Phonics Flip Book

Ages ago I saw a phonics flip book over at Activity Mom.  I made one for M thinking it was appropriate since she knew all of her sounds.  (I say she knows all of her sounds, but really she knows typical consonant and short vowel sounds.  At this point I don't think she needs more than that.)

Well, M was totally disinterested.  I put it away for several months.  And now both she and E are a bit interested in it.  Maybe I should share that this is minimal interest.  She'll read a few words and E likes to flip pages and say letters.











I cut a spiral bound 3x5 booklet into thirds.  Consonants are placed on the first and third sections, and I wrote vowels in the center section.  (I repeated the vowels several times.)

It's fun to read familiar words, but it can be more fun to say the silly words.

I think a phonics flip book is fabulous for a beginning reader.

Fabric Letter Fun

I had these fabric letters completely cut and backed with paper that prepares it to be appliquéd.  M saw them and claimed them for her own!  Since they were stiff, she couldn't hurt them.

Very soon (before Saturday) they will be part of two gifts for two friends that are celebrating their birthdays.  Any guesses?  I've shown it before on this blog!

I'm glad we don't go to many birthday parties!  I don't have much time to sew!  I actually looked downtown (small town) in the card and gift store for something appropriate, but I didn't find anything.  So I resorted to sewing a gift.  Doesn't make much sense, huh, especially since it won't be great quality.  Well, I figure if I can steal 15 minutes here and 30 minutes there sewing, it will be better than trying to shop at a store which, with the drive, would take almost 2 hours.

I already have the fabric purchased to make this fabric letter alphabet!  The Activity Mom has a different version, too!  I can't wait to make those!  Apparently, they will be a big hit when completed!

Word Fun

Our daughter, M, is almost 4years old.  She has always had a love for learning.  That has benefited her very well with the way she has had to overcome apraxia, a speech disorder.  She worked (and continues to) very hard with speech therapists and teachers to learn how to produce basic sounds.  Then she learned to put sounds together and eventually made words.

Now M's love of learning is spilling over into the written word.  She knows all of her letters and the sounds they make.  (I attribute this mostly to the Leap Frog Letter Factory DVD and highly recommend it for ages 2-4.  Of course that was combined with good old-fashioned learning at home and school, but the video is what helped her before age 3.)


M also loves to spell her name.  Now don't misunderstand me.  She no longer likes to write or trace her name.  But she will sing it, paint it, and BUILD IT!  This is a tower of the letters in her name.  She was playing with an alphabet puzzle (available at dollar stores), when she made her name and then was incredibly proud of the tower that went with it.

She made me a proud mom when she went on to spell "cat," and I quickly grabbed the camera.  Cat is a word she has learned how to spell.  It's more memorized than sounded out.

I asked her to spell "pig" for me, and I helped emphasize the sounds while she chose the letters.

Before long M proved that she is, indeed, just three years old (almost four).  She wanted to spell map, and insisted this was the correct spelling, despite knowing it begins with /m/.

I will be linking this up at the great site ABC and 123.  Go to see more great fun and learning ideas!

Alphabet Practice

We used this puzzle just for fun before M was even 2 years old. Now that she knows the alphabet, we pop the letters out of the puzzle and put them in order. Notice she still flips some, but that is still developmentally normal. It is fun to say the sounds the letters make after they are in the lines. Of course we put the letters back in the puzzle for storage.

Last year when M was still learning to talk, we taught her to say "pop" each time a letter came out. She still does it out of habit if she doesn't say the letter name.

Adam and Eve

I will apologize now. Pictures are lacking for this post, but I will still share with you what we did last week as we talked about Adam and Eve and read it in the Bible.

My big focus attempt this week was talking about obedience. It still seems pretty hard for M to understand the word, but I'm sure she knows when she is not obeying us.

I don't like to say the fruit that was eaten from the tree was an apple since the Bible doesn't state what kind of fruit it was, but we did do some apple related activities.

• Cut an apple open to see the star and counted the seeds. (There are always five seeds from my understanding.)
• We made apple prints. We used red paint on yellow paper. Very sharp!
• One special apple print was a single apple. We glued the apple seeds to the middle and M drew a stem. (We looked at an apple with a stem to choose the color first)
• We snacked on apples and applesauce.
• We made applesauce. (This was actually this week, but that's okay, right?)
• We sorted "A" and "a" on two different apple mats. It is a Hubbard's Cupboard activity. You can find it here. It held M's attention very well. She also did very well sorting the letters. She was very proud of her apples, too. Find it here. (I printed these on half sheets of paper. Once again, I don't want to be wasteful of ink or paper.)

M made this easy coil snake. We looked at some pictures of snakes on-line, too. M is certainly too young to understand the reality of Satan, but I thought it was an appropriate activity.
The only book from the local library I could find was Adam and Eve: The Bible Story by Warwick Hutton. It was very clearly biblical with great illustrations.
We did watch The Beginners Bible: The Story of Creation (which included the Fall). We borrowed it from our church library for Creation week and was pleased it included this since it is so abstract.

DIY: Personalized Name Stamp

We made a name stamp. It's just another way to have fun with letters and recognize a child's name. An older child might enjoy making unique "stationary" without the help of a computer. Materials Needed: wooden blocks scrap foam with sticky back exacto knife and mat (or cardboard) pen or marker On the white paper backside (NOT the foam) write letters or numbers. I just used a pen. Though it didn't leave ink on the paper, it left an impression that I could see. When you look at the foam, the letters will be reversed. This is necessary for the stamp. Cut out the letters and/or shapes. Place them on the wooden blocks in the reverse order. The shape stamps are about three inches tall. It was a good length for little hands.

If you have a large ink pad that would be nice and simple. I used a folded paper towel covered thinly with washable paint. A plastic lid is under it (for protection).

The blue on blue turned out well. I noticed the foam doesn't hold a lot of paint, so the stamps are rather light, but still leaves a nice picture behind.

This is fairly simple to make. If you don't have access to wood scraps, I'm sure a small sturdy box or glued together cardboard would work too. In the past I used a wooden ABC block from the toy chest. The paint absorbs into the wood, though, so I don't recommend that. :)

Name Game

It's important for children to recognize their name as an early reader. I know M isn't even three years old yet, but I made a little word game for us to play.

I printed a picture of each of our family members, and typed our names four times using four fonts.

Since this can be used when E is older, I laminated the pictures and the name cards.

To play, at this point, I tell M what each word is and she matches it to the right picture and say it. I also emphasize M for Mmm-ommy I'm sure at some point she will begin recognizing the names herself.

For smaller families, you could even include pets, as Mama Mel suggested in the comments.

(Should I tell you that picture of me is from last summer when I was pregnant?! It was the only decent picture I could find! How pathetic!)

This later became our Family Name Game in a file folder.  (Click link for more info.)