The Smith Family Adventures

It was the second week of our letter of the week activities in the Smith household. Elias is enjoying the letter songs and books. He is able to hear the “A” and “B” sounds in words that we’ve studied I think, but he isn’t necessarily applying it to any word he hears yet. When I ask him if he can think of any words that start with “buh” he says baby and boy and beans and other words we’ve talked about a lot. At least something is sinking in…and we’ve had a lot of fun to go along with it.

B was a hard letter for me to plan for because there was so much we could have done. A lot of words start with B! We could only choose seven of them, but for the rest I tried to point them out throughout the week. We talked about the fact that Elias is a brother, and Simon is a baby, and that they are both boys. We talked about Baba. We played baseball with a bat and a ball. We looked at the blue sky and the black pants and the brown bridge. We crammed a lot in this week!

Letter B Activities for our week:

Saturday: B is for balloons.

On Saturday, we went to a birthday party for one of Elias’ friends. I thought that it would be a good day to do B is for balloons. There were balloons at the party. When we got home, I blew up some of our own balloons and we batted them around in the air. I wanted him to play the game where you see how long you can keep the balloon from touching the floor, but he was more interested in just throwing it up, then grabbing it and rolling on top of it. Those were some tough balloons! I was amazed that they didn’t pop.

Sunday: B is for boat

I planned this one for Sunday so that Daddy could be home to participate. Daddy loves Science, and did some experiments of his own as a kid. For this one, I got some aluminum foil and and tub of water. The boys built boats out of foil to see which ones floated the best. Do large ones float better than small? Do flat ones float better than tall ones? We put some goldfish crackers in there for fun, but by the end they just ended up making a big mess…I wouldn’t recommend that part. The whole thing was a simpler version of something I saw on Sesame Street once. Both Daddy and Elias had fun!

Monday: B is for beans

I purchased a bunch of pinto beans from the store and threw them in a tub. Then I threw in some measuring cups, trucks, and other fun tools. We made a dig pit out of beans. I got the idea from a friend and thought it would be perfect to try out this week. It was a huge hit! When I first got it out for Elias, he played with it for an hour or so straight. Every day since then he has asked to play with the beans. He loves filling and pouring and hiding things underneath the beans. The only thing I didn’t know was how dirty beans are! His hands were pretty much black after playing with them! Simon also had fun watching Elias play. I bet the clinking sound of the beans against the different cups was fun for him to hear.

Tuesday: B is for bird

One of the items on our spring bucket list is to learn about hummingbirds and put something on our balcony that attracts them. I thought this was the perfect opportunity to “kill two birds with one stone.” I checked out some hummingbird books from the library and read them to Elias. The two best ones I could find were, About Hummingbirds: A Guide for Children by Cathryn Sill and The Hungry Hummingbird by April Pulley Sayre. We learned about how they eat and what they eat. We learned about how they fly in all sorts of directions. And…we learned that they are attracted to the color red. We almost chose a hummingbird feeder, but those are much more maintenance than I am prepared to commit to at this point. So instead, we bought a red geranium for our balcony. We may add more flowers as spring progresses. But until then, mission accomplished!

Wednesday: B is for butterfly

Elias upset that I was making him wear the headband.

I’ve been wanting to help Elias develop his imagination. I’ve been modeling a lot of imaginative play lately. I thought it would be fun to dress up like butterflies and fly around the house. I got out some headbands and pipe cleaners to make antennae, and some blankets we could use to flap for wings. I have to say that this activity was a total flop. Elias did not enjoy it. He did giggle a lot while he watched me “flap” around the house. But he did not enjoy making the antennae (the pipe cleaners bent too easily and did not curl easily enough so it was frustrating for his toddler hands…you can see from the pictures that they didn’t turn out very realistic). Then, Elias did not want to wear the headband. Oh well. These activities can’t all be winners I guess.

Still trying to take off the headband

Thursday: B is for books

I had originally planned to do “b is for bear” today. I had a paper bag puppet activity all ready to go along with Goldilocks and the Three Bears. But Elias actually napped today so we didn’t have any time together without Simon there. Plus Elias woke up tired and a bit clingy. So I bagged the bear activity and did B is for books instead. All three of us sat in the rocking chair and read some of Elias’ favorite stories for thirty minutes or so. We looked for B words in some of the books as well.

Friday: B is for Babel

Friday is our Bible story day. Actually, when I thought of B words in the Bible, the first thing that came to my mind was Barabbas. But I decided that I could come up with something better than that. I decided on the Tower of Babel. We will read that story tomorrow!

It all started with nap troubles. When Simon was born, Elias pretty much stopped napping. Well….he naps on average once or twice a week, but it seems like it is rare to never! We started implementing quiet time a bit before Simon was born, but needed it a lot more when Elias started giving up the nap. He’s only 2 and a half! He needs a bit of down time/rest time. Quiet time worked well for about 10-20 minutes, but I wanted him to be able to play, read, or rest quietly for at least 30 minutes. Then, we can work up to longer times when he is older. So I wanted to come up with something to help him stay engaged and focused in his room rather than laying on the floor kicking the wall or opening the door and tossing a stuffed animal out or getting everything out of the dresser drawers.

Letter of the week was born….in my brain anyway…I’m sure lots of other people have thought of it too. I started creating activities for Elias to do which would develop his letter/sound awareness since he already has the letter identification part down. Then it kind of turned into a bigger project.

Each week we will be focusing on one letter. I’ve decided just to go in order of the alphabet, so we started with A this week. For quiet time, I printed out some letter A books for Elias to read and look at. You can get them for free here or here. I also made him a letter A puzzle. Each piece of the puzzle has a picture of a word which starts with A. I made some other activities which I may share later with pictures and everything.

After quiet time, baby Simon is usually asleep so I created some activities for us to do together. Here is what we did this week for A:

Saturday: A is for Apple

We made an apple pie! Elias loves helping me make cookies, so I thought this would be a fun “next step.” He helped measure the ingredients, roll the crust, mix the insides…well pretty much every step in the process! He was so proud when we put it in the oven.

Cutting the butter into smaller chunks.

I am always prepared for a mess when I let Elias bake with me, but this one was extra large!

Getting the bottom pastry just right!

Spooning in the apples

Elias, proudly showing off his pie before it went into the oven.

After we put the pie in the oven, I talked to Elias about the letter A. (I’ve chosen just to go with short A to reduce confusion). I sang him the letter A song which he loved and wanted me to sing over and over again. By the end of the day, he could tell me what sound A makes, but couldn’t answer when I asked him what words start with A.

Sunday: A is for apple (again)

Since it is our first time doing this, I decided to stick with A is for apple for the first two days. We did apple stamping. Elias loves art so this one was a big hit. At first he just wanted to spread the paint around with the apple, but once he realized that he could make a loud noise by “stamping” the apple instead, he got right to it.

Stamping with the apple

Spreading the paint around

Monday: A is for Ant

On Monday, I taught Elias “The Ants go Marching” song, and let him water color a picture that says “A is for Ant.” He still was not quite seeing the correlation between the letter and the sound, but I was not worried. We were having fun, and there are a lot of letters in the alphabet.

Tuesday: A is for Alligator

On Tuesday, I read Elias The Lady With the Alligator Purse. He loved it! He is still asking for me to read it over and over again. Then, we made an alligator card together. He decided that he wanted to give it to Baba so he decorated it, and I helped him write “baba” on the inside (he held the pen and I moved his hand).

Elias gluing on the googly eyes.

Elias reading the story again after he finished decorating his card.

Wednesday: A is for Astronaut

Elias did not know what an astronaut was before this. So I decided to check out some books from the library about astronauts for him to learn from. We read them together and talked about missions to outer space. I used I Want to Be an Astronaut by Byron Barton and Astronaut Piggy Wiggy by Christyan and Diane Fox. Before reading the stories, I told Elias that we were going to learn about astronauts, and asked him if he knew what letter the word astronaut started with. He said he didn’t know, so I said, A-A-A-A-Astronaut, and he said, “It starts with A”

Thursday: A is for Animals

Today Elias took a nap! It was amazing! While he was napping, I hid some of his bean bag animals around the room. When he woke up, I told him it was time to go on an animal hunt. He was a bit skeptical of the activity at first…but I think it was because he was tired. (You can see his amazing nap hair in the pictures below). But by the end, he was running around looking for animals, and ended up rehiding them all himself so that he could play again. Afterward, I asked Elias what letter he thought a-a-animal started with. He said A. So I started asking him other words. Does banana start with A? Does turtle start with A? I don’t know yet if this is really working to help him develop letter sound recognition, but it’s fun anyway!

Our animal hunt started out a bit slow, but picked up pretty quickly.

Elias was very excited to find the “caterpillar” (That is what he calls it…I think it is supposed to be an inchworm.

Friday: A is for Adam

I’ve decided to have Fridays be a Bible related lesson so I chose A is for Adam, and tomorrow we will read about Adam and Eve from his Bible.