The Letter A

Over the past few weeks, Emmett and I have been working on the letter Aa during our Tot School time. He did a great job and seemed to have a lot of fun in the process.

 I drew the letter A (not the best but it worked) and added a few dabs of paint. I intended for Emmett to use his fingers, but he refused. So, I hauled out a paint brush for him to use. He was so proud of his A he showed his dad as soon as he got home, and he made us hang it up in his room.

 I printed off this apple page from 1+1+1=1. I put it in a sheet protector and gave it Emmett with a red Expo marker. He "traced" it while I talked about the letter, sound, and things that start with the letter A. He loves using markers so this was a fun activity. He liked coloring it, erasing, and starting again.

 This was working with his colors. Emmett is great with matching like colors most of the time. He has a hard time with the  names. I printed this apple page with color names on it from 1+1+1=1. I laid the crayons on the right apples for him. He colored the apples really well. We are working on his grip. Here he's actually doing it pretty well in this picture. He usually holds everything at the very end. I named the colors as he colored. The next day I gave him colored buttons, and he matched them to the apples he colored. He did it pretty well. He needed some help, but he kept wanting to do it again. Each successive time he got them right without help.

 If you have a young child and have not heard of Do-A-Dots, you should. They are so fun and the kids love them. I printed off the sheet from Confessions of a Homeschooler. She does a Do-A-Dot page for all the letters. Emmett did pretty well staying somewhat in the shape. However, when he got all the circles he did start to go a bit nuts.

 These color apple puzzles were fun. He was good at matching the correct colors together, but not about actually putting the apples together correctly. Mommy had to help with that part. I also got these from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

I was surprised by how much he liked this activity. I laid out number cards 1-5 and we counted. Then we put the red "apples" on each number (red buttons). I would say the number and then Emmett would put right number of apples on as I counted along. Once we got to 4 he needed a lot more help, but because I put no extra buttons out on the table it worked well. He wanted to do this like 5 times. The kid likes to count!

We did a few other things I didn't take pictures of. We made an apple out of a paper plate. Emmett had to rip paper and glue it on. Ripping paper is a really hard thing for him. We'll have to do more of that. He also had some more activities with the Do-A-Dots, which he loved.

We had a fun time with the letter Aa for apple. We are going to be doing the letter Bb for ball next. Hope you have a great week!