Letter A

Look at my cute boys! This photo is over two years old now, but this was their first day of preschool. One of the awesome things about preschool at home, is that it doesnt require shoes. One less thing for this momma to find. Shoes always seem to be lost around here. :)

I try to have letter art. So I will cut out the letter of the week out of construction paper, and then decorate it with something that starts with that letter. For A we did it a little bit different. I traced their arms on brown paper for the trunk of a tree (or you can dip in paint) and then I had precut tree top shapes in green. I then provided letter A stamps (you can glue foam letters onto a milk cap to make a stamp if you don't have some) and we stamped red As onto our apple trees. (I really thought I had a photo of it, but cannot seem to find it yet)

We had some fun snacks. The first day we had apples and apple juice. 

The second day we had ants on a log (celery) and ants on a raft (graham cracker). I have found many kids do not like raisins (one of my twins included), plus raisins are very big ants. Chocolate sprinkles are just right for ants. We adhered with peanut butter, because I knew none of my class had peanut allergies. You could use frosting, sunflower butter, etc. 

Yum!

Music and Movement are so important for preschoolers. I can get them to do table work so much easier when we have movement and music in between things. I always make the letter of week in tape on my floor. We did uppercase A on Tuesday, and lowercase a on Thursday. We always have "A movement" and you can tell from the photo below, they were moving! I just pick things that start with A, "move like an ant" "pretend you are picking apples", etc.

For music we sang 

5 Monkeys swinging in a tree

Teasing Mr. Alligator

Can't catch me, can't catch me

(Quietly) Along comes Mr. Alligator quiet as can be

(loudly) SNAPPED that monkey right out of that tree

(countdown to zero alligators)

My kids all LOVE that poem/song

We ended with reading fun letter A books. I often just read things from our home, but going to the library is always great for exposure to new authors and fun books.

Some we read were Arthur by Marc Brown

Imogene's Antlers by David Small

and How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman