Alphabet Days (SUPER LONG POST!)

So we've been working on our alphabet. Lucy can sing the ABCs by herself, but her letter recognition needs some help. 

I'm KIDDING!

She is only 2 :) I don't expect her to know her ABCs already, but I would like her to start becoming familiar with them. We've only done A and B so far. But we have had fun and she is already starting to ask me what certain letters are. She will also pretend to write and she'll say random letters as she scribbles! 

Today we were at Daddy's school and she saw the Y on the hill. She pointed and said, "Yooke, mommy, a X!" She was SO excited to see it. I had to tell her it was really a Y and it stood for BYU. She called it an X a few more times, then she called it a Y. 

Here is the list of sites that I got our ideas from. I am not very creative when it comes to coming up with these things on my own, so I am INCREDIBLY grateful to others who post their creative ideas for me to use! 

OopseyDaisy Alison has a BUNCH of super fun lesson plans. She is very thorough in what she covers. She was a 1st grade teacher and is now a stay-at-home mom. Love her blog!

No Time For Flashcards has a list of upper and lower case letter activities. There are some cute ideas on here too!

Totally Tots has an Now I Know My ABCs section with books and activities to use for each letter! Our library never seems to have these books, but we have used the activities and found fun books while searching for theirs.

Making Learning Fun has some fun ideas for activities and printables to go along with popular books. 

There are probably other sites that I have gained inspiration from, but I cannot remember them...So, if anyone finds them PLEASE let me know so I can give due credit! Thanks!

A

Our first A activity: "Ants on my As"

I cut out an upper and lower case A. We glued it on the paper (with a glue stick) and stuck our fingers on ink pads (I only had pink and purple-they were given to me) and put them on the As. 

Then we added little legs and antenna to the fingerprints to make ants! 

I think she had more fun with the ink than making them into ants. 

But its all about the process, right?

 We made an Apple Tree! Oh my, Lucy LOVED this! I told her I had a tree for her to color and she said, "Oh, Thanks Mommy!" "I color a tree?" I wrote As on the trunk and the tree top and she scribbled over them while she colored the pieces.

 The 'apples came from some christmas pom poms that were falling apart. This was her first time using normal glue and she thought it was SO much fun.

I spelled out "apple tree' while I wrote it and Lucy wanted to write the words too. This was so much fun.

 Next (and as in next I mean five minutes later) we made and ANT! When we finished the tree Lucy looked at me and asked 'What else?' So I asked if she wanted to make an ant and she got very excited! I pulled out her paints and let her pick the colors. Three colors of brown held her over for a while, but when she got to the head she decided she wanted some variation!

 Our ant got some yellow, blue and green on it too!

 Little man didn't want to feel left out...so he played with everything while attempting to climb up on the table and over to the paint!

 Our finished 'beedle'...or ant. She calls it a beetle :)  

(and the rag used to wash hands became her 'Mary' hat)

Little man got his wish....a wet paint brush.

The ant activity took a little longer than some attention spans would like, so I think when we do this in the future I will pre-cut and put together the pieces and she/he can just paint them. 

B

 To introduce our Bs we made some blue bubbles (using food coloring and a little bit of bubble mix) and using a straw colored our Bs!

 Munchkin thought it was a blast!

 The bubbles stopped getting blown when she discovered she could make bigger bubbles by blowing into the bowl!

 We did have and incident of inhalation (hehe, i shouldn't laugh, but it was pretty funny) she quickly learned you only blow out with bubbles not in :D

Our Bubbled Bs

Our next B activity was making butterflies!

We used coffee filters, some pipe cleaners (chenille), and finger paints. 

I didn't get pictures of her coloring them (drat) but she and little man really liked getting their fingers all goopped up with paint and smearing it everywhere :)

They now decorate our fridge! I love them!

Our other B activity (we're doing a couple more the next couple of days) was putting together a mini version of "We're going on a Bear Hunt". Lucy and Cole LOVE this book! I had never heard of it before (Devin knows the song) and we have had so much fun reading the book and doing different activities with it. 

 Here we are gluing on snow flakes to the snowstorm page.

Well, that's all for now folks! We have been having fun with our letters. I'm exited for the activities we have coming up!