V Stuff

Activities

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



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



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

Vulture. We printed out this template.

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



Vegetable soup.

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

Here is the recipe.

Violet painting.





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

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

U Stuff

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

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

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

Activities.

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



After we hung raindrops from the umbrella.

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



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




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

T Stuff

No memorable books.

Activities.

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



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



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



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

Tambourine.



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

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

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

S Stuff

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

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

Activities

Snakes.



We made playdough. This is our favorite recipe:

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

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

After mixing the dough, we rolled snakes.

Splatter painting.

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



Jackson Pollock's got nothin on Laura and Talmage.



Potato Stamps.



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

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

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

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



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

R Stuff

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

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

Activities

Rooster.

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



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

Insert picture here.

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

Rainbows.

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

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

My rainbow:



Talmage's rainbow was a little more free:



Red painting.

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



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

Q Stuff

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

Activities.

Quilt.



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

Quail.



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

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

Question Game. Tyler would like credit for this idea.



I created these templates.

The back of the cards:



Front with one set of animals:



Front with second set of animals:



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

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

It was a big hit.

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

P Stuff

Activities

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

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

Insert video here.

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



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

Pomander Balls.

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

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

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