Aa is for Apple

I started a Letter of the Week preschool program with the girls last week!  I'm mostly using the ideas and printables from Confessions of a Homeschooler.  

(a blog) 

We are planning to homeschool for preschool, and possibly more than that.  Not because we think public school is evil, or that everyone should homeschool, but simply because that's what we feel we are supposed to do, at least right now.  I've prayed about their schooling for years now and Joel and I both feel pulled in this direction.  Every family and situation is different and we feel like this is what's right for our family at this point in time.  =)

So here we go!

This was a cut and paste activity.

Here we matched lowercase and uppercase A's to the ones on the tree.

Shape matching.

Arranging apples according to their size.

Counting apple seeds and putting the correct number in the box.

Gracie glaring at Ava for daring to touch the game during her turn.

(She gave me this same look the other day when I mistook the Q she had drawn for an O.  She glared at me and said, "That's NOT an O, that's a Q."  And then glared some more.  HA!  And sure enough, she had drawn the line that makes it a Q.)

Floor Numbers.  This is a fun game where I tell them which number to jump to.  This was Sunday afternoon, after getting home from our trip Saturday evening and going to Sunday School the next morning.  Hence, the very messy living room!

Working on Do-A-Dot pages.

Tracing the letters and coloring.

Then using some fun stamp markers to put A's on the apples.

Then cutting and gluing apples on, just for fun.

Emphasis on the cutting!

Lacing an apple.

Lining ants up according to size.

Doing an ant puzzle.

Gracie wanted to play with these blocks one day and suggested we make 'a really big G!'  So we made an A as well.

We ate apples.  Yum!

These are Poke Pages.  You use an oversized push pin to poke holes in the shape of the letter.

Then hold your paper up to a light or window...

And see what you made!

I found this game at Big Lots and they really like it.  Each worm is a different color on the bottom and you have to match them up to your cards.

We made some letters out of play-doh.

And a few random letters out of pipe cleaners.

We colored a neat sign language paper.  I'm planning to laminate them after they color them, hole punch the corner, and put on a ring to make a 'book' that they can refer to.  They ask me to show them signs for various letters all the time.

(Wearing swim suits because they were going to go swim, but changed their mind so we did this instead.) 

Lacing an A.

Letter Hunt worksheet.  Read the story and circle all the A's.

We rented some books about apples and how they grow from the Library.  One of the books was about making apple pie so we decided to make one!

They also learned from the books that there is a star inside the apple.

They loved poking holes in the crust with toothpicks.  We ended up with a zillion holes!

They also loved cutting the extra dough with scissors.

An action shot:

We won't win any awards for it but I thought it tasted pretty good!  And more importantly, it was a fun learning experience.  =)

Next up:  Bb for Butterfly! 

(and Banana Bread!)