Friday, October 7, 2011
Preschool Alphabet Boxes
I have a confession to make...I'm one of those homeschool moms that love to collect books, resources, ideas, project books, and anything academic related, but then I'm the worst about actually using all the resources I have collected over the years! To use what I have would require me to sit down, focus on it, plan it out, and teach it and I am too easily distracted by anything and everything. :) Can anyone relate? :)
But, for the past couple of weeks, a good friend of mine and I were talking about my 3 year old and how she can be a little bit of a distraction while I'm homeschooling my older three children. By the time I plan out my older three children's lessons over the weekend, I'm tired of planning so I didn't really plan "school" for my preschooler. By "school" I don't mean some elaborate program, but just some things to keep her busy and make her feel a part of our school day. My friend suggested I sit down with my preschooler for 20-30 minutes first thing in the morning and spending this little bit of one on one time with her could make a difference in the flow of the day.
So I dug out all the preschool resources that I have collected through the years, blew off the dust, and I'm finally using them to do "Alphabet Boxes" with my 3 year old first thing in the morning before I work with other children on their lessons.
Here is a picture of the boxes, each box labeled with a day of the week.
So what do I put in the boxes? Here are some of the ideas I put in the boxes:
We are working on one letter per week. So far we worked on "Aa" and "Bb". So each day I put an alphabet book in the box and look at the letter we are studying. Sometimes I put in coloring pages that have the letter on it. On Tuesdays, I have my daughter lace a picture that begins with the letter of the week. I made these by copying an image from one of the many resources I have, color it, laminate it, then punch holes with a hand-held hole puncher. Then my daughter takes a shoe lace to practice lacing the shape. Here she is working on the apple I made for our "Aa" week.
On one of the days the box has Handwriting Without Tears letter cards and Roll-A-Dough in it so she can make the letter with the dough.
In the Friday box, I try to put in some sort of art activity in it that relates to the letter for the week. During "Aa" week, my daughter made this angel from the Catholic Icing's Catholic ABC Preschool Book.
This past week we did the letter "Bb" and one of the activities in her Monday box was gluing beans onto the capital "B" and lowercase "b".
So far it's been a treat to sit down with my big school girl each morning and work with letters with her. Everywhere we go she has been pointing out A's and B's, the letters we have covered so far! It's amazing how much she retains during our simple and brief lessons.
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I'm Tracy. I love my faith, family and on most days, homeschooling my 5 blessings. When I'm not busy baking cakes for my family or making memories in real life or dreaming I had a housekeeper or professional chef, I enjoy documenting a slice of Smith life in blog land.
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4 comments:
Thanks for posting...nice post. Also, I thought you mom's may be interested in the newest kids craze in my town, Patch Hats! Check out a hat you have never seen before here at www.patchhats.com
Great job with your littlest cupcake. I don't know how you do it with 4 kids being various ages. I struggle with just 2:) I love to collect resources too and have several that have never been opened cause I haven't gotten around to it yet:( Problem is we don't have the space to store my "resources" so they are taking up very valuable space in the house:( Voted for you today
I really enjoyed doing the letter of week with my younger kids last year. Great idea to do the lacing cards! I too am guilty of "collecting" stuff and never using it :)
What great ideas!! I think those are the hardest ages because they are mentally everywhere! Thanks for sharing this with us. I especially liked the clay letters.My 3 year old LOVES clay and I think this would be a great way to help her with not only her letters recognition but also her hand motor skills.:)