Our New ABC Book

I have finally come to terms with the fact that I just. do. not. have. time. to make lapbooks for M for every single letter of the alphabet. At least not unless I want to take, oh two years, to teach him.

They are fun for me to put together, and fun for him too, so I plan to continue making them as I have time, but they will be for when he is a bit older and we’ll use them more for fun and as a review. As I complete them I’ll post them to the left over there where it says “ABC Lapbooks”. :)

In the meantime we are making a new, no-fuss, quick ABC book. I hope to do a letter per week, but I know realistically there will be weeks when I just haven’t had time to plan anything. The format of this book will work with that because I’m working on getting it all ready at one time.

The format is pretty simple. 3 pages per letter…

1. craft page
2. collage page
3. tracing page

So, right now I’m collecting ideas in a spreadsheet for a simple craft for each letter. This will be nothing fancy! Just something to help M remember the sound the letter makes.

The collage page will be a workbox activity for him, which will look like this: A blank page except for the upper and lowercase letters in the center. And this: Another page with 5 items that begin with the letter, which he will cut out and glue around the letters on the other page. I’ll include scissors and a glue stick in his workbox.

I am having a little trouble coming up with 5 items for some of the letters. For those letters I may do something different… we’ll see. For now, those are at the end of the list so we have time to think of something.

And the 3rd page is this: A tracing page from Making Learning Fun. The yellow dashed line in the letters is there if you look hard enough! I have attached a dry-erase marker to the inside of the binder with velcro. He can use the marker to trace the letters, then erase with a piece of felt which will be kept in the pocket.

I’ll be keeping a list of our crafts on the sidebar under “Our ABC Book”. I’ll also include a link to them in my weekly Tot School posts, where you'll find any other activities we did for the letter of the week.

I’m excited about this, and eager to go through the letters and phonics a little more quickly than we have been. It will be a fun ABC book in the end that M can look through and “read” on his own.

I’d love to know if you have something similar and what you do about those troublesome letters out there like X and Z. :)

Have a beautiful day! :)

Quick Traffic Light for your Little Driver

M was driving his little spiderman truck around the house this morning, and occasionally he would stop with a blank look on his face, totally staring into space. I finally asked him “what are you doing? (meaning, are you OK?)”. He said, “I pushed on the brake and stopped because the light is red.” “Now it’s green again, bye Mommy!” :)

Now, it really is ok to let your kids just do their thing and not interfere, but whipping up a little traffic light for him seemed like such a simple thing and I was in the mood. So… here’s what I did. No pictures for most of it, yet once again. (Sorry!)

• Empty your close-to-empty tissue box
• Take it apart and put it back together inside-out.
• Tape it up with packaging tape.
• Use your coffee cup to draw 3 circles on red, green, and yellow construction paper.
• Tape them to the front (what used to be the inside of the bottom) of your box.
• Give it to your kid.
• Watch him drive up to it and stop. Hope he knows he can pretend the lights change. :)

Have a beautiful day! :)