I am trying to teach James his letters by sight and sound. Normally I would jump at the chance to go out and spend money on books. It is a reason to spend, right? Well, I am trying to retrain and reprogram myself. I want to be a different kind of American person.
So anyway, I found a great small library close to home that has a lot of homeschooling resources. They have a million books to check out to read to James about each letter of the alphabet. I also got a great book with activities for each letter. I haven't had alot of time to try everything but I have made a letter box.
Each week I write the upper case and lower case letters on two sticky notes and use packaging tape to tape them on. Then I fill the box with anything I can find around the house that starts with that letter. I keep the box on a shelf up high and just get it down once a day to look through it with James. We also add things to the box as we find them around the house. I also checked out this Dr. Seuss ABC game. It's a little too old for James but we have fun using the cards as "train tickets". Haha. He has such a great imagination.
I try to read him the letter books everyday. I don't stress if he is getting it or not. The time and focus is what is important.
I am especially happy with this series of books by Jane Belk Moncure. They are so fun to read and really keep our attention. There is a book for every letter and every case. There are also books for each sound you can make with letter combinations. When we are all finished with the ABC's we will move on to phonics.
As soon as I finish this post I am planning to make my own ABC's game. I am going to write the whole alphabet on note cards. Then I will pin one on to my apron and let James search through all the cards on the floor to find the matching letter. I think playing Scrabble works well for this too. We did that yesterday. Anyway, the book that I forgot to take a picture of with some good ideas is: ALPHABET THEME-A-SAURUS: The Great Big Book of Letter Recognition. The publisher is Totline books.
Hope you enjoy this glimpse into my life with little ones. Leave me a comment please if you have any other good suggestions!
--Mary
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