ABC Book – Letter H

It has taken me more time than I planned to get back to our ABC Book, but I have finally finished the pages for H. I haven’t shown it to M yet, I’m planning on doing it with him during our normal Tot School time this week. So you are getting a sneak peek!
The inside:
M has really been asking for help drawing letters lately, so I’m going to start including some sort of tracing activity for each letter from now on. For H – our letter template, with dashed lines, and laminated so he can use his window markers to trace the letters, then wipe them off and trace them again!
Next, a Tic Tac Toe game using Hammers and Hard Hats:
Two songs about the letter H (sorry only one song is pictured, but both are included in the printable file):

An envelope full of things that begin with H:
Heart pattern strips to match:
And, on the back, a shapes House to color, glue, and build:
I decided to use velcro dots instead of glue for the shapes house, so M can put it together as many times as he wants. I also use velcro dots to keep all the envelopes in the file closed.
Click here for the printable file of all the activities – Letter H.

You can print as many pages as you want and of course use them however you want. You do not have to make an ABC book. :) If you just want the tic tac toe game and the shapes house (or whatever), print only those pages. You could make them into activity bags.
If you use any of them, let me know – I’d love to see what you’ve done!


The instructions for putting the activities together are written on pages of the file, as well as information about where the graphics were found, which sites I used for the letter templates or songs, etc.

Have a beautiful day! :)

Sunday School on Friday – The Shepherd and the Lost Sheep

This week’s Bible story is from a parable that Jesus told, found in Luke, chapter 15.
We read this story from a couple of different children’s Bibles this week – one in the morning, and then the other one for bedtime. I just recently received the second one and I’m hoping to post a review of it within the next few days.
M was feeling a little emotional about this story; the idea of anyone being lost and alone makes him sad. We actually had tears at one point! Toddlers can be rambunctious and drive us nuts, but they also have very tender hearts!
I told him that the shepherd loved the sheep and kept looking for him until he found him, and that Jesus loves us that much too. For some reason this story really seemed to sink in with him.
For a craft we used this idea and made a paper plate sheep. M tore some cotton balls in half (makes it fluffier) and glued them to the back of a paper plate, then added some googley eyes.

At that point, it was looking cute. My artistic skills apparently need some work, because I cut out ears, a nose, and a small mouth and M glued them onto his sheep, and this is what it looks like:

I know! It looks like it has a moustache, doesn’t it?! I can hardly look at the thing. And those ears… well, I’m not sure what sheep ears look like, but I don’t think they look like that! :) Anyway, the fact that it looks funny is totally my fault, and I don’t want it to discourage you from making one with your child. M loves this sheep and was very proud of it.
We also played a very simple “count the sheep” game I made. There are links to the materials I made for this game at the bottom of this post if you are interested in doing this too.
Each person has a game card – basically a blank grid of 20 empty squares. Take turns rolling the die and then put that many lambs on your grid. Going left to right and top to bottom as you place the lambs on helps develop the habit they’ll need later on when they learn to read left to right and top to bottom. Whoever fills their card up first is the winner.
I’ve been really bad lately about getting pictures of M doing these things, but he really enjoyed it and we’ve played it several times since! After we are done playing he likes to sort the lambs into piles by color.
Next week is Noah’s Ark!
Have a beautiful day! :)
Link to make your own dice
Link to game cards
Link to lamb game pieces

ABC Book – Letter F

We have been concentrating on the letter F the last few days. Our library (and I’m sure all libraries have these books or similar ones) has a good selection of simple books about letters and their sounds. We read this one in particular:

It was OK, not the best plot ever, lol, but it did a good job of getting the /f/ sound across.

{If you are wondering why we aren’t going in alphabetical order with our ABC book, it’s because I am too lazy and I’m doing the easy ones first – consonants that normally only have one sound. And we skipped “D” because a small “d” is too similar to a small “b” and I don’t want M to get confused. He hasn’t quite gotten down the “big letter/ little letter” thing. (We call them mama letters and baby letters sometimes – it seems to help!)}
 
Links to the .pdf files for the activity pages are listed at the bottom of this post. If you download them and use them, I’d love to see pictures and hear what you’ve done with them! You don’t have to make an ABC book, you can use them to work on math skills, just for fun, or whatever!

I tried something new this time – instead of just using cardstock, I used a file folder and punched holes in it so it will fit into our binder. It works pretty well and I think I’ll continue to do this with the other letters. It’s nice to be able to take it out of the binder in one piece in order to work on it, instead of taking several pages out.
So here are some pictures of our F pages in our book:
First, our craft page (it’s certainly not original, but feathers are always fun!) – Feathers for F of course:

Then we had a pocket full of things that begin with F:

And then we had a pocket of F songs. The pocket is downloadable at the bottom of this post, and the songs came from the DLTK site, which I love and use quite often. You can find the songs here.

I made a miniature fishes in the fishbowl counting game with a spinner:

A pocket of Flowers to color (these are laminated so M can color them over and over again with his Crayola Window Markers):
And finally, some Frogs to sort by size – Big, Medium, and Small:
M loved the frogs. I guess I forgot to take a picture of him sorting them. His favorite part was naming the “f” pictures and coloring the flowers. He was really interested in the fishbowl game, but lost interest pretty quickly. He didn’t seem interested in the songs, but a couple of days later he started asking me to sing them for him again and now he is singing them himself!

Here are the links to the various files. I’ve listed them separately in case there is only one or two that you would like to use:

Fishbowl game and pocket
Frog Size sorting: frogs, mats, and pocket
Color the Flowers: cards and pocket
F Songs: pocket only
The links to the songs are:
Letter F Song
Do You Know the Flower Man?
A Fishy or a Frog
Enjoy!
Have a beautiful day! :)

ABC Book - letter B

We have started making an ABC book.

I had this idea of creating a couple of lapbook-type pages of activities for each letter. We did B first. This was actually done a few weeks ago, but I waited to blog about it because I wanted to make all the activities available to print if you would like to use them too!

I'll give you the links to the .pdf files as I go through the page elements. Just click on the the picture of each activity (this does not include the letter craft picture) and you will be taken to the download page.

I hope this is as fun for you as it has been for us! Please use them for whatever you like; you don't have to make an ABC book like ours if you don't want to, but you could use them to make your own lap books or just for tot school activities. If you do, let me know, I'd love to see what you've done!


First, we did our letter craft, and glued buttons onto our Bb's. The templates for these are found here.


Here's a shot of the following activity pages:


The first pocket on the upper left is "Things that Start with B". We looked through these and named each one making sure to hear the /b/ sound at the beginning. (I also used some of the printables found here.)


Next we had the "Color the Bulldozers" pocket. M enjoyed this the most. I had each one labeled with a color to use, and the print was in that color (ex. red). M was able to see which color to use and did it all on his own. He was very proud (so was Mommy). The next time I will laminate these and let him use his window markers to color them. That way we can clean them off and he can color them over and over.
Next up is "counting baby birds":

And finally, "baseball size sorting":

{All of the pages are cardstock and here's a little tip:
*Place clear packaging tape along the side of the pages (fold it over so half of the strip of tape is on the front and half is on the back) before punching holes in it; this will make the pages much stronger and you won't have to worry about it tearing out of your 3-ring binder.*}

These activities were a fun way to practice other skills (colors, sizes, counting, etc.) while talking about the letter B and it's sound. It was a lot of fun! Letter F is up next!

Have a Beautiful day! :)

Tools for Tots - Weather Chart!

Update: I found some free weather clip art, added it to the chart the I made, and created a .pdf file that you can download here to make your own weather chart!



We've been learning about the different seasons a lot in the past few months. It naturally leads to talking about weather.

I found these little weather cards at Science A to Z under the weather unit link:
If you are interested in making these, they do have a free sample that you can sign up for. Otherwise they cost a little bit.

I simply laminated all the pieces and added magnets to the back of the small cards. We keep the chart taped to the fridge, and check to see what it looks like outside, then M picks the correct magnet to put on the chart. Very simple, easy to understand, and quick! And it makes him feel so proud! I'm not sure why exactly, but the why doesn't matter, does it? ;) (The masking tape is not the prettiest touch, I know. I don't know why I don't *see* these things until the picture is already taken.)
Enjoy! And have a beautiful (sunny!) day!