Letters

Letter of the week: W!

July 26, 2015July 29, 2015by Sheridan JohnsonLeave a Comment

This week really means that we are only three letters away from completing the entire alphabet!! Whoo-hoo! I can’t believe we have come this far, and so I wanted to make it extra fun for her this week and just spend as much quality time together as possible!

If you know Brielle right now, you would know that she likes to call everyone a walrus (thanks Mom and Mike!) and when thinking of what example I should start with for the week, of course this one was the first one that popped into my head! I am not sure what Brielle’s fascination about them are, I just know she gets REALLY excited any time she sees one in a picture/video/or in any of her books. When I told her “W is for Walrus”, she immediately found a picture in one of her alphabet books, opened it up, and said “Momma I have to call Papa and show him that W is for Walrus” (precious!). She definitely took to that one well and even last night on our walk I trying to get her to name things that she knew that started with a W and she goes “walrus, wheel, walrus” lol!

W is for Wagon was my second example, even though I don’t have one physically to show her, she has seen them and does know what they are. It was a cute example and she loved to draw pictures, and point out every single wagon she saw in all of her books when we would do story time! I think wagon’s are not used around my little town much because first off, most neighborhoods/streets don’t have a side walk that completely connects through an entire street so you end up walking in the gravel most of the time (which is definitely not the ideal pavement one would want to push a wagon on). She caught on to this example and even in my poor attempts to draw a wagon and would tell her to guess what I drew for her, she would “w for wagon!” It was funny that she even knew what it was, because let’s just say, art was never my strong suit in school.

One of the last main objects that I was showing her that starts with a W is a watch! She knows that I always have one on, and so she of course would want to wear it and would walk around the house going “look Momma, W is for my watch” it was so cute and I had a little but of a hard time getting my watch back! 🙂 It’s funny because she even knows the difference between my “work watch” and my “going out watch” and definitely let’s me know how pretty and adorable my going out watch is, haha! Sometimes the funniest things come out of her mouth, but in all actuality that is pretty smart to be able to tell that there is a difference in occasion for the use of the watch I choose to wear, which is pretty cool!

Along with those three words we also read books, practiced tracing, we signed the letter W which looked like the number three to Brielle and she couldn’t quite get her fingers to do what her mind was tell her to do, we sang songs for ex. “wheels on the bus”, colored pictures, played games on her little computer and used her little alphabet book from her birthday party, which she LOVES.

It was a fun week overall, and I will leave you with a few pictures of what we did to learn the letter W! 🙂

Picking the letter W off of the wall :) — Picking the letter W off of the wall 🙂

Using this toy from Krystle that creates music every time you touch a letter! So cool!

Whistle! (of course we couldn't find her old her, so she got another one this week! ) — Whistle! (of course we couldn’t find her old her, so she got another one this week! )

signing W and finding the correct letter in her alphabet book!

More practice with writing :) — More practice with writing 🙂

Alphabet, Brielle, Letters

Letter of the week: V!

July 19, 2015July 19, 2015by Sheridan JohnsonLeave a Comment

This week was so fun, because like I have mentioned before, Brielle picks up on the unique letters way better than the more common letters.

We started out with the example that V stood for vulture! I think to myself why I started with that, and honestly I have no clue because Brielle has never seen a vulture or even really been shown a lot of pictures, so that was definitely a learning experience for her. When she saw the pictures and the video on youtube of one, she immediately said that it was “scary” and added her cute little “rawr” every time we mention “V is for vulture”.

The next day (coincidentally) mom traded in her truck for a van and it seemed to work out perfectly with our letter of the week! So anytime she would see a van that looked like “Nana’s van” she would say “look mommy V for van!” and it was so cute! I think she thought I was saying B a lot of the times instead of V, and had to teach her the difference with my pronunciation and the way we say both of the letters to show her the difference between the two. She also learned the sign for V (which is the number 2), so I think she somehow correlated that there was 2 of anything when I asked “How many letters do you see that looked like this? (and I would be signing the letter V) and would say 2, even if there were 5 letter V’s on the picture!” haha

The last word that we mainly focused on was vegetables. I think for her the word sounds so different because the v practically blends in with the word, that it took her a while to understand that “vegetables start with the letter v”. She has definitely become a great helper in the kitchen with chopping up vegetables (or pretending to be) or cutting up fruit, that I knew she would benefit a lot from one of those play kitchens since she already has so much pretend food in a grocery cart that she pushes around the house. I found a great one for only $30 and she would love to go around telling me all about her vegetables and what she was going to cook for me, and how she was going to mix them together to “make it delicious” which I am guessing she has probably heard us say a few times, lol! It’s so cute to watch your kids use their imagination for play.

Overall, learning this week went well, and she caught on rather quickly. We also traced, cut out the letter, colored pictures, read stories, practiced her alphabet book and once she found the letter she would get a sticker, played a game where she would have to circle “all the letter v’s on the page” and she loved it. She is so smart, and we are getting rather close to the end of the alphabet! I can’t believe it!!

Here are a few pictures from this week:

She found the correct letter in her alphabet book!

Alphabet, Brielle, Letters

Letter of the week: S!

June 27, 2015June 29, 2015by Sheridan JohnsonLeave a Comment

This week was fun in general, because I got to spend a lot of time just having fun with so many examples since the letter S is everywhere!

Of course, I taught her that Mommy’s first name Sheridan starts with the letter S! So we practiced spelling it and the way she says my name has got to be the most adorable thing, ever (it sounds like shur-den)! Sometimes I will even catch her now saying “my mommy Sheridan” lol. I then would let her find the letter S around the house and if she saw my name somehwere she would “look mommy S for Sheridan!”

S is incorporated into our daily learning time with shapes, and we focused a lot on them this week. She knew her basics like circle, square, star, etc., but I really wanted to focus on the unique ones like oval, hexagon, octagon, and rhombus. It didn’t take long before he picked them up and we even had apps on our little samsung note tablet that she would practice and got really good at! She also loved to see a stop say and say what it was, every.single.time we passed by one! 🙂

S is for sweet, which can be used in different ways like the way she is acting, or even her love for sweet tasting foods. If you asked her which one she would prefer, it would definitely be the foods. She loves her dessert, so since this week happened to be the week of her birthday, she got to tell Daddy what dessert she wanted, and she picked brownies and loved them! The way she acts lately at times, is at times, not so sweet. I was really trying to get her to understand that being sweet to others, will allow others the opportunity to be back to you, and well let’s just say it will require a lot more work and patience with that one.

S was also used in the example for swimming. My parents have taken her a lot to the San Marcos indoor pool, and she LOVES to swim! So they have taught her how to do starfish, and practice floating, along with some other skills that help her every day in the pool. She has gone almost every week since about May/June and she will continue to go probably until the pools close down for the summer. We got to take her to the splash pad as well and she had a blast, so water is a must for this girl of ours.

She also loved learning her favorite things such as singing, snakes, and stamps also started with the letter S!

Here are a few pictures of our letter of the week, I loved it!

Cutting up fresh organic strawberries with mommy!

While swimming she found the letter "B for Brielle" she told me parents — While swimming she found the letter “B for Brielle” she told me parents

Fish has the letter S in it, she was so thrilled to know that. :) — Fish has the letter S in it, she was so thrilled to know that. 🙂

She found the letter from the fridge and brought it to me!

Found some cute to her, on sale, shoes at Academy!

Alphabet, Brielle, Letters, Rochelle

Letter of the week: R!!

June 20, 2015June 26, 2015by Sheridan JohnsonLeave a Comment

Welp! This letter of the week has definitely by far been the hardest week for me to teach. I wanted to relate everything to Rochelle, just so I could have an entire full week to talk about her every day with Brielle (which I practically do a little each day anyways) 🙂

R is definitely one of the letters of the alphabet that just doesn’t get used in the beginning of words that often. So to come up with a few ideas on what to really focus on teaching her so she would grasp the letter well was definitely interesting to say the least. I started out with the color Red. Brielle loves to color, and loves to say what each color is, so I would have her find the “red crayon”, or I would ask her to “count how many red pens you have” and we would just go from there. She LOVED finding all the different shades of red, and it opened up the door to her learning that a color can still be called the same name, even in different shades.

Roses have got to be one of Brielle’s top things. We have about 4 rose bushes in our front yard, and at least 2-3 times a week she will go over to them to “check to see how they’re doing” and if they are growing any roses on them. Roses come and go and dependent on the rain and other weather, you will just see them bloom in different times of the year. Of course the pink ones are my favorite, but for the purpose of learning, we really focused on the red ones and she even gave Daddy one! 🙂

Rochelle has got to be the best thing about this letter. Rochelle, as many of you know, if my middle name so when I got to teach Brielle that my middle name is the same as Rochelle’s first name, she gave me the most confused look ever. HA! I said “R is for Rochelle” and she would go grab something that was hers and go “I go to hospital and give this to Chelle,” it was beyond adorable. Rochelle is still such an intricate part of our family and we are so happy that we got to share those two months and one day with her. Brielle is so attached to her, and will include her in many conversations about the day.

Even though I would keep giving her more examples, and usually they stick with just a few ways that she can learn the letter, she definitely had a hard time grasping the letter this week. Not sure why, and even though we have moved on to a new letter at this time, I really think it would be fun to go back and practice the few that she still is struggling with.

Overall, the week was great and even though I work, I try my best to spend just one on one quality learning time together with her every day and teach something new. I can’t wait for next week with the letter S!

Here are a few pictures from the week: