Hazel School- "A" Week

This week we started with the letter "Aa". We started out reading "The Lady with the Alligator Purse". Hazel took much pleasure in making me sing it over and over again. the beauty of it though was that afterwords she was able to "read" me the story. :-)

Our capital letter A craft was an Alligator that I found over at Totally Tots. I set up the paper with the intention that she could cut the teeth out, but apparently Mom was a big over estimating. She cut wonderfully but we haven't worked much with cutting on a line and zigzags were not the thing to start with.
This is how I had the tray set up. She was so excited to see glue and googly eyes! I must break these out more often!
Here is the finished product which is proudly displayed on a makeshift line in our "learning room".
Next we "built" and A from a template I found at Tired Need Sleep. I love it because it gives me the ability to try out the Handwriting Without Tears method before purchasing it. I think for next year I will do the workbooks....maybe.


As part of her trays this week we experimented with tweezers and pom poms. She really liked this and came back to it many times this week. It's funny how some fine motor skills are so simple for her while others are more difficult.



I found this beading set at the Dollar Store! I just know I had found the ultimate deal. Unfortunately you get what you pay for. The wooden beads on the inside are rough and catch the shoe lace making it very difficult to thread. Luckily I have a friend who's hubby is handy with the wood tools and it gonna attempt to sand it out for us. :-)


Writing was big this week. I have made printables from Kid Zone and stuck them in page protectors so that she can practice her writing. I have given her no formal instruction on writing but she sees her brother and I write so much that she is super eager to learn. I go back and forth as to whether or not to encourage this. She just turned three in January, but as of right now I will just let her lead me and try not to get too excited and push her.


Our Second Day we read "Ten Red Apples". It's a wonderful counting book and it was so exciting to see Hazel begin to grasp the idea of one to one counting. Afterwords we built and Apple Tanagram puzzle found at Totally Tots. She seemed to enjoy the exercise but became frustrated because the pieces wouldn't stay put. After I put it in a page protector she seemed to work a bit better with it. I am trying to hold off on a laminator until I just can't take it anymore.





This day I really wanted to show her the Upper and Lowercase A, so I had her use her fingers and print all over the Uppercase and Lowercase A. Then we made Apple prints on the page by using a carrot and cutting a little wedge in the edge. I found the stamp pads at the Dollar Store (which totally ROCKS!).



Here she is adding stems to her apples. I only showed her like once or twice and she immediately grabbed the marker from me and said "I can do it myself!" This seems to be a reoccuring theme here lately.



Of course who could resist stamping all over one's self with red ink?!



I'm sure we did tons of other learning things this week that I just have forgotten or didn't get a picture of. Next week B!!