The Letter A

The letter A was fun because Summer already knew it. Maybe it was just easier ... anyway we finished I and A this week, two of the vowels.

How we learned A:

- We learned a song that emphasized the short a sound, a a a a apple (make the motion of eating an apple) repeated 4 times, then a a a a alligator (make the motion of an alligator chomping) repeated 4 times, then A A A A ape (motion ape arms) repeated 4 times.

- We discussed how the letters I and A are special because they have 2 sounds.

- We watched 4 different youtube A videos. One video about how to write an A, little did I know I have been writing it incorrectly, huh oh well, a video about the a sounds and another video about the letter A, and this video was probably her favorite, the kids singing the song above and learning about the letter A.

- We made animal sounds and moved like an animal.

- We did a science experiment with ants, luckily we have a lot in our back yard. We took them a piece of banana bread and a wheat cracker and watched to see which one they liked best. The banana bread was the winner so I guess they prefer sweeter things!

- We wrote the letter A on the writeboard. The letter A is actually hard for Summer, she has trouble with the angles on the sides. We also traced the letter A in workbooks.

- We watched a story about the Ashanti people who live in Africa from PBS kids, I really love online story books.

- We made an uppercase and lowercase letter A with macaroni, yay macaroni art! I spread the glue in the appropriate shapes and Summer stuck those little macaronis right on target.

Tomorrow we will recap all the letters from the two weeks, W, Q, I and A. I have already been playing around with matching the lowercase and capital letters and Summer has no problem matching them up.

If you don't have a large write board I suggest get one, it is so nice for learning letters. I can use the dot to dot trace on it to help Summer get the letters, or hold her hand while she draws.



I also discovered Summer knows how to use my trackpad on my laptop this week so she has started playing learning games. I really like this ABC alphabet and phonemic game here and so does she, good for all the letters of the alphabet and we played around with the games on PBS Kids, their island has nice learning games.

So far things are going good, almost two weeks done and I feel like Summer is enjoying school and is learning what I am trying to teach her. We need to work more with numbers I guess, we are still on the number 6 but we didn't do much with it this week. We will probably continue learning about the number 6 next week.

Luckily we already know shapes and colors, I haven't even bothered to work on those. I guess once I get the alphabet letters and numbers done we will start spelling and counting :o)