ABC Stuff

SK or SC Stuff

2010-05-09T14:17:00.000-07:00

The Scaredy Squirrel books by Melanie Watt are great SC books!

Activities

Scales

When I do this with Asher, I plan to coordinate my books a little better with the activity for the day, finding a book that has the same topic as the project. Look for that circa 2012. When I finally get around to that, I'm definitely going to read The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister with this project.

The book is about a fish with beautiful scales, many of them shiny, who learns that the most beautiful thing is sharing with others and ends up giving his beautiful scales away. Good message and plenty of SCs to sound out.

We made this scaly fish.

It was pretty simple. I improvised a white fish and glued him on a blue piece of paper. Then I cut out several different colors of scales from tissue paper and included a couple from foil. Tal got to glue the scales on.

Scarecrow

The Wizard of Oz series is pretty big at our house these days; Grandpa is reading the books nightly to Talmage. They are currently reading Ozma of Oz. So when I suggested we make a scarecrow, Tal was certainly excited.

I improvised a shirt, pants, head, and a hat. Tal glued the pieces on a black piece of paper and added the details. We then took some dead grass from my most recent weeding excursion and glued it on.

Sky

This was a fun idea that ended up looking totally different than what I anticipated. I put some blue water color paint in an empty spray bottle. I have some nice paints in tubes, so I just squeezed out a bit into the bottle, but I bet if you could break a chunk off a Crayola set it would work just fine. I then added a cup or so of water and shook it until it mixed together. Talmage and I painted horizons along the bottom of our papers (I did use watercolor paper for this one so it would absorb the paint well). We then took our pictures outside and sprayed on a blue sky. I sprayed minimally and got a rainy sky.

Tal didn't want a rainy sky, so he sprayed a lot.

I have to admit; Tal's picture turned out awesome.

Treasure hunt. scale, scarfs, skirt, skin. The treasure was Skittles.

PR Stuff

2010-05-09T14:14:00.000-07:00

The Prince Won't Go To Bed by Dayle Ann Dodds was probably our favorite book of the week.

Activities

Frog Prince

I found the idea for this little guy here. I printed off this sheet on both green and yellow cardstock. The site recommended craft foam, which I'm sure would have been cuter, but I didn't have any and cardstock worked well. Tal and I went rock hunting, and after we found an appropriately sized rock, I painted it green and glued on googly eyes. We glued the rock onto his legs and added the yellow crown. Tal felt he needed nostrils and a smile.

Handprint Butterfly

Print seemed a good PR word and we did a really fun activity with handprints during H week but I didn't want to repeat it. So we came up with a handprint butterfly.

I let Tal pick three colors and we brushed the tempera paint on his hands. We positioned the prints facing outward. After it dried (again, with the help of a blowdryer) I drew a butterfly body with a black Sharpie. Talmage added the butterfly smile.

Praying Mantis

Tal loves origami, and I'm always trying to think of ways to insert more math into this project, so I got ambitious and thought we'd make this folded praying mantis. I got through 5 of 100 steps. Once it started talking about waterbomb bases I got lost.

So instead we started to make this guy.

Now I admit that at this point we had already spent a good half-hour on the other praying mantis, so I didn't finish putting him together. So follow the instructions listed here. (You'll have to scroll down a bit.)

Treasure hunt: prince, princess, present, praying mantis. The treasure was chocolate covered pretzels.

PL Stuff

2010-05-09T14:07:00.000-07:00

Plantpet by Elise Primavera was kind of a weird book, but it was great when we made plantpets.

Activities

Planets

We took a piece of black paper and made stars with a toothbrush and watered down white tempera paint. Then I took this idea from Ehow: Use the pinky to create a red dot for Mercury, the ring finger with yellow for Venus, the ring finger with blue for the Earth, the pinky with red for Mars, the thumb with orange for Jupiter, the thumb with yellow for Saturn, the middle finger with green for Uranus, and the pointer finger with blue for Neptune.

I thought it turned out pretty cute.

Planetarium

We went to the Clark Planetarium.

Plantpets

I wanted to do these during GR week as grassheads, but I never made it to the store to buy grass seed. This week, however, we read a book named Plantpet, so the projects worked well as a PL activity.

Cut off the end of a nylon stocking, leaving about four inches. Spoon about 1 Tbs of grass seed into the bottom of the stocking. I added roughly 1/2 cup of dirt from my backyard at that point, but various websites recommended sawdust. After tying off the bottom of the dirt, we added a rubber-banded nose. Other images on the internet had rubber-banded ears, too. Googly eyes helped complete the effect. "Dress" a Yoplait yogurt cup with paper, buttons, anything you want. Fill the cup at least half-way with water, and place the head on top of the cup, letting the nylon dangle in the water. The nylon will serve as a wick. The grass will begin to grow in about a week, provided you keep the water level above half-way.

Treasure hunt. plane, planets, plates, pluto. The treasure was Good and Plenty. I was certain he wouldn't like it. I was wrong.

GR Stuff

2010-05-09T14:04:00.000-07:00

Activities

Green Painting

I mixed three colors of green. We painted with them.

Grandparent's Cards

I've mentioned before Tal's love of card-making. This time we made cards for his grandparents. The most adorable part was the things Tal thought of to say thank you for. Here is my favorite.

Treasure hunt. green beans, grapes, grass, grater, groundhog. The treasure was 100 Grand.

GL Stuff

2010-05-09T14:03:00.001-07:00

Activities

In general I try not to spend too much money on these projects and instead opt for stuff that's generally already in my craft supply, but there were just so many fun GL things at the craft store, that I bought everything.

Glitter Glue

These were a big hit. What's more fun than shiny adhesive?

Stained Glass

This craft involved putting different colors of plastic beads into the frame and then melting them in the oven. Not actual stained glass, but I counted it.

Glow-in-the-Dark Paint

This stuff was AWESOME. I picked up a pillowcase from the DI this week and let Tal decorate in with this fancy glowing paint. Here's the end result.

Treasure hunt: glue, glasses, glove, glow-in-the-dark pillow. The treasure was Black Forest Gummy Glo Worms.

FR Stuff

2010-05-09T13:56:00.000-07:00

Most of the books we used had "friend" in the title.

Activities

Frame

This is also a repeat from F week. Tal was a little more rushed with this years frame. But he was excited about what happens when red and green mix.

I thought the frame set off Tyler's mountain picture nicely.

Fractal

This is a Sierpinski Triangle.

It is a fractal, which means it is "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole." I didn't teach Tal that, but we did make a Sierpinski Triangle.

We actually made one on each side of the paper, and Tal then wanted to cut it out. Hence the incompleteness of the fractal. Don't tell Mrs. Keir. I'm not sure Tal understood any of this, but he got good practice drawing triangles. I didn't realize until we did this that he didn't really know how, so I made three dots and he connected them.

Frog I ran out of time this week, but the frog we did during F week would have fit nicely here.

Treasure hunt: fractal, frame, freezer, fruit, frog. The treasure was fruit snacks.

FL Stuff

2010-05-09T13:53:00.000-07:00

There weren't any books that really stuck out for me, but I did discover that books with "flower" in the title are pretty girly.

Activities

Egg Carton Flowers

I cut apart a cardboard (Cardboard? Non-styrofoam, at least) egg carton into it's individual egg cells. Tal then painted each of the cut apart carton pieces in bright colors. We then cut about 2" squares from various pieces of tissue paper. After the cartons were dry (with the help of a blow-dryer) we pushed the tissue into the carton cavity and held the whole thing in place using a pipe cleaner through the center. I bunched up the pipe cleaner at the top so it didn't slide through the flower.

Plastic Stain Flowers

We made suncatchers (imitation stained glass with plastic frames and glass stain). Here is a website that sells something like what we did.

Flag

Like I've mentioned before, I didn't plan on continuing this project once I finished the alphabet, so there are many projects that I did back in F week, for example, that really should have been FL projects. I'll fix this all in two years when I do it with Asher, but in the meantime I'm just going to repeat some things. It was fun to see Tal's progress, however.

Here is Project Flag 2009:

Note the random number of stripes and haphazard arrangement of stars.

Here is Project Flag 2010:

This time we looked at pictures of flags online and Tal was very specific that we needed 13 stripes and 50 stars arranged geometrically. This led us into a discussion of what the stars and stripes mean, which led us into a discussion of what states are, so I printed of this map and we found all the states where his cousins live.

Treasure hunt: flower, flour, flag. The treasure was Flipz (yogurt covered pretzels).

CR Stuff

2010-03-25T13:58:00.000-07:00

Old Cricket by Lisa Wheeler was the best CR book ever. Old Cricket is cranky and crotchety and suffers from creaks, cricks, and cracks; and that's all before he meets Old Crow.

Activities

Crawling race.

We had Tal's friend Luke over and we did a variety of races in the front yard, beginning with crawling. We also jumped, hopped, walked, tip-toed, and, of course, ran.

Crown

I cut out a long strip of thin cardboard (a cereal box worked well) and measured it to fit around Tal's head. 2 or 3 inches wide. Then I cut yellow paper the same length as the cardboard but about an inch wider. I glued the yellow paper to the cardboard, lining up the bottom edges. This gave me room to cut the points. Tal decorated the paper side (not the cardboard side) with all sorts of craft bling. Finally we made a ring and stapled it.

Note that Tal added his jewels in a very mathematical and ordered way. We also glued cotton balls on the bottom to give it a furry crown look.

Crocodile

I found the instructions for this guy here. I'm going to pull their images to explain this because it was a bit complicated. Or you could just go to their website where the craft is very clearly explained.

With scissors, I cut two 16.9 oz soda bottles in half and then trimmed one of the bottom pieces to about 3 inches.

Then I cut about three slits up the bottom of the longer bottom piece so that I could fit it over the other and used packing tape to fix them in place. After I slit the top pieces so they too could fit over the ends and fixed them in place with packing tape.

Finally, I hot glued four bottle caps to the bottom for legs, and two to the top for eyes.

Then came the fun part. I mixed 2 Tbs Elmer's glue with 2 Tbs water. Working in chunks, I spread the mixture over the surface of the crocodile, and affixed 1" squares of green tissue paper. Once the glue was covered by tissue paper, I then spread another layer of glue over the paper. I repeated this until the entire surface was covered and I liked the thickness of the tissue paper skin.

After the glue dried, we added details. Googly eyes for the eyes, points down his back, and feet for his legs. Voila! Craft crocodile.

We sang a whole long of "Never Smile at a Crocodile" during the making of this project.

Treasure hunt. crayons, craft box, crown, cricket, crocodile. The treasure was a Nestle's Crunch bar.

CL Stuff

2010-03-25T13:57:00.000-07:00

Activities

Clay Coil Pot

I found this self-hardening clay at the craft store and taught Tal how to make a coil pot. We rolled out long snakes of clay and then circled them around until we had formed a pot.

Tricks I remembered from high school pottery: Scratch and wet each layer before adding the next one. I guess that's it.

Clown Collage

I found this project in the Usborne Art Treasury (see link at left). Have I touted the virtues of this book yet? This book has fantastic ideas for art projects using not much more than your basic craft materials. If you've got paint, paper, and glue, you're pretty much good to go. The authors connect each project with a work of art, and this project was connected to Picasso and his collages.

Clock

I used some clock flash cards to teach Tal how to tell time. He's pretty good. He definitely gets that the little hand points to the hour and the big hand points to the minutes. He also got pretty good and counting by fives.

Treasure hunt: closet, clothes, clay, clock. The treat was eclipse gum.

BR Stuff

2010-03-07T12:26:00.001-08:00

Bobby Bramble Loses his Brain by David Keane was full of BRs and HILARIOUS to a four year old.

Activities

Braid

He learned how to braid really well! You know, bring the outside clump in the middle. We added some beads for fun.

Bracelet

I bought Fruit Loops. This was HUGE. In our house we purchase Cheerios, Kix, Chex, and for when your feeling a little outrageous, Life. So the Fruit Loops were a great big giant deal.

I measured a piece of yarn that fit around Tal's wrist and he strung it with Fruit Loops. I envisioned him leaving it intact until Daddy got home to take a picture of it. It didn't last more than 15 minutes.

Breadsticks

Here is my favorite recipe.

1.5 c warm water
2 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp yeast
3-4 c flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 cube butter
garlic salt
parmesan cheese

Dissolve yeast in water and sugar. Add flour and salt. Mix and knead 5-6 minutes. Let rest 10 minutes. Melt butter. Pour half of melted butter in cookie sheet. Spread around until entire sheet is covered. Roll out dough until covering most of the pan, and a uniform thickness. Pour remaining butter over the top of rolled dough. Sprinkle very generous amounts of garlic salt and Parmesan cheese. Let rise 15-20 minutes. Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes.

Treasure hunt: broccoli, broom, bread, brother. The treat was brown licorice.

BL Stuff

2010-03-07T12:22:00.001-08:00

We've pretty much covered letter combinations that make unique sounds (like Sh, Ch, and Dr) so we're going to cover letter combinations that you often find together. For example, B and L Talmage could sound out on their own in the word black, but bl as one sound would make the process easier. I think we'll work through the alphabet this way, (using the examples on this website) before we start to tackle vowels.

Again, I'm making this up as I go along with no real trained method in mind.

Anyway, I had no idea back at B Stuff that I'd still be doing ABC Stuff come 2010 and past the end of the alphabet. So a couple of the activities from B Week will do for Bl week. Maybe when I do this with Asher I'll get more specific with a better variety of B activities.

FHE Blessings: Daddy got into BL Stuff, so when it was his turn to teach Family Home Evening he did a lesson on blessings. He taught Talmage that blessings are something Heavenly Father gives us to help us in life and then he and I listed the blessings we are grateful for. Each of us then drew pictures of our blessings.

Daddy is grateful for:

Talmage is grateful for:

That's a picture of Daddy. Daddy is 29 years old. Mommy is also 29 years old, but she's less of a blessing in Tal's life.

Picture Blocks:

I let Tal pick 12 pictures that he liked of our family (easily available here) and printed them out. We then bought two 2-inch blocks (I had hoped for 3 inch, but 2 inch is what Michael's had. Robert's had nothing.) I cut a 2 inch by 2 inch square out of a piece of paper and let Tal use it to frame his favorite part of the pictures. I outlined the frame and trimmed the pictures down.

We then mod-podged the square faces and attached pictures. I then added two more layers of mod-podge over the top of the pictures to seal and finish.

Blackberry and Blueberry crumble: This dessert was super simple and super fantastic. I mean really fantastic. Really, really. Fantastic.

It came in handy as Tyler NAILED his administrative interview today and so we had Blackberry and Blueberry Crumble to celebrate.

Black and Blueberry Crumble

1/2 c Blackberries; fresh or frozen
1 1/2 c Blueberries; fresh or frozen
2 tb Sugar
1 ds Nutmeg
1 c Oatmeal
1/2 c Flaked coconut
1/3 c Melted butter
Vanilla ice cream

In saucepan, combine blackberries, blueberries, sugar and nutmeg. Cook over low-heat. Set aside. In a measuring cup, pour oatmeal and toast in microwave, cooking on high heat and stirring once. Combine toasted oatmeal, coconut and melted butter. Set aside. In dessert bowls, spoon an ice cream mound. Pour toasted oatmeal mixture on top. Spoon fruit over all.

Approximately 15 minutes.

Black painting (crayon resist): This is a fun project and one I remember from my elementary school years. Talmage and I colored pictures on a white sheet of paper. (Light colored crayons work best for this step, but I didn't limit Talmage.) Once our pictures were done, we took watered-down black tempera paint and covered the entire sheet of paper. Crayons are waxed based, so they repel the water-based tempera paints. Once the black paint had dried, we scratched a design in the picture that removed the layer of black paint.

Treasure hunt: blocks, blueberries, black (marker), blue (shirt), blood. The treat was a blow-pop.

TR Stuff

2010-03-07T12:08:00.000-08:00

When I realized trucks and trains started with TR, I knew we'd have no problem finding TR books. Our favorite find of the week was Russell and the Lost Treasure by Rob Scotton.

Activities

Train. Since we painted a choo choo train during CH week, I had to change the activity a bit. This time I bought a wooden train from the craft store. Tal painted it.

Truck. Similar to above, this wooden train came in a kit with markers. Tal colored it.

Tree

For this activity, Tal traced my hand on white paper. We cut out the hand a glued it on blue paper. I then cut leaves out of various green and yellow papers and Tal glued them on.

Rice Krispie Treats.

Find the original recipe here.

Treasure hunt: Truck, train table, train tracks, trash can, tree, trunk. The treat was a store bought Rice Krispie treat. Tal pointed out that anything would work because treat started with a TR.

DR Stuff

2010-02-08T10:39:00.000-08:00

Daydreamers by Tom Feelings is wonderful for its illustrations, but the lyrical text provided Drs for us to read. Dream Hop by Julia Durango was fantastic.

Activities

Drum.

Oatmeal container. Decorated with all sorts of bling. Cut a whole in both ends and strung yarn through it so it can go around Talmage's neck. The site I found the project on recommended making drumsticks, but I thought hands worked well.

Dragon.

How cool is that dragon? I found the instructions for it here. We took a 12-egg egg carton and cut it in half. We painted one half one bright color, and after cutting two egg holders (is that what you call them?) and painted that part another bright color. Then I followed the inspiration of the activity village creator and cut out flames and and nose out of other bright colors. Tissue paper for the head and body. Talmage wanted to add ribbon for a tail and I thought that was a nice touch.

On second thought, follow the link I attached for more clear instructions.

Dragonfly.

I googled "dragonfly craft" and came up with a couple ideas and then combined them for our dragonfly. Talmage colored a large popsicle stick with markers and we affixed googly eyes on the end. I used the wings you can find here and here. (The person who made the images made them large, so for them to fit on a 8.5 x 11 piece of paper, click on print preview and reduce the image to 30%. I also switched the paper to a landscape orientation.) I printed the wings on bright paper and let Talmage decorate them. Being a dragonfly, I thought glitter would be a nice touch. Talmage did, too.

Dress-up Dolls. I found these ethnically diverse, not afraid to be man enough to put on a unitard or a one-sleeved dress, boy paper dolls here.

Creepy looking, aren't they?

I thought it would be more fun for Talmage to color them, so I opened them in Photoshop and turned them into colorable outlines. The only problem is that in the process, I lost the little tabs to fold back on the clothing so that the clothes can attach to the dolls.

Talmage took issue with me calling them dolls. Apparently dolls are for girls. Of course the first thing Talmage did with one politically correct dress up guys was attack the other politically correct dress up guy.

Treasure hunt. dragon, dragonfly, dress, dresser, drink. The treat was gumdrops.

TH Stuff

2010-02-07T07:37:00.000-08:00

TH was a little tricky, because TH makes two sounds--the voiced TH (as in there) and the unvoiced TH (as in three). We stuck with the unvoiced TH because that's how it's found in the majority of words. However the majority of common words (like the, there, they, them) it's voiced. Ah well.

I also realized Talmage has a speech impediment this week. For Ss he makes the unvoiced TH sound and for Zs he makes the voiced TH sound. Who knew? I'm sure that'll get cleared up in elementary school. I, of course, said my Rs as Ws until I was nine.

Books that talked about the three little somethings (pigs, bears, grasshoppers) worked well. You wouldn't believe the fairytale variations we found. We only sounded out the words that made the unvoiced TH sound.

Activities

Thermometer: We found the instructions to make a homemade thermometer here. I purchased all the required ingredients--water bottle, red food coloring, rubbing alcohol, playdough, and a clear plastic straw. We couldn't get the fluid to rise up the straw. So instead I got one of our many digital thermometers and talked about what happens when you're sick.

Thank-you note: We've been a card making factory here at the Howe home. With Valentine's this last week, we made over 50 valentines. I made him stop when we couldn't think of any more people to send them to. So he was THRILLED to make thank-you notes.

Piece of paper. Folded in fourths. Decorate with crayons and hearts and glitter. Things Tal wanted to say thank you for? Thank you to Hana for letting us go to McDonald's. Thank you to Daddy for letting Tal play Labrynth 2.

Last Name, Thousand (Tyler's story of place value): One of Tyler's classic math lessons involves number houses. Due to many hours of playing on the TI-83 (yes, our family's nerdy like that), Talmage is able to read three digit numbers, but struggles beyond that. We tried out Tyler's number houses lesson, and Tal did shockingly well. By the end, he could correctly read this number: 234,000,762,027,123.

Here is the PowerPoint Ty used. I'm not going to explain it more than that, but would be happy to answer questions.

Alpine Utah

Crazy Threes: Matching games are big at our house, so I thought we'd add a new level to your traditional matching game. I made sets of three images that I cut out and faux laminated with contact paper. We mixed them up and placed them upside down on the table. Each turn a player turned over three cards, and you had to find the entire set of three to earn that set. I was prepared to turn it into a traditional matching game, but Tal loved the threes.

For fun I used images that have to do with the concept of threes.

A word of explanation on the bottom two pictures on the third page: that's a bishopric, see (with three members of it), and Star Wars is a trilogy. At least it is at our house, where Tyler elected to show him the original three and pretend the more recent three never happened.

Treasure hunt. thermometer, three, thank you note, thumb. The treat was a Heath bar.

CH Stuff

2010-01-27T13:38:00.001-08:00

Do you have any idea how many books feature chickens? A LOT. We also found books that emphasized chocolate and chicks.

Activities

Chocolate Chip Cookies. If you'd think there's going to be a picture to accompany this, you'd be wrong. That's because most of them went in the garbage. Apparently you have to update your baking soda every once in awhile. I think the baking soda I used has been with me since Provo--six years ago.

But Talmage loved mixing the dough. Still a success.

Countdown to Valentine's Chain. You know, not enough people countdown to Valentine's. This chain kicked of a chain of Valentine's preparation events including the homemade production of roughly 80 Valentine's cards.

Okay, this isn't really the chain we made. But we cut apart the chain before we took a picture of it, so I'm including a picture of this infinitely cuter chain.

Cheetah. All right, so I took the picture before I got his ears attached. Whoops.

I wasn't TOTALLY certain of the base color of the cheetah, so we looked online. Tal wanted to be very certain we got the precise yellowish brown color. Then we improvised the rest of the cheetah. With googly eyes, of course.

Choo Choo Train

This was a fun activity in the properties of different paints and painting strategies. We used your standard tempera paint for the trains, using a single stroke for the cars, Donald Crews style. For the wheels we spun the brush. For the smoke, we played with watercolors, painting first with water and then dabbing the pigment.

Tal got really interested in why different paints worked differently, so we had a discussion about pigment and binder.

Treasure hunt. chair, church, checkbook, chain, cheese. The treat was chocolate covered raisins.

SH Stuff

2010-01-13T12:54:00.001-08:00

Well, ABC Stuff can't just end. And besides, now that we're kind of reading, I've found that there are a whole bunch of sounds we need to learn outside of the ABCs, not to mention vowel combinations. So this week is SH week. SHHHHHHHHHHH.

Our letter sound activity has changed a bit. Now we make the sound of all the featured letter combinations in the book, and we also read one word per page.

Nancy Shaw's sheep books, particularly Sheep in a Shop and Sheep on a Ship were great Sh books. But Talmage's and my favorite was She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain by Jonathan Emmett.

Activities

Shirt. I was excited about this for weeks in advance. I bought a T shirt from Michaels for about $3.00 and these iron-on letters. My vision was just to write Talmage, but Tal recently learned his full name. Anyone see any problem with having your sons full name plastered on his T-shirt as we go about the town? And then what if I posted a picture of that shirt on the World Wide Web?

Shrinky-Dinks. Did you have any idea that this craft sensation, popular in the early 80s, still existed? I didn't, but now that I know, I'm ECSTATIC. Santa slipped some robot shrinky-dinks in Talmage's stocking, so I did a little research and found the blank shrinky-dink paper at Michaels. Hooray!

Follow the instructions included with the paper.

Sheep This project was inspired by a sheep I made in Mrs. Bush's first grade class. The idea stuck with me 23 years.

I cut out several different shapes: large cloud shape for the body and small cloud shape for hair out of white paper; medium size oval for the head and four rectangles for legs out of black paper. Tal then glued cotton balls on the white pieces, and I assembled the sheep as shown.

I suggested we add an eye (you know, a sheep in profile). Tal laughed and said sheep have two eyes. Very conceptual of him.

Shell Box (or CD or magnet; anything you want to cover) Hee, hee! People who specialize in seashell decor are funny. One person recommended adding shells to "ratchet up the beauty" in your house.

I used a spare box I had saved and covered one (short) end with Elmer's glue. Tal squeezed a bunch of glue and I used a paintbrush to spread it so the entire end was covered with a thin layer. Tal then chose seashells (that I purchased at Michael's) and we hot-glued them to the box. After he finished with the shells he chose, we poured sand over the end that sticked to the Elmer's glue layer.

The beauty in my house is FOR SURE ratcheted up.

Shapes

.

Simple enough. Playdough. Made shapes. We talked about how many sides a triangle has versus a square and a circle. We talked about the difference between a square and a rectangle.

Treasure hunt: shampoo, shirt, shoes, shorts, shower. I couldn't find a treat that started with sh, so I used a Hershey's chocolate bar.

Z Stuff

2010-01-13T12:52:00.000-08:00

Animal Strike at the Zoo by Karma Wilson provided plenty of zoos, zookeepers, and zebras.

Activities

Zebra

I bought the wooden zebra at Michael's for a dollar or two. We decided that zebras are black with white stripes rather than white with black stripes.

Zoo Number One

What's cooler than Magic Grow Capsules? The safari edition made an awesome zoo.

Zoo Number Two

Simple enough. I bought zoo themed stickers from the store and we made a zoo scene on a piece of paper.

And the Actual Zoo.

All right, several snowstorms this week made a trip to the zoo impossible, but next time we go to Hogle Zoo, I'm counting it.

From Ascot to Zipper.

Tal and I have had issues about getting dressed the last couple of weeks. Namely, I would like for himself to get dressed. But I realized that I've never really taught this skill to him. Hooray for ABC Stuff!

I got a laundry bin and put in a variety of seasonal clothing. Then I would describe imagined weather conditions and activities. As fast as he could, Tal would pull out a corresponding outfit and put it on as fast as he could.

Zucchini Bread. An idea for next time.

The treat was a PEZ dispenser. I thought of Twizzlers, too. And last summer in Washington, I found a candy bar called Zero.

Y Stuff

2010-01-12T09:47:00.000-08:00

The If You Give a (insert rest of the title here--Mouse a Cookie, Moose a Muffin, Pig a Pancake, you get the idea) books by Laura Joffe Numeroff worked well.

Activities

Yellow Painting. We painted in yellow. I mixed three shades. For future reference, you only need a very little bit of red mixed in lots of yellow to make yellow-orange and a very little blue mixed in lots of yellow to make yellow-green.

Woven Wall Hanging Using Yarn. Why didn't I weave during W week? I don't know.

I took a paper plate and cut seven slices into it. (You must make an odd number of cuts for the weaving to work.) We then wove by moving in and out around the circle. Periodically we added craft beads. The beads were Talmage's favorite part of the project.

Yak

The templates can be found here, here, and here. Color, cut, and paste. Done, done, done.

Treasure hunt: yard, yogurt, you, year, yak, yarn. The treasure was York peppermint patty.

X Stuff

2010-01-11T11:43:00.000-08:00

Well, it's a new year and ABC Stuff is back on the agenda. I asked Talmage this week if he wanted to do ABC Stuff and I got a resounding "YES, YES, YES, YES!!!" The last time I saw any enthusiasm for the project was back in July, I kind of got a lukewarm response in August, and did a bit of arm twisting in September before abandoning my efforts all together. The biggest shame of all of this is that I've largely abandoned art projects without the motivation. The upside? You wouldn't BELIEVE the amount of irrelated stuff you can get done when your son plays computer games all day!

Tyler got an Ipod Touch recently, and Talmage loves it. LOVES it. We have a two hour screen time rule at our house, and we've been quite impressed that Talmage likes to save his screen time until Daddy gets home with his Ipod. That means no TV, computer, or the like until 5 or 6 pm, so I am again aware that I need to do some mothering. Hence the reigniting flame in the ABC burner.

I've tried to preference the sound a letter most commonly makes in ABC Stuff. I've been able to make it work so far, but X threw us for a loop. When x is at the beginning of a word, it doesn't really make the "ks" sound, so we had to improvise.

For Christmas I bought the Dr. Seuss collection for beginning readers, and we got a lot of mileage out of Fox in Socks this week.

Activities

Ox: The simple yet enduring paperbag puppet.

You know, it wasn't until I did this project that I realized that I don't really know what an ox is. A male cow? Then what's a bull? Is it a whole nother species? So I did a little Wikipedia research. Fascinating stuff. An ox is "a castrated male (occasionally a female or in some areas a bull) kept for draft purposes." I didn't tell Talmage though. I decided to wait until he's five before I explain castration.

Here and here are the templates.

The Gingerbread Man (featuring a fox): I printed out the story from this website. Talmage watercolored the pages. We then bound the book together with string.

For your viewing pleasure, here is the final page in the book:

Xylophone:

I broke my own rules, since this starts with a Z sound. What can I say? English is difficult.

Talmage colored in this template, this template, and this template. He was very particular about his colors. Have I mentioned that he's a CRAZY perfectionist? He is.

X is for safety: I liked this because Tal practices writing the letter X, and he learns not to poison himself. Win, win!

We printed off this sheet. Then we put an X through the items we don't eat.

Treasure hunt. fox, ox. That's it. The treat was Trident sugarfree gum (with xylitol). Or Twix! Why didn't I think of Twix! And I just found Airheads Xtremes at the store. And to think, I went with xylitol.

W Stuff

2009-09-12T08:55:00.001-07:00

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

2009-09-12T08:39:00.001-07:00

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

2009-09-11T16:25:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-11T16:07:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-11T15:38:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-13T14:56:00.001-07:00

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

2009-07-06T08:51:00.001-07:00

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

2009-06-24T09:45:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-09T09:50:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-04T20:59:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-26T10:53:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-19T20:48:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-15T13:21:00.000-07:00

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.

I Stuff

2009-05-05T08:25:00.000-07:00

We checked out Hank Finds Inspiration by Craig Frazier for H Stuff last week. Because we hadn't been to the library yet, it served double duty. It was an okay H book but a phenomenal I book!

Other great I books? I Wanna Iguana by Karen Kaufman Orloff, Why Mosquitos Buzz in People's Ears by Verna Aardman, Imogene's Antlers by David Small, and Isabelle and the Angel by Thierry Magnier. What a great week for books!

Activities

What's that? A wedding cake? A volcano? A teepee? A tower? A beehive? A tholos tomb? No, it's an Igloo.

Compare the above picture with the one on the Family Fun website:

Then read Family Fun's instructions here and let me know what I lost in translation.

Iguana.

Here are the instructions. Our craft store didn't have all the necessary Woodsies, so we simplified and improvised. Talmage thought plain old green was a little boring, so he added several purple iguana tattoos.

Insects. (I cheated and did butterflies).

I originally saw this idea on TV for coffee filter butterflies, but I did the activity before I could go to the store and buy coffee filters, so I improvised. I think they turned out pretty cute.

We talked about what insects are and identified ants, mosquitos, bugs, and butterflies as insects. (I'm pretty sure a bug in his head is a fly.) Then we took a sheet of paper and painted it with watercolors. I dripped water on mine and sprinkled it with salt. We then accordion folded the paper and fastened a pipe cleaner around the middle. After we fanned out the "wings." We made a paper plate mobile out of the butterflies and hung it up in Tal's room.

Instrument.

Pretty simple. I saw this at the craft store when I was buying things for the iguana. It cost about two dollars. We painted it.

Treasure hunt. inside, igloo, iguana, infant, itchy. The treasure was Mike and Ike's. I know, it doesn't start with a short I sound; I'll take suggestions for alternatives.

H Stuff

2009-04-27T09:24:00.002-07:00

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

2009-04-27T09:23:00.001-07:00

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.

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

2009-04-14T10:05:00.002-07:00

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

2009-04-05T09:42:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-01T20:15:00.001-07:00

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

2009-04-01T15:40:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-01T14:21:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-01T13:26:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-01T13:08:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-01T12:53:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-01T12:38:00.000-07:00

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."

Evidence of Amazing Mothering Coming Soon!

2009-03-19T09:22:00.000-07:00

I'll post it once Talmage is happily watching television.