The Alphabet Tree...

In a few short weeks my boy is going to be starting pre-school. Yes, I've managed to keep him out of pre-school for the last few years (he's going to be 5 in October). I wanted to put him in pre-school last year but with our moving and being in limbo for so long we ended up not doing it. However, we have been making great strides with this boy learning his letters over the last few months which makes me feel better for not having him in any type of organized learning program yet. I wanted to share my super easy learn your letters method that has been working really well with my kiddo.

Here is our alphabet tree...





My friend gave me a cute vinyl tree last year and one day the idea came to me to make an alphabet tree for the boy. So this tree lives on the wall in his room and every few days or week he gets to draw a new letter and put it on the tree. I'm super relaxed about it, it's more of a fun thing not a very scheduled thing. He draws a letter when I feel like he's learned the last one well enough or he's getting bored one afternoon and it gives him something to do and work on. Then he tapes the letter up wherever he wants and we spend the next few days learning about the letter. The goal for me (and him) is to do one thing a day with that letter until he has it down.

For example, the last letter he drew was P. So here are the P things that we did this week.

There are lots of coloring pages online for kids. I like this one because it shows different things that start with the letter, and I like the big block letters that he can draw the letter inside of it. I almost always print off a coloring page for him to do during the week.

We made some play dough and he made letter P's before doing whatever else he wanted to do with it.



Starfall is such a great website. My aunt told me about this, she volunteers for a kindergarten class and said that they use this a lot at the school. It has each letter and he can go through the different examples for each letter. They also have the sign language for each letter.

What fun would learning letters be if we didn't make pancakes each week with the current letter? He loves getting his letter pancakes.

Other ideas for letters:
 - Go to the library and get a book that mostly has to do with that letter (so for P we could have found a book on parks, or picnics, pigs, etc). Read the book and point out the letter p's in the book.
 - Practice writing outside with chalk.
 - Go on a field trip and point out the letter you are working on. We had a picnic in the park and talked more about p's.
 - Get pipe cleaners and make letters by bending the pipe cleaners around.
 - Just simply practice writing the letters on paper.

There are so many things you can do! It's just a matter of repetition, doing one simple thing each day focusing on that letter. It makes me feel like a better mom because he is learning something instead of just hanging out all summer. He loves it and likes showing off his letter writing skills and feels smart when we are reading books and he can point out letters. It's been a lot of fun for both of us.

Silver Lake scavenger hunt...

The mountains were calling me the other day. So I left my sink full of dishes, the piling laundry, and the messy bedrooms aside and drove up to Silver Lake to smell the pine trees. It was such a beautiful day up in Brighton!

This is a great lake to take kids on a walk. The path is paved the whole way around the lake and it's a quick one. We took about 45 minutes to walk around the lake with lots of stops to sit on logs and watch the squirrels play.

My boy is not a hiker. He hates going on walks, so I knew I needed something for him to do to keep him interested and not complaining every step of the way. I printed out this nature scavenger hunt that I found on pinterest and brought a pack of crayons with us. HE LOVED IT! He was so into finding the different things on the list. We would stop each time he found something and he would color it in on his paper. One note, I taped it to a hard board so that the paper had support for coloring.

Next time I think I will make my own scavenger hunt page. This one was more geared for parks, and he was pretty bummed that he didn't find a swing, or dog to color.

Notice his amazing coloring skills. I'm not being sarcastic... we've come a long way! He hates coloring because he feels like he isn't good at it. But he keeps working on it. I love that he picked good colors for all the pictures and he colored the bark of the tree brown and the leaves green. This is great progress people. PROGRESS!! No thrown crayons or a discouraged little boy that day, I'm happy about that.

It was so nice to go and spend time time in my favorite place. The mountains feel like home to me. I love the smell, the mountain breeze, the sound of the aspens swaying. I was much more refreshed when I came home and was able to tackle my chores with a much happier attitude ;).