while i am home, and as the dreaded decision of wither or not to send dash to kindergarten in the fall looms, i decided as his momma we needed to start working on this letters. at first i asked myself, ugh isn't this what he goes to preschool for? should i, as his momma, be doing this? so i decided to ask him what he thought. i approached him with a sheet full of letters and said, "hey dash, would you like it if momma helped you work on learning these at home sometimes?" when he replied. "sure momma, i love to do work on numbers." i knew i had no choice. thus began the letter of the week project.
once we established that those little weird symbols are letters, not numbers, it was on. my little dash man has shown me time and time again that he is an old school, direct approach, paper and pencil learner. ew, but whatev. this methodology goes against everything i practice as a professional, but as i know and respect, all kids learn differently. so we start each letter week with a good old fashioned workbook page. dash uses a marker to trace and practice naming and writing the letter in both upper and lower case. we also do a fun little corresponding letter page as well.
after this we paint a letter just for fun, and to allow him more time to look at, and trace over the shape of the letter. we will display these letters in his room like this:
once we are all finished. cool, right?!
on another day we will do a project related to that letter. since we are on "a" we created Apple print paintings. simple. dash paints an apple and stamps his paper with it. dash had a great time, and was so impressed with himself, he decided to add it to his wall of fame, aka our refrigerator.
please feel free to try any of these ideas at home with your little, even if you aren't doing a letter adventure. sometimes as a momma i find myself drowning in days of pb&j, laundry, shhhhhhhhhhh-ing sounds, and nick jr. yes, its true, it happens here too. so, these little projects and activities help me to make sure i when i watch my babies sleeping next to me at night, i don't feel toooo much guilt about a day wasted.
they love. i love. win/win.
