Learning the Letter A (Part I)

Recently I've been working on making some materials to teach Alicia the alphabets, starting with the letter A. So far, I haven't finished going through the materials yet and she's already familiar with the letter and can recognise it and point it out and say it clearly on her own. In fact, she could say it the first time I went through the alphabet A with her. But I feel it's always good to do lots of repetition with a young child like Alicia so I'm still going to go through the rest of the materials. :) I thought of most of these activities on my own, bearing in mind what she loves to do most at the moment... must cater to my little "student's" learning needs. Haha. :D How can I possibly miss teaching? Keke. I'm teaching EVERY DAY, 'working' overtime all the time! :) Just that this 'student' of mine now is MUCH MUCH younger than the JC students... haha. :D And did I mention that it's so much more rewarding, enriching and fulfilling to teach my little one? whahahaha....

Anyway, these activities were carried out over a few days... it's not possible to cram so many things into a day! Space out the activities as young children learn well with repetition. For me, learning at such a young age must definitely be through FUN and exploration! That's why my activities centre around the various senses, and music and reading are absolutely crucial in their learning process.

First I wrote some As for her on a piece of paper (both upper and lower case) in different colours. Then we pasted As I cut out from magazines and stuck them on the same piece of paper together with her.

This is before we stuck the As from the magazine on...

Then I went on to the Alligator Puzzle with her but she wasn't interested in it at first. She's reacting to it a bit more now though she's not really piecing them together yet. She can identify the parts of the alligator though - head, body and legs. :D This puzzle's meant for 18-24mths and the progressive puzzle's available here.

And after that, I let her play with the Apple Tree I prepared for her. I came up with this activity as I believe she'd love the feeling of playing with the velcro and I was right - she LOVES this! But she loves pulling the apples off the tree rather than sticking them back on... :) She loves this apple tree so much she brings it around with her in the house sometimes!

Yay! I finally finished sticking all the apples on the tree mummy!

*Hop over to Simply Mommie's Precious Handmades to view this learning aid and other interesting learning aids! :)*

For literature, we read the book, The World of Ants, and she was fascinated by the MANY ants in the book. Sometimes some non-fiction's good for young children too! There's no need to just stick to fiction... hehe. But you can always read The Ant and the Dove or The Ant and the Grasshopper with your kid too.

I also exposed the Build-A-Letter resource to her but I think she's not so into it yet. Well, maybe when she's a bit older or maybe she just needs a bit more practice. At least she's flipping through the file and playing with the pieces here and there now and then. I guess that's a start.

Hmm, what's this?

Let's check out the rest of the file!

Hee... see my letter A?

Another activity I did with her was with her sticker book. She loves stickers so I thought that this would surely catch her attention - and it certainly did! I drew the alphabet (upper and lower case) on her sticker book and her task is to stick the stickers to form the alphabet. I chose to do this using a sticker book because she's not so precise in her sticking skills yet so the sticker book would provide room for correction - and she definitely needed it! Hehe...

I'm done with the BIG A... now on to the LITTLE one...

Now to add the finishing touches... paste the stickers of letter A!