The Letter "A"

Today, Little One (19 months) has been assessed to be 36 months old developmentally so we are beginning our own brand of homeschooling on pre-school level.

Our letter focus this week is the letter "A".
Our goal is to learn to recognize our letter in written form, uppercase, lowercase, phonetically, and in English, Spanish and Sign Language.
I'm not expecting that all to happen this week. The weekly letter focus will give us a good foundation and fun ways to remember to incorporate our letter into every activity.

This afternoon, we painted outside with mixed media.

We used:
Yellow Paint
Red Paint
A Red Bingo Blotter
Salt
Glue
Felt scraps


Here Layla is painting with red and asking for the yellow paint in sign language.
She is using "sign approximation" or her interpretation of the correct sign. The correct sign is made by creating a fist with your hand, keeping your pinky finger and thumb out in a Y shape. This is the sign for the letter "Y". If you twist your letter "Y" from side to side, it becomes the word "yellow".

We also made a Tactile letter "A" with paint and salt for texture. We will be making different types of tactile letters throughout the week.
Tactile letters are cut out letters or letters pasted onto cards that a child can physically manipulate by feeling the shape, size, and texture of the letter to improve memory and comprehension of the letter.
Tactile means relating to the sense of touch and it is a part of kinesthetic learning (learning by doing -or experiencing rather than being told).

Here is Layla's finished masterpiece and our Tactile letter "A"


Later on, we made all natural playdough! This was Little One's very first playdough experience and she went NUTS.
At first she thought it was food (which I assumed she would) but she soon was very excited to learn that she was allowed to squish it and smoosh it all she wanted!
We made an "A" and repeated the letter and letter sound before she went wild with the playdough.

After taking the "A" apart, she smacked, squished, smooshed, seperated, shook and screamed, "WHOA! WHOA!! WHOA!!!" with giant smiles and laughs.
That excitment definitely made cleaning up playdough pieces from the ceiling, floor and walls worth it. :)