I was inspired to do Alphabet Summer by Andrea. She has been doing it for a couple of summers now and her kids love it. When she was here visiting, she said to me, “All you have to do is plan things you would want to do anyway and put it with a letter.” Me - “Oh! Well, that makes it sound easy. I can totally do that!” So here I am jumping on the Alphabet Summer Bandwagon. Because we are doing things we would be doing anyways our alphabet most likely isn’t going to go in order. If it’s raining we are going to do R, when we go on vacation we are doing V, we will do F whenever it is a good day for us to take a field trip, and so on. It gives me some flexibility and I like that.
I think it is a great way for younger children to learn more about the alphabet and for older children to keep up on their writing. Most of the time I am going to have my kids do the homework part in the morning and the activity in the afternoon. Drew is going to do a worksheet that I will have printed for him and color a picture that starts with the letter in his notebook. The older ones will write a story or draw a picture and write about it. There are 26 letters in the alphabet. I figured out how many weeks we were going to be home for (I don’t plan to do it when we are on vacation) and then decided that we needed to have 3 alphabet days a week to finish by the end of summer. M W F
Our Alphabet Summer Looks Like This:
A – Animals – Read about favorite animals on the computer. Do an animal craft with paper plates.
B – Beading – Make bracelets and necklace.
C – Collage – Make a themed collage out of magazine clippings.
D – Duck – Play Duck, Duck Goose on the trampoline.
E – Eat anything for lunch!
F – Field Trip – I want to take my kids on a field trip once a month – children’s museum, children’s play, water fountains, etc.
G – Grandparents Day – Make fun things and put them in the mail.
H – Hat Day – Everyone wears a hat – Hat craft
I – Indoor Smores and Table Tent
J – Homemade Jam
K – Kitchen Play – Teach the kids to wash dishes by hand – bubbles and all. Kangaroo snack.
L – License plate game and lollipops. Go on a drive to play the game, stop and get lollipops.
M – Mixes – Make homemade cookie mixes to have stored on the shelf ready to go.
N – Northshore Park - Picnic, ducks and play
O – Outside Play – Bike wash
P – Make Play-do or Popsicles
Q – Quilt Ratio – Count each colored square of a quilt – Graph the results.
R – Rainy Day Reading Marathon – I want to do this on a rainy day (obviously). We can read all day and break it up with movies and board games. We are going to read Diary of a Wimpy Kid this summer– all 4 of them.
S – Sock Puppets
T – Make a Treat together.
U – Take a walk or drive and take pictures of things that look like the letter U – Building, windows etc.
V – Vacation!
W – Water play, water color or water fountains in The Woodlands – depends on what we are in the mood for.
X – X marks the spot – Treasure hunt.
Y – Yellow lunch – serve lunch on the yellow plate, all things yellow.
Z – Zucchini Bread
Doesn’t it sound like fun? It does to the kids anyways. :)
Check back tomorrow. I have another idea planned!
Read previous posts for part 1 and 2.
