I finally got around to preparing crafts for our last letters Xx, Yy, & Zz. Now that Buddyboy is big enough to sit in the highchair entertaining himself with attempted self feeding, I was able to spare 20 mins a day focused on Babycake and our letter lessons.
For Xx we only talked about x-rays. Since Babycake is a big fan of Curious George, she was able to connect the dots, and we had a great discussion about the letter Xx, our X-ray craft, and what exactly an x-ray is and does in relation to George falling and breaking his leg in one of his adventures.
I know xylophone also begins with x, but explaining the sound each letter makes, getting a child to remember that sound, and then saying 'well, yeah it makes that sound, but here it says zzzz for this word it just so happens to begin,' seems a bit foolish. The point of the lesson is to help the child understand the special sound the letter makes (the majority of the time). I feel like "second" sounds a letter makes ie. X-zzzzz C-sssss, should be introduced after the child has a firm grasp of the alphabet and the sounds each letter mainly produces.
Yy was a fun day for Babycake since she had a friend over. She was so excited to show how we do crafts and sing our letter sound song. Our craft consisted of covering a Y in yarn, and coloring images of things that are typically yellow. We had fun discussing how yarn and yellow "start" with Yy, and then came up with other words like yo-yos, yawns, and yaks, to name a few.
For Zz Babycake made Zeke the zebra and sang a little rhythm song about him (how cute is she?!). I also had her cut out pieces of a Zz-zipper puzzle. She then had to figure out how the pieces fit together to make a Z and glue it down.
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| Xx, Yy, & Zz crafts |
Babycake had a great time doing these crafts as well as all the other crafts we've done on our Letter of the Week venture. I think she learned a lot. She knows all her letters by sight and has even started writing them. She can spell and read her own name. She can tell you the sound each letter makes on her own, but when asked, she is prone to brain freezes. Our next big adventure is reading.
I've always been grateful for her love of learning and am excited to begin this new phase with her. I'm so thankful for her initiative in self-education. I often do not come up with our topics or lessons. She finds something interesting, asks about it, and then experiments with it. My role has simply been to provide guidance and craft supplies.
