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Tootsie Pop and Kitty Cat began the All About Reading, Pre-Reading program this past week. Snootz wanted to participate in all the activities with them which is great. The program starts with uppercase letters first, goes back through the alphabet focusing on lowercase letters and then goes through the sounds of the letters. I have decided to take one week for each uppercase letter and once we have completed that I will reevaluate to determine the best schedule for the rest of the program.
Last week we completed the first lesson, A is for Alligator. I borrowed a bunch of Alligator books from the library and put them all in a basket with a few Alligator toys. Throughout the week I read the books aloud aand Snootz read several of them on his own. Here is a list of the books in the basket (our favorites are starred):
Fiction Books
- Alligator Shoes by Arthur Dorros
- There’s An Alligator Under My Bed by Mercer Mayer*
- Why Alligator Hates Dog: A Cajun Folktale by J.J. Reneaux
- Alligator Alphabet by Stella Blackstone
- Alligators All Around by Maurice Sendak
- Alligator Arrived with Apples by Crescent Dragonwagon
- Alligator Baby by Robert Munsch*
- Oliver and his Alligator by Paul Schmid
- Zack’s Alligator and the First Snow by Shirley Mozelle (Level 2 Reader)
- Zack’s Alligator Goes to School by Shirley Mozelle (Level 2 Reader)
Non-Fiction Books
- Alligators (Baby Animals) by Alice Twine
- Alligators and Crocodiles: Hunters of the Night by Elaine Landau
- Who Lives in an Alligator Hole? by Anne Rockwell*
We began the week with Ziggy the Zebra doing some rhyming activities with the children. The children also completed the alligator page in the program activity book.
Additionally, I used some of the materials from the Animal ABC’s packet found at 1+1+1=1. I printed and laminated the letter A play dough mats so the children could work right on them. The girls asked me to help roll the dough, so you can see some adult rolled dough and some three-year-old smashed dough in the photos. They had fun with this for about five minutes before they were ready to dig into their bin of play dough tools. (This is the best play dough recipe ever).
They also did another activity from the Animal ABC’s packet, painting a large letter A with watercolors and then cutting and pasting alligators onto the page. The girls did very well cutting the alligators out themselves, with just a little help from me, and then I cut the letters out for them.
Snootz didn’t want to cover up his painting with the alligators.
This week we will move on to the letter B. B is for BEE!
**Note: I started a different “letter of the week” program with the girls in the spring (photos below) using some of the materials from the Letter of the Week packet at Confessions of a Homeschooler. We stopped after the letter E. It is a good program and I will definitely be pulling some things from it as we continue with the alphabet. However, I decided to use the All About Reading program because I love their materials so much and it feels more manageable since everything is pretty much ready to go. The alphabet basket was an idea I found at 1+1+1=1 and is really cute but took so much time to put together. I may decide to do that again for some of the letters but not every week.
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