letters

Letter of the week: Z!

August 16, 2015August 16, 2015by Sheridan JohnsonLeave a Comment

This week was so fun and just so sad at the same time! It was crazy eventful due to her being sick and me having to work, so we literally only got about two and half days to learn this letter! That brings me to the last post about the alphabet, Z!

Z has been something I have a waited a long time for, because ever since I was pregnant with her (3 years ago(*Tear*)), I knew I wanted her theme in her room to be pink and zebra and I couldn’t wait to decorate the room! So she has known and seen zebra’s since she was a baby!

Of course, we had to start out with our first example being Z for Zebra! She is really good at knowing this and caught on pretty quickly when I said “look Brielle what does Zebra start with” and I would point to the picture in her room, and she could go “Z”! It was so cute and she could even sign the letter Z pretty quickly as well, which definitely adds to her cuteness!

The second main example would be Z for zipper! There are so many things now that she is older, that she uses everyday, that has a zipper on it. She loves to try to zip up her little shorts, and it’s so cute because her angle when she has them on, it’s definitely more difficult to zip! She loves to try though, and she also two pencil bags (the ones the kids use in school) to hold all of her crayons, markers, scissors, etc.) that have zippers on them and she just recently learned how to open them on her own and it’s so cute! She said “look mommy, it’s a zipper and it’s starts with a z”! I couldn’t believe how quick she caught on, and I was so happy for her!

The third example would be Z is for zoo. The zoo is such a fun place for the kiddos to experience and since we actually went not to long ago, I felt it was a great example for her to be able to understand and we got to talk about what kinds of animals we would find in the zoo. **She also got all of the letters correct when we spelled out zoo. She said “z-o-o” I jumped up for joy and gave her the biggest hug!** So maybe that could be what we work on next will be spelling and identifying letters and words! 🙂

We also did a LOT of tracing since she has gotten SO much better at it, reading a lot of books and pointing out the letter Z, practicing her alphabet book, coloring and identifying the letter Z, signing Z, and practicing words that start with Z in spanish as well! She picked up “Z is for zapatos” pretty quickly and would go get her shoes. She is seriously amazing and I am SO proud of how far she has come in the last 26 weeks! I hope you all enjoyed the ride, and last but not least, here are a few pictures from the week!

She picked out Z properly from the group of letters I set out for her.

I bought her this alphabet poster from Teacher Heaven and let her put pieces of paper on the appropriate letters I would say!

She had to scroll through this entire toy to get to Z!

More tracing and she had to flip through the pages of this book to get to Z

I asked her to "type an email and write about the letter Z" so did the best she could, but she did type a lot of zzz's — I asked her to “type an email and write about the letter Z” so did the best she could, but she did type a lot of zzz’s

More writing and tracing, and trying to do "zig-zags" — More writing and tracing, and trying to do “zig-zags”

A musical game where it asked you a question and you have to answer it correctly to be able to play the music

Alphabet, Brielle, learning

Letter of the week: X

August 2, 2015August 2, 2015by Sheridan JohnsonLeave a Comment

This week definitely felt like it went by faster than normal! When I started teaching Brielle this letter this week, I started to think “what in the world are we going to do with our time during the mornings when we are done learning the alphabet.” I just want to cherish these next two weeks of learning the final two letters! 🙂

When I was thinking of what we needed to best learn this letter of the week, we were at the mall and I found these little musical instruments for toddlers/little girls for only $10! It was a great deal and brings us to our first example of the week, xylophone! I love the little xylophone that came with the instruments and Brielle actually LOVES it too! She loves to create different music and sounds and of course try to dance with them any time she can! “x is for xylophone” is something that she picked up rather quickly on, and she can actually say xylophone pretty good, which took me years to say it correctly!

Of course when it comes to giving examples for the letter x, there really is only two that start with the letter. (xylophone and x-ray). It really is quite hard to explain to a two year old what an x-ray is, when she has never gotten one before. I tried my best to remember that I am talking to a 2 year old and after teaching her, I always try to ask her a repeat question of the day’s lesson just to make sure she retained some of it, and after teaching her this, she said “where they look at people’s bones”. It is interesting how much this little girl knows and can remember, because I honestly have never gotten an x-ray for anything(knock on wood), so I have just been a witness to them, and I just want her to be as knowledgeable as possible if she ever has to encounter one.

I usually try to give three examples each week, when teaching her a new letter, but the other examples that I could think of didn’t start with the letter x, the just contained them in the word and I didn’t want her to get confused. So, this week was just two examples and I must say, that I asked her today “x is for..?” and she said “xylophone!” with such excitement and then said “let me show you”,which then proceeded her to find her little toy instrument and play some music for me. So precious! Can she stay two forever? (Ok, minus the tantrums, LOL!)

Here are a few examples of the week:

She was finding out information about the letter X on her computer!

She ran from the fridge and found x, and started dancing to the music!

Trying to write X on her own, like mommy!

Making music by typing in the correct letters, and she got X correct!

tracing our letter of the week, that comes off of her alphabet wall in her room!

Trying so hard to stay between the lines.

Alphabet, Brielle, learning, 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: