A is for Ambulance Magnet Page

Free to download here from Making Learning Fun


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Letter A: A is for apple - capital letter

This is from Making Learning Fun and can be downloaded here - I also created a lowercase version many years ago here.

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Letter A: A is for Alligator puzzle

Free for download from Lawteedah.

Click here for a whole page of alligator activities and other general letter A stuff.

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Letter A Tracer Page

Free for download from Lawteedah.

Click here for a whole page of alligator activities and other general letter A stuff.

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Z is for Zebra Colouring Page

Z is for Zebra Colouring Page

This colouring page is part of the alphabet colouring series from Activity Village and each shows a capital letter and the animal.

A is for antelope colouring page

A is for Antelope Colouring Page from Activity Village 

Letter U: U is for unicorn:magnet page

Free to download here from Making Learning Fun

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Magnetic Letters and Fridge Magnets

Sooner or later it happens to us all.  We fall off the wagon and stop doing something which we had been doing all the time.  It may be the exercise classes, the grocery budget, the toddler group which is great but just a little too far away from home, with me it has been blogging.  We have had an interesting last few months which have involved moving the kids and me back from Germany to the UK and therefore starting a new school and this in itself could be why the blogging has taken a back seat but in reality it was that my laptop broke.  B decided that the keyboard was thirsty and poured apple juice into it; the resulting gunge under the keys meant that the laptop thought the semi-colon key and the F4 key were being pressed and either booted up to the password window and didn't recognise the password or thought that I had wanted to go into system recovery instead of Windows.  Add the this the dodgy number pad where OH dropped his laptop on mine and the fact that the monthly Internet allowance for Broadband of 15GB was used by R and A in four days (thanks UTube!  Germany and the Netherlands have unlimited broadband for a monthly fee - a much better system than the UK) and so I couldn't download anything at all even when it did decide that it was going to work today.  OH kindly bought and fitted a new keyboard for me this weekend so now I have no excuse!

A and R are also struggling to get back on their own wagons; in their case reading scheme books for school.  They both love books - we have what is jokingly called "the library" on the landing outside their rooms but lets face it reading scheme books can be books for the sake of learning the words rather than books which are a good story.  The school they are at now is much more committed to raising the standards of its students and gives a certificate at the Celebration Assembly for any child who has done reading at home three times during the week - A was really disappointed not to get one this week so hopefully next week will be a different story.

Meanwhile B continues to lose interest in any activity that seems to be learning based ("No Counting!") and so I decided that we needed a set of magnet letters like these ones for him to play with to build everyday familiarity. These simple things have conquered the globe to become a bog standard image of early childhood learning but they are about £8 a set in the UK (WH Smith prices) and you need a lower case set and an uppercase set.  It is also difficult to use them to spell more than simple words as you generally only get one of each letter.  

I decided that it might be more interesting to make our own letters.  A local supermarket was selling tumbled stones - normally used to flower arrangements I think- at ridiculously cheap prices and "buy one get one free".  Add to this a paint pen in gold and a strip of cut to size self adhesive magnet strip (like this one Flexible Adhesive Magnetic Tape (1/2"x 30" Roll)) and this is what you get.  

Much more tactile than bits of  plastic and B who is a sucker for stones like most toddlers has been stealing them to play with before the magnets are even stuck on most of them.  R immediately fell in love with the gold pen and we also decorated some to just look pretty for our fridge.  

Right off to make a "Reading for School" chart to help with other wagons!

Playdough Mats - resources for download master list (last update 15 Jan 2012)

Playdough mats are perfect for combining learning with fine motor skills.  A is the kind of learner that these would have appealed to when he was B's age - hates writing, loves fiddling with clay/dough or anything mucky; if only I had known then what I know now etc. etc. etc.  Before I head off to make my own I thought I would do a general round-up of those already out there, If I can avoid doing the work myself it makes sense right?  For my playdough recipe I'm going to stick with the one from Prekinders (the link is included in this post).
Of course since the simplest playdough mats are images with circular spaces for balls of playdough you could also use any of the magnet pages or bingo marker pages out there as well.
Just a word about making these re-usable.  Most of the ones I've seen images of are laminated.  If you choose to go down this route and your little one really likes these kind of activities then it could get very expensive; I'm paying 20 Eurocents per pouch myself (plus of course the cost of inks).  Instead of laminating I'm using document pockets- the kind of page protectors that you can pop into a ring binder, it is faster than making a laminated sheet, can be reused and can also be filed away easier.
Anyway onto the master list (I'll be updating this post as I find new resources):

Numbers and counting
1-10 by Tired Need Sleep (autumn theme - scroll down for link)
11-20 by Tired Need Sleep (no particular theme)
Counting playdough mats on a food theme from sparklebox
Rocket playdough mats 1-10 and 11-20 from sparklebox - make the playdough stars to go round the rocket
Christmas counting mats from sparklebox
Winter counting from sparklebox
snowman counting
Number words to 10 from sparklebox
Ladybird numbers 1-10 from TES Resources

Simple addition
crocodile dice game from sparklebox - roll the dice and make playdough teeth to add to the croc's mouth
flower petal addition from sparklebox

Alphabet and letters
playdough snake letters from Make Learning Fun
our own a is for astronaut magnet page
our own a is for apple magnet page
our own b is for balloon magnet page
our own c is for cat magnet page
our own c is for car magnet page
our own d is for dinosaur magnet page
our own f is for frog magnet page
our own l is for ladybird page
our own p is for panda
our own r is for rabbit magnet page

spelling and words
Brown bear mats from Make Learning Fun

Misc
Make a face from Sparklebox
Cherry Pie (part of Thanksgiving theme ) from Prekinders - playdough mat is halfway down the page
Transport themed playdough mats from Sparklebox

Letter S: s is for sun: Alphabet file Folder Game

Alphabet matching game to go with our "s is for sun" theme (although it could also be used for a weather theme).

The sun alphabet was downloaded free from Sparklebox.(click here to download) - the letters in the set are A4 sized but we scaled them to print out four to a page.

Having cut out the first set of letters A and R volunteered to glue them into the file folder. (we used two folders stuck together to make sure there was enough space)

The second set of lowercase letters was laminated to allow one to one matching.  B can pretty much do this on the pattern alone but it gives us a chance to name each of the letters as he finds the match.  The game can be taken to the next level by making it a lowercase to uppercase matching game using the complementary uppercase letters from here.

B was so keen to play this he grabbed each letter as I cut it from the laminate, all(!) we need now is to get him to realise that the letters have unique names.

letter e: e is for egg: Easter Egg Matching Activities - our homemade version

After writing Muck Monsters: letter e: e is for egg: Easter Egg Matching Activities for download we had a change of heart.  Instead of using our printer ink we decided to make our own easter Eggs.  

First a plastic lid was cut to shape and then we used this template to draw around to produce our eggs.  

Then we coloured them in - a group effort which all the children helped in- each one is unique to make the puzzle a little easier for B.

A helped me laminate the eggs.

R cut them out and A cut them in half.

Here is the finished result.

B enjoyed cracking the eggs (complete with sound effects) and then putting them back together!

letter e: e is for egg: Easter Egg Matching Activities for download

Looking forward to Easter this is a free download from the people over at Sparklebox to match upper and lower case letters.

I would save this one for older kids as although there are a couple of egg backgrounds they are reused for multiple letters and so not unique.

Another free download this time for numbers rather than letters is from Confessions of a Homeschooler.  (lots of activities on this page - the Easter Number match is about halfway down)

We tried this one last year but it was counting so B would have none of it!  This year at the grand old age of three we will try again but i won't hold my breath. Again the backgrounds are not unique so the very littlest ones may struggle.

Learning Resources:sandpaper letters and numbers

Recognising letters is a precursor to learning to read.  Most of the letters that you read are lowercase so why start with uppercase letters? "Been there, done that" as the saying goes.  Yet whenever you see letters written down in learning materials it is always the uppercase letter that is displayed first - interesting convention huh? No? Just me then.
Anyway after a bit of a false start I have started again with B and learning letters (he just wasn't interested last year).  This time however I decided that it would be a good idea to take a leaf out of the Montessori book and use sandpaper letters for tracing with his fingers.
Now as you can see from here these things come in around $20 (or more) for each case (or here for UK customers at £25 per case).  Way too much for most budgets I suspect but it is fairly simple to make your own.

1. First get some fine grade sandpaper - after all I want texture but not to hurt his fingers. 
2. Then you need to get something to mount your letters onto.  "Proper" Montessori letters are mounted onto wood but then they are designed to be used day in and day out by lots of kids so I decided that thick card would do. I didn't have any mounting card (the kind used for mounting pictures in frames) when I went to look.  I have a feeling it has been used by the pink sparkly kid for drawing and making her own books out of... so instead I recycled some of the double thickness corrugated cardboard moving boxes we still have kicking around with coloured paper stuck on the front.  Not so pretty but it will do.  Choose the colour of your backing card carefully - again "the real thing" uses different colours for vowels and consonants.
3. Print your letters out using a sans serif font (that is a font without the "twiddly bits" like arial, comic sans or d'nealian).  A font size of about 400 point will give you letters of about 4-5 inches high depending on the font you use.  Cut these out.

Stick these onto the back of the sandpaper sheets -saves on fiddly tracing ;)  .  Flip the letter over before you stick on the back of the sandpaper, forget this at your peril or all the letters will be mirror image!

4. Cut each letter out using a craft knife (you can get cheap ones from discount stores  - sandpaper will ruin your scissors!) and stick onto the card rectangles.

Whilst we were at it we decided to make a set of numbers too.

 Let the learning begin!

Letter B: B is for beans

We did quite a lot of things on the B is for beans theme whilst the bigger kids had their halfday of school on Wednesday.
1.We stuck beans on a B.  Good for fine motor skills.

We used a glue stick for this one as I know B likes to use this as it is the glue used most often by the bigger kids - not today though as you can see from the number of beans we actually managed to get onto the paper.
2.We counted the beans and stuck them on.

This was more successful as I put dots of PVA glue onto the paper and B matched the beans to the dots.  Then I made the mistake of getting him to count them "Not counting" is the favourite chant we get whenever we do this.  Yep I have a 2 year old who can recognise most of the lowercase alphabet but can't count to 10!
3.We made a bean sensory box.  Biggest hit of the lot but we were going for a mini-meltdown by this point so no images.  You know what a sensory box looks like anyway right?
4.We used two types, beans and lentils, and (tried) to sort them into big and little.  B just wanted to use the bowl with them in like another sensory box activity so we went with the flow.

Some days you just have to pick your battles ;)
When we had finished R noticed this pattern on one of the beans - all totally natural, no cheating I promise!

Learning Letters: Reinventing the Wheel

Why reinventing the wheel? Well the ultimate aim of teaching your little ones letters is to get them to read and write- obvious isn't it.  Alongside letter recognition we have been watching phonics DVD's  (Fun With Phonics and Alphablocks - both from the BBC) and using Jolly Phonics Workbooks 1-7, all of which use lowercase letters.  We even managed to find Chicka Chicka Boom Boom on YouTube  which starts with the lowercase letters (although some uppercase letters make an appearance).   Even your average piece of type nearly all the letters are lowercase.
But when you look at the learning resources I have been using like the magnet pages from Make Learning Fun

they are uppercase. How confusing must that be to a 2 year old?  So in the interest of consistency we are starting again and using lowercase letters first.  Of course this means producing my own magnet sheets etc.  (hence re-inventing the wheel) but there you go.  Resources to follow shortly (I hope - I'm nothing if not the laziest person on the planet sometimes).

Letter A: A is for Ambulance

"B needs to learn his letters" I said to OH the other day. At 2 he is a little young but if he were in the UK he would be spending a couple of afternoons a week at our local nursery just like his brother and sister did. Where to start with learning letters? Some advocate doing it ABC order, some linking it with reading/phonics and so doing those letters that have the same sound whatever word they are in which roughly translated means vowels last. Jolly Phonics (which was taught to the Reception Class at my kids UK school) starts with the letter "S". I decided that reading can wait and stuck with alphabetical order so "A" it is.
For the first "A" activity I took a picture of an ambulance (I used the one from http://www.first-school.ws/) and dropped it into MSPaint. Then I painted out the wheels. Next I dropped the same picture in and painted out the bodywork instead. This left me with two sheets.

I then cut out the wheels and gave them to B along with the other sheet and (fanfare please!) a glue stick. You have never seen such a happy toddler because whenever we do gluing normally his sister interfers; I mean helps; and takes the glue stick away from him. Not only that but he could pull the wheels off and stick them down again several times - Wow! As you can see he got them pretty much spot on too. With an older preschool child they could cut the wheels out themselves.
He didn't feel like colouring today so it will get displayed au naturelle later in the week.

Learning the alphabet:alphabet frieze

How many millions of alphabet friezes are there in the shops -all cute as can be and costing a pretty penny most of them too. This is an idea for a basic lowercase letters only frieze that you can add your own pictures to later as you introduce each letter to your child. Of course I couldn't resist using it as cutting with scissors and taping with sellotape practise too!

We took plain white A4 paper and divided each sheet into six squares. In each of the squares we wrote a letter of the alphabet (in a random order). Next time I intend to use a tracer font(wherethe letters are made of dots) and get my son to write them in himself but I just didn't think of this until too late!

For the background we stuck sheets of coloured A4 together with sticky tape to make a long strip.

Get child to cut the white paper squares out and place in alphabetical order. Tape onto the background using sellotape.

Fix to the wall.

As an ongoing project add pictures/photos of examples of things that start with the letter from magasines or the childs own drawings etc in a line under each letter.