The Life of a Running Momma: Weekly Learning Theme: Letters

After multiple weeks dedicated to holidays and events going on I found myself with an unplanned learning theme week. I couldn't decide which theme I wanted to focus on. I was going back and forth between numbers/counting and letters/alphabet. I finally decided on the alphabet because I'd like to introduce letters right now and revisit the theme later on when Carter is better prepared to learn letter names and sounds. The objective of this week was simply to expose Carter to letters and get him talking about them more. He already excitedly exclaims "lelers!" when he sees them on billboards, menus, street signs, etc. So I know he has an interest. Going into this week he knew Cc for Carter, Dd for daddy, and Pp for Paul. Dd and Pp are great letters for him to start with as they are constant consonants and only make their /d/ and /p/ sounds. Cc is an obvious letter for him to pick up because it's the first letter in his name, but it's a little trickier as it makes the /c/ and /s/ sound and many words that begin with Cc have beginning blends, for example cheese, where you don't really hear the /c/ sound. My plan was to constantly expose Carter to letters, seeing both the lower case and upper case letter, and hearing their letter sound when seeing them all while having fun.

Listed below are the objectives I am focusing on for the themed weeks. I have updated our objectives from the original ones we focused on because Carter mastered those skills. I plan to continue to implement activities to practice and reinforce our previous objectives while putting more emphasis on our new objectives. Some of them won't necessarily be targeted with specific activities during our weeks, but I wanted to list them to help me remember to practice them continually. The highlighted objectives are ones Carter received exposure to during our theme this week:

Take turns in a simple game.
Understand the meaning of mine, his, hers.
Group objects based on a category (sort by defining feature). Since Carter was doing so well sorting by shape and color I already started having him sort by other features.
String beads or other objects.
Count to 3 and understand what the numbers mean. Carter can count to 3, but we're still working on understanding what each number means.

Activities/Movement:

We played with an alphabet puzzle my parents got Carter for Valentine's Day. First I just pulled it out and Carter looked at the letters while exclaiming "Lelers!" Then he pointed out the Dd and said "D for Daddy". He also pointed out the Cc and the Pp while saying "C for Carter. P for Paul." Then he pointed at different letters and I'd tell him the name, sound, and a word that starts with that letter. I then used the puzzle to point at the letters while I sang the ABC's and then sang the ABC's using the letter sound rather than the letter name. After all that we took the puzzle apart and put it back together.

I put together an alphabet sensory bin for Carter using rice and foam letters that were part of a puzzle I got in the dollar spot at Target a while ago. I'd hide letters and have him find them. I'd also point out letters; telling him their name, sound, and a word that starts with that letter. I'm always careful to choose a word that actually uses that letter's typical sound. For example I use Carter or car for c rather than circle because circle doesn't start with the /c/ sound, it starts with the /s/ sound. When we do this weekly learning theme when he's older and knows his letters better I would hide the letters under the rice and ask him to find specific letters.

My Great Aunt Kathy gave me an awesome alphabet animal train book with finger puppets when I first started teaching (she is now a retired kindergarten teacher, but was still teaching at the time). Carter loved playing with the finger puppets. When he'd pull one out I'd tell him the letter on the train car, it's sound, and what the animal was he had. When he was ready to put the finger puppet away I'd tell him the animal's name and the letter it starts with and then ask him to find where it went. He'd find the empty train car and point at the letter. We'd review the name and sound of the letter. It was a blast!

Checking out all the animal finger puppets on the train.

Playing with the dog finger puppet.

I got out an alphabet coloring book for Carter to color pictures in. Before he colored he wanted to look through the book and read the pages. Then he chose which pages he wanted to color. Tt for tiger has been a favorite in many of the different activities we've done.

Looking through his alphabet coloring book before coloring.

A favorite for Carter that we do many nights is play with his letters in the bathtub. He has foam letters that stick to the side of the tub. He likes to find the C and tell me C for Carter while sticking it on the wall. He also finds D for daddy and P for Paul. Then he'll ask me for certain letters. He'll ask for Mommy so I find him M and tell him M for mommy /m/ /m/ /m/. I always repeat the letter sound 3 times so he gets lots of repetition hearing the sound. We keep going until he gets tired of the game. It will be fun when I can ask him to find certain letters and he fishes them out. Even more exciting will be when he can use them to form words!

During our shape week I got out shape roads I had from school and Carter drove his cars on them. I also had letter roads I used in my classroom so I pulled those out. Carter enjoyed driving the cars on the roads while I told him the letter name and sound. They will be a great way to practice handwriting later on so he sees how to form the letters and can practice in a different way.

Originally my plan was to start a letter of the day during our alphabet week. In first grade students are supposed to master 100 sight words (words they can't sound out and need to be able to just look at and know as they are some of the most commonly used words). To help students learn their words I had a password for the day which was one of the sight words. To enter the classroom they had to say it, spell it, say it. Not only were they saying it, but they were also hearing other kids say it. It worked great. So when I was thinking about working on letters with Carter I thought, why not use that same idea for letters! I made letters on card stock using foam, popsicle sticks, fabric, and other materials that would stand out from the paper. The first letter I decided to do was Cc since Carter already knows it pretty well and it is at the beginning of his name. I taped the letter to the front door and each time we leave I have Carter say the letter name, the letter sound, and a word that starts with the letter. So he says, "Cc for Carter, /c/ /c/ /c/" just like I do when I show him letters. While he says it he runs his finger along the letter to feel it's shape. After the first day I realized we don't go in and out the front door enough to get that much practice so I decided to do a letter of the week. Each week we'll have a different letter. I'd also ask Carter to show me our special letter during different times of the day so he could get practice with it even though we weren't going out the front door. He really enjoyed it, but we'll see what he thinks doing 26 of them.

Feeling the foam letters before I hung them on the door.

Practicing his letter before heading to the park.

Shaving foam was a huge hit during our winter themed week, so I decided to pull it out again this week. I showed Carter the alphabet puzzle, sang him the ABC song, and the ABC sound song. Then I set the puzzle on my side of the table and covered his side of the table with shaving foam. I pointed to letters on the puzzle and then drew them in the shaving foam. I asked him to try drawing letters and he did pretty well drawing a C. After that he wanted me to make letters in the shaving foam and would ask me to draw certain letters. It was a blast and could really be differentiated for older learners. Once Carter was done playing with letters in the shaving foam I let him get a couple of cars to drive in it and make tracks.

Trying out writing a C.

Carter asked me to make Dd for daddy.

Possibly our favorite game of the week involved our letter blocks. First I got out all the letter blocks and arranged them in alphabetical order. I sang Carter the ABC song and letter sound song while pointing at each letter as I went. Then I let Carter play with them for a while getting them all mixed up. On a chalkboard I wrote the first half of the alphabet and I had Carter grab a block out of his mixed up pile. I showed him the upper case letter, told him it's name, what is says, and a word that starts with that letter. Then I had him find the matching letter on the chalkboard and squirt it with a water gun to erase the letter. After practicing with a couple blocks I realized I wrote WAY too many letters on the chalkboard at once, so we started over and I just did 3 letters at a time. It was much easier for Carter to find the matching letter that way. It was also really cute because he'd put the letter blocks on the shelf below the letter written on the chalkboard and then start squirting the letter on the chalkboard. He had a blast with this game and enjoyed getting to squirt the water gun into the sink to empty it of water when we were done.

Building with the letter blocks.

Erasing the J after erasing the first few letters he pulled out of the pile.

Playing with fewer letters and blocks worked out much better.

For Christmas my mom got me a giant jug of cookie cutters. Inside there was an entire set of letters. I pulled them out and we played with them using Play Doh. Carter loved grabbing letters he knew and telling me what letter he was making. I also made letters by rolling the Play Doh and showed Carter my letters. The whole time we played we talked about letter names and sounds.

We also played with magnetic letters using the magnetic chalkboard in the nursery. While we moved the letters around and stuck them to the board we talked about letter names and sounds. A fun activity when he's older would be to ask him to pull a certain letter off the board or put it on until all the letters are either on the chalkboard or pulled off.

A while back I bought a giant alphabet floor puzzle at a garage sale. Carter and I put it together while talking about the letters on the pieces. Then he wanted to get cars to drive on it so I came up with an idea for a game involving the cars and the puzzle. We'd drive a car across the puzzle and then say the letter that the car stopped on. It was a lot of fun and after we'd done it for a while Carter drove his cars all over the puzzle.

Driving cars on the large alphabet puzzle.

Craft:

Carter absolutely loves stickers right now so I pulled out letter stickers and he made a picture. He'd tell me what letter he wanted if he knew the letter name or the name of something he wanted the letter for. For example, he told me Fezzy so I pulled off an f for him to put on his picture. The whole time I'd follow my regular procedure for practicing letter names and sounds as he placed the stickers.

Coloring on his letter sticker picture.

Asking me for a letter.

Using the foam letters from our sensory bin, Carter made a letter painting. He would tell me a word he wanted to make and I'd give him the letter that the word started with. Then I'd tell him the letter name and sound. The foam letters worked perfectly as stamps and it was so funny to see Carter grimace and work so hard to push them down. It was definitely a bit exaggerated!

Special Snack:

For lunch one day we had alphabet chicken noodle soup. Carter loved it and would excitedly show me a letter he found either telling me what letter it was or waiting for me to tell him the letter name. When he ran out of noodles he said, "Mommy, more looloos, please!" It was so cute. It was so much fun seeing him get excited to find the letters at the bottom of his bowl.

Make Believe:

We didn't do anything alphabet related that fit into this category during the week.

Songs:

Obviously I sang the ABC song to Carter. I also sang the same song using the letter sounds rather than the letter names. Our reading specialist at school always encouraged us to practice the song that way with the students and I loved the way it connected the letter sounds and the letter names by using the exact same song and tune.

Field Trip/Interactive Experience:

I had planned to go on a walk and search for letters as we walked. We ended up doing our walk on a day when there was still snow on the ground. Instead of searching for letters on our walk, we drew letters in snow. Carter thought it was great fun and even tried to mimic the letters I drew in the snow, using a stick to draw.

Trying to make a C in the snow after I drew one.