The Letter Aa

First things first, I did not sit down and create all of this. I used my resources! I have been pouring over blog sites for a while now trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I have to start small, and I need to go along with the schedule that we have. This seemed like the best way to work it into my system. It may all change over time, but this is the beginning.

The letter Aa... this is my general plan (below you will find all the links to the activities)






Alligator Craft ( No Time for Flashcards Blog)


Apple Craft (No Time for Flashcards Blog)

Vocab Cards- the idea came from here on the Rising Rock Stars portion of 1+1+1=1 blog. But she begins with the letter L because for all educational purposes you should start with letters that are easy to form and easily recognizable. But since we are following our Mom's Day Out schedule we are starting with the letter A. She has not completed her downloads yet for all the letters, so I worked my hardest to make cards like hers. I really feel like Eliza needs vocabulary focus with her speech issues. I hope I can keep them organized and add to them and review them like Carissa does on her blog and in her Rising Rock Stars Preschool. (I can share them in a link through e-mail. I tried to on here and I am just not that tech savvy yet... working on it)

Name Tracer Pages- You can make anything you want on this page to print out. We are working on our name.

The copy/ color Aa page was a page that was in my files from my teaching days. It is a Carson Dellosa and you could probably go to any teacher store and pick out a practice book with these in them. If you would like a copy of it to look for the book in the stores let me know.

Pom Pom Numbers can be found here. I have had so much fun printing out all of her resources and her resources and laminating them. (my printer and laminator are on FIRE... be prepared it can be overwhelming but FUN!)

The Do-a-dot page and the Aa cutting page I got when I downloaded the Letter of the Week Preschool Curriculum. She has all kinds of activities that could keep you busy every day of the week. I am just going to pick and choose what I am doing from that. Here is her post from the letter A but not everything is included in the post that she has in the packet. It is totally worth $10!


A few other notes:

The Bible Verse I got from an A-Z Bible Verse site.

The books I just happened to have on hand, and pulled more from our personal library.

The videos were just because.

Alphabet Stories is from my Kindergarten teaching days. It is just story cards that over-emphasizes the A sound in a short little story.

I think that about covers it. I'd be glad to help if you have more questions... but I am off to plan letter B before this week gets away from me =).

My preschool brain is in OVERDRIVE

Okay...so... where do I begin?

I have been feeling like I am slacking on Eliza. She is almost 4 and well, she has speech issues that we are struggling with. I started thinking about what we needed to do to get her going, motivated, learning, focus, and improving (yes she is in speech 2 times a week). This year, I have a lot more time and energy on my hands so I am making it my goal to focus on her and learning. Tot School and my friend Tonya Dodd were my inspiration, and if you remember... I did a few post last year about some Tot Tools that I made. (so it has been brewing for a while). So I have started planning. My goal is to spend 2 days a week focusing on the Tots in my house (mostly Eliza, but Cruz goes along for the ride). Since she is in Mom's Day Out on Tuesday and Thursday, I thought that I would spend Monday and Wednesday doing fun, focused activities. I also thought that I would share, because when I was a teacher, I loved doing fun stuff, but I did not enjoy planning it as much. So, since I am working on planning stuff... it is yours for the taking. My plan is to do our focused learning to coincide with what she is doing at school. They typically do a letter of the week (doing 3 a month with a week for review) so we are going to try to groove with that.
I am going to try to post what I do with links or ideas on what we are doing with enough advance timing that you can do the activities too if you so wish.

So, come along for the ride.

First Official Day

Off we go!!!

Just STAGGERING

Today was Silas' staggered day of school. I know everyone says this, but how did this happen? He was my baby! I think that he is going to enjoy school, he is fired up and ready. I also think he will be more recptive to learning at school. He has come a long way from basically not knowing letters in December, but his personality is just sensitive and slow. He does not like to be pushed into things and he likes things on his own time. Thankfully, he is ready for Kindergarten.




After going to school for his first day from 9 until 1...he said that it was a WONDERFUL day. He said that he made a new friend. He said the he thinks he is going to like school. He also asked to go back tomorrow and then promptly fell fast asleep in the car.

Sunday Snapshot

Very rarely do I "matchy-match" my kids. I had planned to for Easter and 3 out of the 5 stayed home. This was the first time since then I had put this all on them at once (and this is not Eliza's Easter Dress that Nommie made). Someone asked me for a pic of all of them, and I realized that the last one I have was from Christmas so I made an effort to take one this morning.

Celebrating a LAST

My mom brought it to my attention... I cannot even remember if it was a book, or a poem, or just an idea, but it stuck with me. We always celebrate the firsts... the first smile, the first laugh, the first steps, the first day of school. But, we sometimes bypass over the lasts... and it is those lasts that are just as, if not more special.

So I give you a last...




This is Silas' last official nap. I have always told my kids that since they make you nap in Kindergarten, in my house you will nap or have a quiet time until you go to Kindergarten, after that you are good to go. I did not even ask Silas to nap. We had a fun morning at the pool and everyone else was in bed, the two of us crawled into my bed to snuggle and watch some cartoons and we both dozed off. Silas, though would never admit it, loves a nap. This nap lasted over 2 hours. I have said it before, Kindergarten is going to wear this boy out, and I am going to miss our snuggle and quiet time (because mommy has been a push over this summer and have not really made him follow the offical nap rules). I don't think it has hit me yet that he is going to school. He is my momma's boy, he has my heart and we are just alike. Man, I am going to miss him.

TEN...10... ONE-ZERO...

I SO remember the day I turned double digits. It is big! So big, that I thought we needed to celebrate the 10 year life of my oldest son with something extra special for him. So, what did we do? Thanks to help from a few friends and family, we loaded up the car (just the 3 of us) and headed to see our favorite team play some ball. I do not think that we could have done anything that he would have enjoyed more. The excitement on his face and in his attitude was contagious.

We got up on Saturday morning, dropped off the kids with Gran and Papa (with Nommie coming to the rescue after dinner time) and headed out for our road trip. Thanks to a friend (that I used to babysit) we were hooked up with a room at the Omni Hotel in downtown ATL. The hotel in itself was fun stuff. It is the site of the CNN Headquarters so it was busy, busy!! We checked in, put our stuff up and headed out on a mission to get the field early for batting practice and dinner. We hit a snafu or two on the way (obviously looking like lost tourist) and were escorted by a "nice" escort to the MARTA station via Underground Atlanta (don't ask why...we had parking passes for the field, we just wanted the "experience"- so Brent says). After some needed handholding, water purchasing for dollar bills and some mustered up confidence we found the buses to the field and headed over. Sadly, it was raining so there was no batting practice, but the stadium was empty enough for us to enjoy the Braves Museum, some ball park food, and a walk around the gift shops. Right at game time, the sky cleared up and we headed down to our seats... we were SHOCKED!!!





Again, thanks to some friends we scored some AWESOME seats. We thought we were in the second set of seats. When we got there, we discovered we were ON THE FIELD. LIKE LITERALLY! We were just a few seats down from the visiting team's dugout. We could make eye contact with the Dodgers. We could touch the dirt on the field. We had to keep a continual heads-up watching for the ball. IT WAS A BLAST! Sadly, mom got sent on the snack run... and wouldn't you know that Daddy and Bay made the JUMBO-TRON while I was gone. OH Well, Mom always has to take one for the team. Bay appreciated his Dippin' D@ts so all is well. And in one of the last few plays of the game, a lefty hit a grounder up the third base line and it hit the wall right at our knees. Brent did try to dive for it, but could not quite reach it. The bat boy gave it to a kid several seats down, but word is that the Jones fam made it on TV showing the play. (good thing I reminded the boys that because of our location and all the camera's there would be no nose picking during the game =)

This Dodger (who had a great game) slid into third at his first at bat so hard that his pants ripped open down the side. I think I saw his panties (he he he) but he was too tough to change and let the breeze flow all game long. (the photo does not do it justice)
This was the Dodgers dugout... see how close. I am sure we made a fool of ourselves staring and pointing... it was so close we could see the bullpen on the screens in the dugout.
Do you know how big these cats are? We were excited that Heyward got to play... this is him on 3rd. He is a BIG man!

SO MUCH FUN!!! Our only regret was that our buddy Chipper Jones was out having surgery. He was JUST injured the week before the game and was not able to play. We hope that we still get one more chance to see him before he retires.