Next week brought to you by: The Letter “A”

I originally thought I wanted to start at the beginning of the alphabet when I began this series. At least after we did “e” for ear. But after deciding on “e” and “a”, I realized I wanted to start with letters that had body parts associated with them so that we could begin identifying those. So, in future weeks we will be exploring letters like “m”, “n”, and “h”.

For now, the letter is “a”. No facial parts for this letter but plenty of great stuff to teach! We will be focused on “apples” and “alligators” though.

Here is what we are focusing on for the week.

Books:

We read tw0-three books each morning after breakfast. This seems to be the best time to get him to sit without wiggling and stay engaged. Here are the books that I got:

• My “a” Sound Box by Jane Belk Moncore, illustrated by Colin King (there are a series of these for lots of letters and sounds so you will be seeing them frequently on my list)
• Alligators All Around (The Nutshell Library)by Maurice Sendak
• Apples (Harvesttime Welcome Books)by Inez Snyder
• Eating the Alphabet: Fruits & Vegetables from A to Z (Harcourt Brace Big Book)by Lois Ehlert (focus on letter A)

Activities:

• I can’t think of any friends or immediate family members whose names start with “a”. If you have some, print their pictures and place them on a wall or near the changing table and point to them and pronounce their name often.
• We will pull the “a” magnet off of the refrigerator and played with it many times. Also kept it within his grasp on the refrigerator.
• I have a set of letters and number bath toys and we will place the “a” in the bathtub for playtime. We will also place a plastic toy apple in the tub.
• Daddy and grandma have also joined the fun when they are interacting with him at playtime.
• I also got a few books on “alligators” so we will talk a bit about them and touch some cards that have rough surfaces.

Sounds:

• “aaaaaa”
• “arrgghhhh”

Songs:

Looking for some songs to teach your child? Here are some that we will be singing this week:

• Apples And Bananas by Countdown Kids
• Alligator by Jack Alessi

Foods

• Apples – We are starting into eating pieces of fruit so I will make sure there is opportunities for us to talk about apples and for him to eat them. He also likes to eat (while very supervised) chunks of apple off mine when I am eating it. This is a great activity for us to do together.
• Avocados – we have these pureed and might try them as finger foods this week as well.
• Apricots – fresh ones are in season right now so you might try introducing this fruit to your child.
• Asparagus – I won’t be giving this to Isaac but if you have a child that is ready for trying a new vegetable, why not? Just make sure that it is cooked to the desired tenderness depending on their age.

What Else?

What else would you do when focusing on the letter “a”? Any activities or games that you have done in the past? No matter the age of the child, feel free to add your favorite books, songs, foods, activities, and more below in the comments section. We would love to hear them and share them with others.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 22nd, 2009 at 10:44 am and is filed under Chatter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.