Bright Beginnings

School is now in session in our home. Children are constantly learning, so singing the ABC's, reading letter and number books, and pointing out letters or counting while playing is of course educating, but I wanted to start a more structured form of learning that could build on top of each lesson. So while perusing my favorite recourse site (do I even need to say Pinterest at this point?)I found this great site No Time For Flashcards by Allison McDonald. For someone who wants to start teaching little ones but doesn't know where exactly to start this is the perfect site for them. I've worked in day cares, religious ed classes, and elementary schools so the concept of teaching and lesson planning wasn't foreign to me. However, I've never taught a one-two year old in a "school" setting. As advertised, No Time For Flashcards is all about early education and creative play. Allison provides so many brilliant ideas and resources.

So with this new guidance I've started planning and doing mini lessons for each week. I've decided to start with the alphabet. So each week we focus on one letter. We've done three letters so far and Babycake and I have been having a lot of fun with it. 

For "Aa Week" I got as many books about the alphabet from the library as I could find. Like I mentioned, the youngest child I'd taught in an educational setting was five. So it makes sense that only about half of the books were a success with my toddler. (this is a learning experience for both of us)

Here is the list of the four books that Babycake enjoyed reading:

Eating the Alphabet: Fruits and Vegetables from A to Z. This is a great picture book of fruit and veggies listed in alphabetical order. It is very colorful and eye catching.

ABC Safari. This book is great for kids who love animals. One animal is listed for each letter. I really like this book b/c it lists animals but also gives a short poem for each animal.

Curious George Learns the Alphabet. Babycake loves Curious George. This book does have a lot of wording and is a bit long so it might not be as interesting to most toddlers. However b/c it is Curious George, her favorite, Babycake happily sits and listens.

Apples A to Z. The perfect alphabet book for Aa week! This book is great for toddlers and older children because it provides one simple sentence that matches the picture and letter for each page, but also gives a short paragraph description. 

So for each day we add the books when we sit down to read (there's no set reading time, Babycake loves books so we'll read at different times throughout the day) and do one craft or activity that coincides with the week's lesson.

For activities we glued apples to an apple tree (glue is super exciting for a one year old), colored a lowercase A to make it an apple, hunted for acorns in the yard, made an Angle, and made an Alligator. Here are the finished products: