Learning Our Letters in Creative Ways

Hello Family and Friends!  This week we had the pleasure of learning more about transportation on land. The kids learned about how we travel with cars, trucks, bikes, feet and animals.

On bike day, we included dad and went for a bike ride to the park! When Jon is available, I love to include him as much as possible.

It has been an excellent week of learning, even if sometimes our homeschool time looked like this:

The reality of teaching/learning with a toddler, is that sometimes it does not go well! This particular day, Hope wanted to spend most of the time in my arms... So thats what we did! She learned (a little), Jonathan learned (hopefully), and my arms and back got stronger! Ha! 

Mother Goose Time had some excellent activities for learning letters this week! We took full advantage of the games to learn the letters "D," "J," and "U".  We will be working on these three letters (though I usually have Jonathan learn more) for the entire unit.

Jonathan loves the color green... Can you tell?

One of the activities we do every week with Mother Goose Time is fill out and color a letter book. The kids color them and then practice reading the words that begin with that letter. 

MGT also has the children forming the letters out of letter pieces every week. The kids love this activity because it is just like a puzzle! I usually bring out all the letters we have learned this year in order to review. Also, I have them go over the sound of the letter they are working on and name a few words that begin with that sound. 

One of our favorite activities this week was the "Letter Roll." I improvised on the supplies as I thought the kids might enjoy using their car tracks to play this time. The kids had so much fun doing this activity, I left it set up for the rest of the day and they played with a while longer. Here are some more photos of the fun:

 There was always a celebration when the ball made it all the way to the correct letter. Such a neat idea!

Another favorite activity this week was called "Walk on a Path."  I adjusted this activity for my early reader (Jonathan). Instead of calling out the letters, I gave him a simple word to read and he walked the path to the first letter in the word. He is working so hard to learn to read! I am so proud of him. Here are some awesome videos and pictures of him learning his words and letters. 

I love this video of Jonathan participating because it shows the reality of learning with a toddler in the room. Hope played for a while, but then got distracted as 2 year olds do! Instead of reading words, Hope got a picture and walked to the corresponding letter.

I always feel like these blog posts aren't given enough thought and time in my life, but I am so glad to be doing this! This blog has been an excellent way to me to reflect on the quality of our learning... It gives me a new perspective on ways that I can improve and on the ways the children are learning so well. I am so excited to see what this year will bring for the children, and also for myself as I develop into a homeschool mama.