H Stuff

H week was pretty fun. I randomly had a lot of ideas for this week, which made it fun. Books were actually kind of tricky. These are the best we found: The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear by Don and Audrey Wood, Dream Hop by Julia Durango, and Hank Finds Inspiration by Craig Frazier.

Activities.

Hippo Puppet.

To continue with the paper bag puppet theme, we made hippo puppets. These were a little different (and inferior in my opinion) because they didn't have mouths that opened and closed. But we colored them instead of painted them, which was a fun turn of events. Here is the template for the head (to be glued on the flap) and here is the template for the body (to be glued on the bag part, just under the flap).

Heart Attack. I am a photography idiot, and I took pictures of this with Tyler's camera without a chip in the camera.

Pretty simple. We cut multi-colored hearts out and I let Talmage and our friend Benji who was over that day decorate them. They mostly used crayons, but I had our usual craft bling--feathers, googly eyes, buttons, and poof balls. We then gave Daddy a "heart attack" and attacked all the doors upstairs with hearts to celebrate Daddy's first day of the LPP program. I envisioned them on the bedroom door, but Talmage wanted a wider ranging heart attack.

This is the heart Talmage made for himself that day. You'll note an abundance of googly eyes.

Hand Painting.

This was really fun and really messy. I rolled out butcher paper in the driveway and we dipped our hands in paint and made prints on the paper. My original vision had us placing our prints in a circle, but Talmage of course got a little more creative and branched out.

Mental note: I need to get an old sheet for driveway paint projects. There are a few green footprints in front of our house now. Oh well. It's washable paint.

Hat (the newspaper variety).

These are the instructions I followed. Originally I thought I would buy a visor from the craft store and we'd decorate it. If I have a girl, that might be fun. This was nice and simple though.

Hungry Hungry Hippos. The game. We played it.

H treasure hunt. house, hot dog, hammer, hair, hat, hanger. Treasure was Heath bar.

G Stuff

G proved to be our most difficult letter yet; we had a hard time shaking the soft G sound. Also, the funky swirly lowercase G that some fonts use was almost unrecognizable to a 3 year old. I'm a little behind in posting this, so I can't remember all the good G books we did. Grown ups Get to Do All the Driving by William Steig was one.

Activities

Go Fish. The game. We learned it. It wasn't as successful as Uno, our current game of choice. (See here.)

Two-faced gorillas.



The template for this is here. I printed the yellow side on yellow paper rather than coloring it. We painted the black side black and left the smile white. Googly eyes for that googly effect. I tried to pull a child's psychology "Let's talk about our feelings" activity by asking Talmage what makes him sad and what makes him happy, but he just had fun making funny faces.

Shape Goose.

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Here's the template. This was kind of fun because the goose is made up of different shapes. Talmage knows his shapes pretty well, but it was a good review.

Giacometti Figures.

Okay, if I'm honest, we didn't do these for G week due to the soft G sound. But we did do this this week and I thought we should document it.

We made the base of the figures with pipe cleaners, heads with paper balls, and then covered them with tin foil. Had we used putty for the feet, they would have stood up.

G treasure hunt. garden, grass, glass, glue, glasses. The treasure was Mr. Goodbar.

F Stuff

Now that I'm a year into this project and I'm doing phoenetic sounds like FR and FL, I realized that I did F all wrong. Frame, frog, and flag belong in a later week. Remember this next time.

I found great F books. Fancy Nancy by Jane O'Conner and The Foot Book by Dr. Seuss were perfect. Ugly Fish by Kara LaReau was excellent for Fs, but the plot line (where a fish doesn't want to share his tank, so he eats all the peppy fish who are put in there with him) was a bit alarming for a toddler. Talmage's review? "I don't want to be swallowed."

Activities

Frame.

When I went to the craft store to stock up a couple of weeks ago I found a wooden frame for about 99 cents. Perfect.

Talmage painted and decorated it. And I did a good job letting go of creative control. I think it turned out rather well.



Frog.



To continue our paper bag puppet theme, I found a frog. Here is the template, but I'm sure you could improvise one just as easily.

Flag.



This may have been Talmage's favorite activity yet because of the stickers involved. White paper. We glued red stripes on. Blue square. And all the star stickers you want!

Family ABC book.





I stole this idea from my sister-in-law Sarah. I spent WAY too much time scrapbooking papers with each of the letters of the alphabet. Then we glued on a picture of someone in our family whose name started with that letter. We included grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and immediate family. Maquel, I would like to suggest you name your twins Ursula and Veronica.

Wheeler Farm. It was a fun time to go to the farm because all the animals have babies right now. I was probably the most excited.

F treasure hunt. family, fridge, food, fire truck, face, fingers, fur. The treat was Swedish fish.

E Stuff

At the end of the week, I'm not sure we have the short E sound, largely because Talmage refers to elephants as uh-fa-lents, so when he remembered that that was the word I was sounding out, E made the sound uh-uh-uh.

Elmo Loves You is a fantastic book for short E sounds, largely because Elmo refers to himself exclusively in the third person. Other short E sound books were hard to come by, but What the Elephant Told by Barbara Brenner and Ella the Elegant Elephant by Carmela and Steven D'Amico, though a little long, worked well too.

Activities

Easter Eggs

We are going to dye Easter eggs with my family later this week, so we decided to do something a little different for our activity. We started by blowing the eggs (poke holes in both ends with a pin and blow out the egg inside) and then did a variety of decorations.

We tried to tie-dye the eggs by placing the eggs in a colander and then dripping vinegar on them. We then dripped some food coloring on the eggs and rolled them around in the colander. In the end, the eggs looked like your standard dyed eggs.

We weren't quite ready for our craft to end, so we went a little wild. What says Easter better than yarn, buttons, and feathers?



Easter egg patterns.

Yeah, the idea for this was better than the project. But now that the project that never ends is finally made, I'm glad I've got it.

I've been trying to think of how to insert math into this project, and Talmage has a hard time with patterns (you know, red, green, blue, red, green ,what comes next (Talmage's likely response would be "Purple!")). I thought since it's difficult to think of short E activities, this might be a good time to use this one.

I tied it into E Stuff by making oval eggs. I'll insert the picture here. I made the document 8.5 x 11, so I think you can print directly from the picture onto a sheet of paper.

I copied the eggs onto different colors of paper and then laminated them. (Well, that's what I decided to do after several attempts to make them flannel board figures and failed miserably. Then I thought, "Is this project more effective is you can stick them on flannel?" And I decided no.)

That's it. Now we can make a variety of patterns. This might be a good sacrament meeting activity.



Elephant Puppet

Maybe this summer while I'm being a single mother Talmage and I will make a puppet theater so we can use all our puppets. Hmmm.

Painted the paper bag gray (Talmage is getting really good at color theory and mixing colors). Then I used this template for elephant parts. I thought we might put some ribbons in their hair, but Talmage informed me that they are boy elephants. Clearly.



The Elves and the Shoemaker.

The printable colorable book was available at this site. I then printed the accompanying shoes on cardstock and we learned how to lace shoes.

E treasure hunt. egg, elbow, elephant (on a book we have), engine, envelope, exercise video. The treasure was Cadbury mini-eggs (delicious).

D Stuff

Pretty successful week. In sounding out letters in our books, Talmage confused the lowercase B and D. How Do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon? was a fantastic D book.

Activities

Five Little Ducks. There are a lot of versions of this song and I think mine is the most funny. I was excited for this activity because I remember learning this song in preschool circa 1984. I also was excited to bring back the circa 1984 (and earlier) flannel board.

Our activity that day involved us making a flannel board. I bought a piece of flannel from the cloth store (light blue, of course) and hot glued it (only on the back because the glue makes the material pucker) to a piece of foam core. I assume plywood or cardboard would work just as well. I then glued manilla folders on the back so that I can store our flannel board projects for the future.

I printed out a mom and dad duck from this template and five baby ducks from this template on different colors of paper. I then faux laminated them with contact paper and glued sand paper on the back.

I was excited about this because I knew my mother-in-law would be disappointed if I wasn't integrating math concepts into this project. Tal's pretty good at one-to-one number connections and addition, but he has a harder time with subtraction. This was a fantastic and easy way to do that.

I feel obligated to explain that the sweater was pooching funny. I did just have a baby 7 weeks ago, but my belly isn't THAT big.



Dalmatians.



We painted a brown paper sack white. I'm sure this would be easier with a white paper bag, but I couldn't find those at the store. Anyway, Tal appreciated having paint as part of the project. Glued black spots and ears, plus googly eyes and a poof ball nose. Classic red tongue under the flap.

Dinosaur (Pipecleanosaurus).



I actually read about how to do these a year ago, and when we did the activity, I went from memory. When I looked online for the directions so I could attach them here, I realized that I had forgotten a couple steps.

D treasure hunt. Dad, doorbell, door, dishwasher, dirt, Daddy's car, doctor's kit. The treasure was Dots.

C Stuff

As soon as we started C Week, Talmage guessed that the C made the sound "sss." I corrected him and changed the sound to "kkk." I'm sure I'm going to shake his grip on his worldview when I teach him the soft C sound. English is tricky.

Activities

Cookies and cards for our cousins. Actually just our cousins who live in Salt Lake got cookies. We mailed cards to the rest. So far, the cooking projects might be Talmage's favorite. And he likes to paint.

Colorful collage.



This was fun. I rolled out about 10 feet of paper and compiled everything creative I could think of. Wrapping paper, paint, markers, tissue paper, magazines, cookie cutters for tracing, glue. I think that's it. We then went crazy. Well, (as I mentioned before) Talmage loves to paint, and he stuck with that. I did more of the papier colle part.

Cow puzzle. Here's the site with the instructions for this. We printed stage 4 and glued it on a cereal box for durability. We needn't have bothered. Talmage loves puzzles. They're his gift. And apparently this didn't hold a candle to the 500 piece puzzle we were working on on the dining room table. The pieces didn't even stick together! It's in the garbage can now.

Caterpillar


We took a popsicle stick, glue poof balls on it, googly eyes, and used a pipe cleaner for an antenna. I probably should have used a longer popsicle stick. Incidentally, our book that day was The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Not bad for hard C sounds.

Caterpillar C.


Pretty simple. I cut out bright colored circles and Talmage glued them in a C shape.

Visit to Costco. Okay, we needed to go to Costco and I passed it off as a C activity. We got hot dogs and a smoothie.

Car trip.


We went to Moab at the end of the week. Tyler's annoyed that I've forever changed road trips to car trips in Talmage's head.

C treasure hunt. Camera, closet, clothes, cup, cars. The treasure was cookies.

B Stuff

B has been our most difficult letter to write. In fact, two weeks later, Talmage will write M, E, and L out of his own head, but still struggles with the two bumps on B.

I don't have any books that stand out, except we discovered Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus this week and though it wasn't the best B book, it might be the best children's book ever written.

Activities

Banana bread. Big hit. With both Tyler and Talmage.

Bumblebee B.

I drew a hive and then used my thumbprint dipped in yellow paint to make bumblebees swirling around it. I use me in the first person because Talmage would have no part of putting his hand into paint. Whose child is this?

Blue painting.

I had visions of channeling Picasso and his blue period. Actually Stockton was with us for this activity, and he was quite involved painting much of our kitchen.

This was pretty simple. I mixed three colors of blue and let them have at it. Then they took baths.

Bluebirds.


The idea for this was actually blackbirds, but I didn't have any black paint at the time. That way we could do the blackbird poem:

Two little blackbirds sitting on a hill
One named Jack and the other named Jill.
Fly away Jack; fly away Jill.
Come back Jack; come back Jill.

We took a large and a small paper plate, painted them blue, glued them together. I improvised feet and wings. Add a triangle beak, googly eyes and that's it.

Visit to the Tracy Aviary. To see the birds.

Bird Feeder. For next time.

Bubbles. For next time.

B treasure hunt. Ball, bed, bathtub, blanket, bottle, bionicle. The treat was Gummi Bears.

A Stuff

Vowels are tricky. What sound do they make? If I remember from my college linguistics class, mostly the schwa sound, and very rarely the short A sound. But we focused on the short a sound anyway. This made finding books to find the sound kind of tricky, and I don't have any that stand out as exceptional.

Activities

Ants on a log. The classic. Celery, peanut butter, raisins. Talmage decided he didn't like celery, and I subsequently ate all the logs of ants.

Fingerprint ants.

Pretty self-explanatory. Draw the letter A. Stamp your thumbprint up the sides of the A like it is an anthill (I only had a green stamp pad). We then talked about how ants have six legs and drew them on.

Aquarium picture.

The website I found this on had a cute idea about taking a box, filling it an inch high with sand and then pasting these sea creatures on popsicle sticks and sticking them in the sand. That way, you really get the vision of aquarium being a box where you find sealife instead of the ocean our resembles. Ah well, something for next time. Here's the link to the ocean illustrations.

Talmage wrote that A all by himself.

Visit to the Living Planet Aquarium. Mamakell and Stockton came with us. It was one of Asher's first outings.

Apple Prints: For next time.

A treasure hunt. Art kit, apples, Asher, animal board book. Short A stuff is hard. The treat was frosted animal crackers.

Why the Site

I worry that Asher won't get the same active mothering that Talmage has. This is one reason that I wanted to space my children three years apart. That way (hopefully), I will be able to repeat this project in three some odd years for Asher.

This in part explains the organization of the site. I'm not going to post what books we did unless they were particularly good for illustrating the letter sound. I will include notes to myself on what to change in the future. Mostly I will keep pictures and instructions and websites I've pilfered here regarding our activities so I remember what I did.

But you may find an occasional note about Talmage and his development. Maybe in three years I'll update it to include notes on Asher. And if the site is helpful to the internet audience at large, that's fabulous.

What We Do

Each week is dedicated to one of the letters of the alphabet. (Almost) every weekday, the schedule looks like this:

1. We write the letter of the week. At the beginning of the week, we write the letter in flour. I read somewhere that the tactile quality helps make the activity stick. Talmage just likes playing in flour. I initially thought this might be too advanced for Talmage, but by C Week, he caught the vision and could write any letter he wanted. I should mention that Talmage could already recognize all the letters both upper and lower case and so he just needed to make a connection between the letter in his head and the finger writing the letter. If he masters the letter in flour, we move to a pencil and paper by the end of the week.

2. We look for the letter in a book and state the sound. Again, Talmage could already recognize all letters when we started this project, but he didn't know many of the sounds letters make and had a hard time hearing the letter sound in words. So for this portion of our activity, I read a book and stop when a word starts with the featured letter. When I point at the letter, Talmage tells me what sound it makes. Occasionally I will review previously featured letters, just to make sure he's paying attention.

3. We do an activity that has to do with the letter. Art project, cooking project, math activity, something. This section is rather open. Occasionally we will go somewhere.

4. At the end of the week, we do a treasure hunt. I give a series of clues that have Talmage guess a location or item that starts with the letter of the week. At the end of the hunt, he finds a candy that starts with that letter. I'm taking suggestions for a treat that starts with the letter Q now. There is a video of how this works in B Week.

The Whys and Wherefores

Talmage has given up his afternoon nap.

I could probably end there, but if you want the specifics, I've always believed that active mothering leads to healthy children and happy mothers. I've fulfilled this in the past by going places with Talmage: the zoo, the Children's Museum, the Planetarium, the park etc. But now Asher is here which makes our at home time less efficient, and the aforementioned lack of a nap, which means more time to fill in the day. When I stay home I'm tempted to try and clean the house or work on the courses I teach, which means Talmage has to play on the computer or watch TV--both projects that will turn his brain to mush. Neither do they accomplish their intended purpose--to allow me to do something else productive--because he gets tired and then nags me to play then I nag him to leave me alone. Unhealthy children and unhappy mothers.

Hence, the birth of ABC Stuff. I had admired other friends' ambitious mothering for the good of their children. I started ambitious mothering for the good of me. But I think Talmage has fun, too.

Maybe I should post a sign on my front door that reads "Warning: Messy House. But Look For My Immaculately Kept Blog ABC Stuff."