W Stuff

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak is, perhaps, the ultimate W book. When the Elephant Walks by Keido Kasza was a new find that worked well, too.

Activities

Water Print



This was fun. We had some styrofoam packing leftover from unpacking Talmage's bunkbed. We carved waves in the styrofoam with a knife, then inked the styrofoam using blue paint that we blotted on with a paper towel. We then made prints by placing a piece of paper on the inked carved styrofoam and pulled them off. It was a good introduction to printmaking.

Water Music

We took five tall glasses, filled them with varying levels of water and hit them with spoons. We could almost play Mary Had a Little Lamb.



I totally stole this picture off the internet. But until Tyler takes pictures for me again, this will have to do.

White Whale

We printed off this coloring page on blue paper and then used white chalk to color the picture. We set the chalk with hairspray.



A white crayon would have worked well, too.

Window Painting



I bought these window painters from the grocery store.

Treasure hunt. wall, wallet, watch, water bottle, window. The treasure was Whoppers.

V Stuff

Activities

Vote. We let the people make their voices heard. We called various family members and Talmage asked them "What do you like the most, apples or oranges?" We then kept track of their responses on this chart:



After we collected our data, we made a bar graph to compare the two:



Talmage pointed out that my orange line was much closer to the five than the four. I was about to be defensive when I realized that meant he understood the graph. Good work Talmage.

Vulture. We printed out this template.

Painting the picture with watercolors mixed up the activity a bit.



Vegetable soup.

This soup was delicious. I ate it for a full week.

Here is the recipe.

Violet painting.





I thought our violet paintings had a kind of Morris Louis feel to them. If Morris Louis only painted in purple.

Treasure hunt. vacuum, van, vase, vulture. The treat was a Dove chocolate bar. Red Vines would have been even better.

U Stuff

This has been the hardest sound of all to stick with. It's been hard for Tal to shake the idea that even though U starts with the "yuh" sound, it doesn't make that sound. Neither does it make the sound "wuh." We did the best when he could remember that U is for umbrella (as every alphabet book has taught him, and then to listen for the beginning sound.

You know, the fact that he can listen for the sound that starts a word is a huge testament to his progress. In fact, this week he started sounding out words in his books. As long as the letters in the words make the sound I've taught him, he can do it. Last night he sounded out cat, pig, dog, duck, jump, just, spit, and stuck. I was pretty proud of him.

For U week, we looked up books in the library catalog that had umbrella and under in the title.

Activities.

Umbrella. This is where I found this craft. We took a paper plate, cut it in half, colored each half on both sides, cut slits in the middle (from bottom to half way on one and from top down half way on the other) and joined them to make an X. We used four wooden dowels for the handle.



After we hung raindrops from the umbrella.

The Worm is Under the Apple. This idea was born from my learning that a preposition is anything that a worm can do to an apple (the worm is over the apple, the worm goes through the apple, the worm is beside the apple, etc).



Game for two players. Each person starts by rolling a single die. Move the number of spaces as proscribed by the die. If you land on an apple, you place the worm pictured below near the apple pictured below. The other player (in order to take the next turn) says where the worm is in relation to the apple. If they do so correctly, it's then their turn. If they do so incorrectly, the original player gets another turn. First one to the end wins.




Treasure hunt. umbrella, underwear, upstairs. The treat was Hubba Bubba Bubblegum. I know. It's a bit of a stretch.

T Stuff

No memorable books.

Activities.

Turkey. We traced Talmage's hands on red, orange, and yellow paper. Then we outlined his shoes on brown paper. We assembled the turkey like so and then added eyes, beak, legs, and the wobbly red thing.



Turtle. I stole the idea for this craft from here. We tore up orange and green paper and glued the pieces to a paper plate. We added feet, a head, and a tail. Oh, and googly eyes.



Tie. Tyler started being a principal and so Tal and I made him ties. I cut them out. We added bling.



Talmage was disappointed when Tyler didn't wear them to school.

Tambourine.



We took two paper plates (the stiff kind) and decorated the outside. We then put lentils in the middle. I'm pretty sure I've been hanging on to those lentils since the WIC days. Glued around the rim.

Tic-tac-toe. The game. We played it.

T treasure hunt. table, tail (the dog's), tape, tire, towel. The treasure was tootsie rolls.

S Stuff

Now that I'm a year into this project and I'm doing phoenetic sounds like SN, SP, and SW, I realized that I did S all wrong. All of this projects belong under a different phoenetic sound. Ah well, I'll correct it with Asher.

We discovered the Scaredy Squirrel books by Melanie Watt. Besides being great S books, along with Mo Willems, they are our favorite picture book finds of the year.

Activities

Snakes.



We made playdough. This is our favorite recipe:

• 1/2 cup salt
• 1 cup flour
• 1 tablespoon cream of tartar
• 1 tablespoon oil
• 1 cup water

Mix the above ingredients over low heat. When the ingredients get doughy, remove from heat. As it cools, mix in food coloring. The cream of tartar in this recipe makes the playdough last as long as you keep it in an airproof bag.

After mixing the dough, we rolled snakes.

Splatter painting.

We went outside to the driveway and laid down an old sheet (forever designated as our painting sheet). I mixed tempera paint with some water (so it was a bit runny). We then took brushes and splattered. Pretty cool, huh?



Jackson Pollock's got nothin on Laura and Talmage.



Potato Stamps.



Simple enough. Take a potato. Cut in half. Draw or trace the design you want as your stamp onto the potato. Cut around the shape you just drew or traced. These cuts only need to be about a quarter-inch deep. Slice from the side of the potato about a quarter of an inch deep towards your shape. Be careful to stop when the extra piece of potato is loose. Do not cut through your shape. You shape should protrude out from the rest of the potato. Use either paint or an stamp pad to ink your potato. We used a stamp pad.

Thank you ehow for explaining it more clearly than I did.

Swirly circles. Okay, I cheated. I really wanted to do this and ABC Stuff doesn't allow for the soft C. Hence the swirlyness of the circles.

We folded the paper in sixths, drew circles in crayon, and then watercolored solid colors over the crayon. I thought they looked awesome.



S treasure hunt. salt, sandals, scissors, sea star, sink. The treat was Skittles.

R Stuff

So, I'm a little behind in updating the blog. This is for a couple of reasons. One, I lost my scanner and need to get over to my mom's house to scan. The other reason is that round about U Week, Talmage lost enthusiasm for the project. I didn't want to push him into it--I wanted it to be fun and not a chore--and so I lost enthusiasm for updating the blog. But cute sister-in-law Sarah linked the blog to hers, so I feel the time has come to finish ABC Stuff. Also, Talmage was reading words last night (as long as they are composed of letter sounds that sound like what they are supposed to) and so his excitement for letters has been rekindled.

The real problem? While we did stuff for P through V Week, I've forgotten a lot of it. So I'll do my best to recreate it, but the books in particular are probably going to suffer.

Activities

Rooster.

I wanted to find a rooster that was distinct from a chicken and a turkey. This is where I got the vision for this project, and I tried to make a template to mimic these shapes, but it kind of exceded my photoshop abilities:



So in the end, I just eyeballed the shapes using the above picture as my guide, and ended up with the parts to make this rooster:

Insert picture here.

In the end, I think that this was one of the projects that involved more grown-up cutting and little toddler involvement.

Rainbows.

We took a pyrex plan and filled it with water. Then we used a small mirror and propped it up at an angle. We positioned the mirror so that the sunlight hit it and then observed the rainbows on the wall.

We talked briefly about how a rainbow is light shining on the rain, and then we used watercolors and painted "rainbows."

My rainbow:



Talmage's rainbow was a little more free:



Red painting.

I mixed three colors of red. We painted. Voila:



R treasure hunt. rake, rattle, recycling bin, roses. The treat was Rolos.

Q Stuff

For books, we searched the catalog for quilt, quail, and quiet. We didn't find any we LOVED, but Quiet Bunny by Lisa McCue wasn't bad. When we looked for letters, I pointed out that Q is always followed by U and together they make the kwa sound.

Activities.

Quilt.



We talked about how quilts are like a puzzle and they are made up of little pieces that fit together to make a blanket. I showed him the gorgeous quilt Gail made for Tyler and me when we got married. Then we made our own paper quilt with pieces from this template and this template.

Quail.



I looked at several pictures of quail and improvised a paper bag puppet. The essentials were the black feather on the head and wings. Talmage painted the bags brown and I added the details. And, of course, googly eyes.

Simpler puppets work better for Tal, but with Q, I didn't have many options.

Question Game. Tyler would like credit for this idea.



I created these templates.

The back of the cards:



Front with one set of animals:



Front with second set of animals:



Then I printed the images on yellow paper, cut them out, and laminated them.

We then played a game where one person puts a card on their forehead, animal side out, and then they have to ask questions to find out what kind of animal they are.

It was a big hit.

Treasure hunt. queen, quilt, quail, question game, quarter. The treat was Hershey's Kisses. I know. It doesn't start with a Q. An internet search gave me Quench Gum and I thought of finding the mystery flavor Dum Dums with question marks on the wrapper, but I ran out of time.

P Stuff

Activities

Three Little Pigs. Another flannel board success. I found these coloring pages online. I got the pages here.

I cut them out and Talmage watercolored them. Then I faux laminated them, sandpaper on the back and voila! Three Little Pigs story.

Insert video here.

Paintings at UMFA. I was going to do this for M Stuff (museum) but then ran out of time. We went to the Utah Museum of Fine Art to look at paintings. I got on their website before hand to pull images that they had on display (I called their education office to verify). I then made a chart. Charts are all the rage at our house right now.



We then looked through the displays for these works. It was much more successful than I imagined and he did his art historian Mama proud.

Pomander Balls.

One of the best things about ABC Stuff is that we are festive at all the wrong times of the year. What's more fun than Christmas in June?

These are pretty easy. Citrus fruit. Poke with a pencil and insert a clove in the resulting hole. Other instructions involve ribbon and cinnamon, but we stuck with simplicity.

Treasure hunt. paint, pencils, puzzles, panda bear, pants, piano, popsicles. The treat was a Push Pop.

O Stuff

This week I did a specific library catalog search again. I searched octopus, ostrich, and otter. Cowboy and Octopus by Jon Scieszka was probably our favorite. Okay, it was my favorite. I kept trying to get Talmage to pick it at night.

Activities

Octopus Windsock



Piece of paper. Talmage chose blue. I glued two together so that it would be long enough for eight legs each a ribbon width long. I trimmed the paper width-wise and then let Talmage color it. We glued on googly eyes and then attached 8 ribbons for the legs. I tied yarn at the top so we could hang it.

At the end Talmage was very clear on the fact that octopi have eight legs.

Ostrich

We printed off this coloring page. I thought it looked a little cleaner when we cut it out and glued it on colored paper.



Orange Painting




I mixed three shades of orange. Then we painted.

Treasure Hunt. octopus, omelet, otter, ostrich. The treasure was Oh Henry bar (nobody makes treats with short vowel sounds).

N Stuff

The Napping House by Don and Audrey Wood worked well.

Activities

Nose Stuff. When we did this, Talmage let us know that this was his Sunbeam lesson in church last week. We talked about noses and what noses do. Then we talked about different smells. We gathered various smells from around the house (vinegar, cinnamon, rose petals, soap, dirt, lemon zest) and then we blindfolded ourselves and guessed which smell was which. When daddy got home we tested him. He got 4 out of 6.

Numbers. Talmage knows how to count to ten, but beyond that, he takes random stabs at numbers, and thirteen and eleven come up several times. Gail (award-winning mathematics instructor that she is) suggested we learn how to count beyond twenty and even up to one hundred so that he can catch the pattern.



I made numbers in "families"; 1-9 in white, 10-19 in green, 20-29 in blue, etc. Then we counted to ten and lined the subsequent numbers up in rows underneath. That way he could see the patterns numbers make.

I don't know that I'm explaining this well; hopefully the picture will make sense. We got through the 30s and that was about all his toddler brain was ready for.

Nest. We printed off this coloring page. Then we cut out the eggs, put them in the nest, and glued the whole thing on green paper so it looked like it was in a tree. Then we talked about what nests are and how birds make them soft with sticks and feathers. Talmage then wanted to add sticks and feathers to his nest.

I thought it was a nice touch.



Treasure hunt. nail clippers, napkin, neck, necklace, nest, noodles. The treasure was nerds.

M Stuff

This week was FABULOUS. The creativity was flowing rivers. RIVERS.

My favorite childhood book, Mother, Mother, I Want Another by Maria Polushkin Robbins, was a perfect M book.

Activities

Mosaic.





Our neighbor, Ida, who is wonderful in all things toddler, gave us a big bag of small colored squares. Talmage and I used them to make mosaics. Then we looked at images from the Mausoleum of Galla Placida in Ravenna:



Talmage looked for a while and then said "I'm all done, Mom."

Mailboxes.



Woah. I didn't forsee the wild success of this project. We took three boxes, wrapped them in different colors and then decorated the outside. You know, old school elementary Valentine's boxes. Then we put one in mommy and daddy's room, one in Talmage's room and one in Asher's room. Now periodically throughout the week, I write mail to various people. Not frequently enough for Talmage, who checks his mailbox for new mail roughly fifty-seven times a day.

Map Hunt. Talmage loves looking at maps at the zoo, so for this hunt I made four maps of the floorplan of my house (something tells me that isn't something I should post on the internet). Then we found the star that marked where we were and the star where we wanted to go to find the next map, and followed the map. Talmage was shockingly good at it. The last map guided us to a treat.

Masks. We didn't actually do this, but when I do this with Asher, we should decorate masks.

Treasure hunt. milk, microwave, mirror, macaroni, mom, and mailbox. Treat was M&Ms.

L Stuff

Great week for books! This is because we discovered Little Pea and Little Hoot by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. New favorites. I think I might frame some of Jen Corace's illustrations from Little Hoot to hang in Talmage's room.



Looking For a Moose by Phyllis Root was also a winner. Plenty of Ls with long-leggy moose.

Activities

Cyanotype Leaf Prints



My very favorite activity yet. Cyanotype prints are a basic photograph printing process that uses a photo-sensitive solution on paper that when exposed to light turns blue. Any area that is covered when exposed stays white.

We talked a little bit about leaves--that they are green, that most things growing outside have them, and that that's how a plant eats--and then gathered leaves in our yard. Inside we compared the shape and size of the leaves. Then we made prints from the leaves.

The Internet explained to me that it wasn't hard to make my own paper. What was even easier, though, was ordering some inexpensive paper from this website.

Since I'm painting my room blue to callously cover up Stockton's masterpiece, I think I might display some of these prints.

Lion Puppet.



Okay, Tyler pointed out that my creativity is waning when I make an animal puppet weekly. But I did add my own flair to the instructions for this lion.

I printed off a face from this template (in white, blue, and orange) and arms from this template (in orange) and glued them to a brown paper bag.

Rather than use this template for a mane, we cut strips of paper from red, yellow, and orange paper and curled them by rolling them around a pencil. we then attached them around the face part.

Voila! I thought they kind of looked like The Cowardly Lion after he gets gussied up in the Emerald City.

Ladybugs. I was so excited to see ladybugs for sale at the garden center in my local grocery store, and I had big plans to release them in my garden at this point and examine real live ladybugs. But the store was out. Don't worry, the kind lady assured me, they'll be in next week. I'm not sure she understood me when I whined, "But next week is M week."

So instead, we made these guys:



We found rocks outside and painted them red. When the red paint dried (with the aid of a blow dryer) we painted a black head and black spots. Talmage felt it important they have googly eyes. We affixed the eyes with super glue that was kicking around our house from when we superglued Talmage's head together.

Treasure Hunt. library books, lemon, lamp, lawnmower, leaf, laundry. The treasure was lifesavers.

K Stuff

Want to throw a curve ball at your toddler? Teach him that K makes the same sound as C.

Since the last several letters have been less common letters, I've adopted the approach of searching the library catalog for specific words when looking for books. For K books, I searched kiss, kangaroo, koala, and kitten and came up with several great books.

Activities

Kite



No big project here. Cut a paper into a diamond shape, attached yarn for a string, let Talmage decorate it. Done and done.

Three Little Kittens.

I thought this was a fantastic project. Talmage found it a bit less fantastic. It was a little long and took us two days.

First, I printed three copies of this template and this template on white paper. I let Talmage color those as he wished and assembled and then laminated the kittens. Then I printed this template on three colors of paper, two copies of each color (for a total of six copies). I cut the paws out of three separate colors and laminated those and then "dirtied" the other three paws and laminated those.

I put sandpaper on the back of the kittens and velcro on the kittens paws with the other side of velcro on the colored paws, or mittens. We then acted out the poem "Three Little Kittens."

Insert video here.

Kangaroo Puppet



We got the template for the head and joey here and the arms and pouch here. I took the website's suggestion and folded in the flaps of the bag to make the head more triangular.

The joey in the pouch was particularly fun.

Treasure hunt. kangaroo, kite, key, kid, kitten. The treat was KitKat bar.

J Stuff

The best book we found was One, Two, Three, Jump! by Penelope Lively.

Activities

Jellyfish.



I got the idea for this from several different sites (google jellyfish craft) and kind of made up my own. I took a styrofoam cup and poked two holes on the top. I strung yarn so I could hang the fish. Talmage then affixed tissue paper squares of various colors to the cups and we then hung strips of tissue paper to the mouth of the cup. I also included strips of plastic (from a Ziploc bag) so it would have some sheen, but I think those just disappeared.

Jack O'Lantern.



Do you know how hard it is to find pumpkins in May? Very hard.

Talmage's friend Benji came over and we decided to make paper Jack O' Lanterns. They both embraced a Picasso like approach to faces. After we did the pumpkins, we moved on to bats, ghosts, spiders, and sea monsters. The boys hung up the pictures as decorations and got in costume. Talmage was a dinosaur. Benji was a king. We had prettytend Halloween.

Unfortunately, I again failed to figure out Tyler's camera.

Jet.



The above picture is missing a tail fin because this picture was taken several days and several crashes after we made it. We printed off the template from this website, cut out the pattern, and traced it on a styrofoam tray, the kind meat comes on (well cleaned). After cutting the pieces out of styrofoam, we simply put the pieces together and painted it. Note that tempera paint doesn't work; acrylic will do the trick.

Treasure hunt. jacket, jack o'lantern, jelly, jar, jellyfish, jewelry, juice. The treasure was Junior Mints.