Lightly spray pan cavities with vegetable pan spray.

In large bowl, beat butter and sugar with electric mixer at medium speed until well blended. Beat in egg and extract; mix well. Combine flour and salt; add to butter mixture. Beat until well blended.

Press dough into cavities, filling 2/3 full. Bake 9-10 min. or until light brown around the edges. Cool in pan 5 minutes. Turn pan over; lightly tap pan to remove cookies. Cool completely on cooling grid.

Makes about 1 dozen cookies

Love this pan!! Thank you Joanie! So easy for kids to mush the dough in, cook, and out come the cutest shapes.

Colors.

Cotton Balls.

Hungry Caterpillar. January made flannel board pictures to go with the book. Annie counted all the fruit.

I got a lot of my ideas again from here. They are easy to print. While Annie's working on something, I cut other things out for the next activity.

Upper and lower case word matching.

Match the colors and the word. She liked these puzzles.

Letter B. Letter b stands for...

Beads.

Beanbags. The kids each made their own.

Blood. We made fake blood of syrup and red food coloring for a Halloween decoration.

and Books. We got Halloween books from the library this week.

Click HERE to download free puzzles, number games, big B and little b matching games, and letter practices (and much more!). Annie loves playing school...I do to! These are all free so just click on the download buttons.

Letter of the week. Letter A.

My plan: To do a letter of the week using learning tools and activities. Through Pinterest and the internet, it is super easy to get ideas and to print any you want off. Annie and I are going to work on them for part of the time Apollo is at preschool and bring Apollo in for the fun too.. Annie LOVES LOVES "playing school". Being a busy mom, I want this activity to serve me and me not have to serve it or stress over it. So, we're keeping it simple. I hardly take any time to look, and print off the stuff I want. For example, this week we're doing the letter B and will go biking. Since I know what letters will be coming (ha ha), I'm going to keep track of ideas that come to me so I don't have to search too much when the letter comes. Here is where I got my letter A stuff. There are tons of ideas to pick and choose.

Keeping it Together: Walmart had the flat folders for 10 cents a piece and I bought some page protectors. I put Annie's art work, puzzles I cut out, activities etc. in there and will do so with all the letters. It's a great review and great activity book for road trips or church. Apollo enjoys doing the activities and they can be done again and again. I'm planning on keeping it around for baby #3.

I got this idea from my friend, Bonnie, as she's doing the letter of the week with her second child. He's just a little guy and knows all his letters. We were first year high school teachers (she was an English teacher) together and now it's fun to keep in touch via the blogging world. She told me she has more ideas and resources than time to do everything. I've found this to be true.

I cut out the puzzles and games while Annie did her projects, then we worked on them together.

Annie likes to show Apollo what we've been working on when he gets home. He likes to do the puzzles too.




Chalk. Fun way to learn. Apollo drew out the big letters while I did the lower case.