tot school - letter a

Noah is 17 months old.

We began two new long-term themes this week....Letter of the Week, and a weekly Bible lesson! I've been itching to start both of these, but have been waiting for Noah to be interested in letters & to have the attention span for a real Bible lesson. Happily, Noah did super this week with both new themes:)

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Letter of the Week - Aa

I made the focus on ants & apples for our Aa learning. Here are Noah's two art projects of the week...

Noah did every bit of the gluing on the apple tree picture by himself! I was quite proud & impressed:) He did go a little crazy with the glue though...

He also really enjoyed making the ants page. I took that idea from the Totally Tots ABC page. He always enjoys finger painting, but this was a good opportunity for listening (only make dots), practicing counting (1-2-3 dots), and learning "A" versus "a."

I made some other counting cards to work more with numbers while still keeping with the apple/ant theme. He did okay with these...I think they bored him:) But I set it up with big pompoms to correspond to the small pompoms.

Noah shocked me with these! I printed these Aa ants from Confessions of a Homeschooler hoping to review colors with Noah. He has consistently been identifying his colors for about a month, but I still thought he would enjoy these. I set out a few at a time, with one as a guide...

But Noah decided that these needed to be sorted into "A" and "a" piles instead of by color! I think he got this from doing the Starfall "Aa" page where you sort the apples at the end, but I was very impressed! He eventually did sort them by color too.

That is all the pictures I have for our letter activities, but some of the other things we did included:

*Reading Alpha-Bite! by Charles Reasoner and Chicka Chicka ABC by Bill Martin Jr.

*Starfall "Aa" many times (Noah points, I move the mouse/click)

*Having an "Aa" snack day! This one was very fun, and I hate I don't have pictures! Noah had apple juice, apple chips, apple sauce, and our own version of ants on a log...pretzels with hummus and raisins. I call them ants on a twig:) I wanted to make this a picnic, but our weather was just too cold.

*Watching the Leapfrog Letter Factory dvd

*Doing our ABC puzzle book (from Melissa & Doug)

I think Noah did super with all of the Aa activities! I am really looking forward to continuing learning his letters:)

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Bible Lesson

I began our Bible lessons focusing on (part of) Philippians 2:15 - "shine like stars in the universe."

A little back story...I have a list of several scriptures I pray for Noah, and Philippians 2:14-15 is one of them. This is actually one of the verses Carisa was inspired by for Raising Rock Stars too! Anyway, since I have felt it was time to begin having a Bible lesson with Noah each week, I thought focusing on a verse I already pray for him would be a perfect place to start!

I made a little paper for Noah to use during our lesson, and I explained how Jesus wants us to be his light in the world. I used a flashlight to help illustrate this concept...Noah loved playing with it!

I also explained how when Jesus lives in your heart, his light will shine from inside you for all to see. Then he practiced making his light shine:)

Then we had to sing This Little Light of Mine! We HAD to keep using the flashlight too:)

We talked about letting our lights shine all week! Noah also made a picture of a shiny star (made with foil) to help him remember to shine like a star:) He did all of the gluing on this one too (obviously!), and it was great shape reinforcement!

I cannot encourage everyone enough to do a Bible lesson with your children each week! It has been such a blessing to me this week to see Noah learn about God...I am very excited to continue this each week!

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That's all for our week! See what others are doing for tot school and share your own ideas at 1+1+1=1!