ABC, easy as 123.... sometimes

I saw a blog post about using laminated ABC letters to do a variety of children's activities.  I thought it might be a great idea for Lily as we continue to encourage her in this area.  However, I'm far too cheap frugal to print out 26 ABC letters and then pay to laminate them, so I just used construction paper and a Sharpie.  Once the letters were printed and I had my ideas organized, I attempted to engage Miss Lily in some 'fun' learning.  Of course, I was not surprised when she wanted nothing to do with my plans.

And then dark chocolate came into play...

We'd recently come into a large bag of Hershey's dark chocolate squares (thank you, Gigi).  There are three flavor (color) varieties in the bag.  For some reason, if I asked Lily to do my 'fun' learning activities using these chocolate squares she was totally into it.  Blocks=NO.  Cars=NO.  Princesses=NO.  Dark chocolate squares that she's not allowed to eat=YES.

Let the learning commence!

First Lil's has to lay the letters out in order.  We did lots of singing of the ABC's.

Next we Lettercised several times in a row.  I love that Dr. Jean!

I gave Lily chocolates and asked her to place them on specific letters.

She was SOOOO excited when she got them correct.

Using dye-cut letters, I asked Lily to match letters.  'Put the O on the O card.'

(Yes, I rearranged my living room furniture this week.  Hence the variation in pics.)

Made a match!

The academic side of learning was a breeze for Gabe and has not been as natural for Lily.  It is AWESOME to see her feeling so good about this process.  Makes this mama smile.

With the candy variety, we were also able to work on multi-step instruction and sequencing.  'Put the blue chocolate on the F and then put the purple chocolate on the G.'  Great for listening skills, paying attention, logistics, etc....

When it's time to clean up, I give specific instructions like 'first collect the red chocolates, next collect the blue chocolates, etc.'  Then she collects the dye-cut letters and construction paper letters - sorting them into piles.  Then she double-checks each pile to make sure the letters are in the correct order.

We also used foam letters to match the dye-cut and construction paper letters.

We used popsicle sticks and string to form the letters.

We used our sight-word puzzle pieces to match letters.  'What sound does COW begin with?  Which letter makes the C-C sound like COW?'

(Just forgot to take pictures during some of our activities.....)

There are tons of possibilities here, these are just what we've been doing this week.  Lily has also been really into Kumon books.  Gabe loved these!  I really appreciate their step-by-step system.  So often ABC books will pair upper/lower case letters together which is not the easiest way for children to learn.  Kumon begins with tracing lines, curves, zig-zigs, progresses through mazes, then onto uppercase letters.  Love them!

So very thankful to have found some things that excite this lady about academic learning.