Brainstorm in Bloom: Awesome Letter A (Alphabet Wall)

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Awesome Letter A (Alphabet Wall)

My 4 year old (Roly Poly) and my near 3 year old (Firefly) are starting our official Alphabet Wall! I did this with my 6 year old (Hornet) and it was so much fun! The letters appear in somewhat a random order because I let them choose what letter and SOUND we will do each week. We talk, sing and do a craft (or 2) with each letter and then add the letter to our playroom wall (in ABC order).

A week was awesome! We had an apple party with our friends and then played with alligators (Roly Poly’s favorite reptile), ants (my boys love all insects) and an abacus!

For the rest of the Alphabet, go HERE!

Enjoy this
Awesome A for
(Seedlings ~ preschool age)...

What we did for the Awesome Letter A?...

Alphabet Wall:
Apple Prints ~ Just cut an apple in half. I like a vertical cut but a horizontal cut makes the cool start in the middle. Then dip the apple in paint and get stamping. We used apple colors of red, green and yellow.

Books:

*Read The Adventures of Abby Alligator (Alpha Tales book) and The AB Book (Bob Book Pre-Reader)

*Read a few Apple books ~ Ten Apples up on Top by Dr. Suess – a classic that every child should hear, Apples, Apples Apples by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace and Apples by Gail Gibbons!

*Read some Alligator books ~ Alligators and Crocodiles by Gail Gibbons and Alligators by Steven Otfinoski.

Art/Crafts:

*Apple prints ~ see above

*Ant Hill~ We used a black ink pad to make ants on a tan paper. They also added some details with black pen! Then we put glue down and sprinkled sand to make an ant hill.

Activities:

*A Hunt ~ The kiddos went around the house hunting for things that started with the letter A. We discussed some of these things before we started…airplanes, apples, alligators, anacondas, animals, art, ants, etc.

*Apple Bobbing~ Good old fashioned apple bobbing is a blast!

*Abacus ~ I made a game for the abacus but it proved to be too difficult for my younger boys - they just wanted to push the beads back and forth but not do anything structured. My 6 year old liked the game though - check it out here.

Letter Formation:
*A with Hand ~ put fingers together at top and thumbs together in the middle to make an uppercase A.

*A in the sand ~ we use an orange powder drink for our sand but anything soft and fine will do!

Music and Movement:

*Alligator Looking for Some Food in the Morning song ~ check out Perpetual Preschool for the motions and words!

Snack:

*Apple taste testing ~ we gathered several different types of apples to taste from different friends’ apple trees! It is fun to see how different they taste. We also had some apple cider.