Alphabet Party

Xander and I have been using www.letteroftheweek.com for a long time now, and we finished "Z" week last week. The suggestion is to have an alphabet party when you finish, so we did!

Thanks to Xander, our dining room table is decorated with alphabet blocks. We still have up the windsock he made for "W" week.

This morning, almost as soon as the kids woke up, we went to the beach to meet Cheri and JT. It was a lot of fun and a nice time of day to be there. We saw a real live fishing boat, seagulls, sandpipers, surfers, and seashells. We also saw waves, just like when we went to the beach for "W" week.

When we got home, Xander colored a big alphabet banner that I made, and we hung it in the dining room. After lunch, we made these Ladybug Strawberries from www.learningdevelopmentactivities.com:

http://learningdevelopmentactivities.blogspot.com/2010/06/ladybug-strawberry.html

After that, we read books. Nick wanted Berenstains' A Book and Xander put together the alphabet puzzle in the My Playtime ABC book. Then Nick went into independent playtime to play with foam ABCs and his Leap Frog alphabet magnet toy and I re-gave Xander his Bob Books set, wrapped up with a bow. I told him the reason I was giving it to him again was that I knew that now he could read all of them. And he can! He is still on the slow side, but faster than before and much more confident. This is what he said after reading the first few Bob Books:

"I need to read some more. Whoa! Another Dot book! Some more Dot books?"

One of the longest sentences he read all by himself was:

"The bag had a tag."

Then Xander wrapped up some gift bows for Nick to open. Nick's favorite!

For his rest time, I am letting him watch one of the story videos that Aunt Judith and Uncle Bob and family gave the boys for Christmas: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, which includes Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, Wild About Books, Five Creatures, Inch by Inch, Blueberries for Sal, A Story, A Story, and Millions of Cats. We read three of those books during letter weeks. :)

Erik was pretty impressed when Xander read the title of one of his Wonder Pets episodes, "The Wonder Pets Save the Unicorn." He knew which word was unicorn, and he even corrected what he had originally said, "the baby unicorn," because he saw that it did not really say that.

Tonight or tomorrow, depending on when I finish it, I will give Xander the book I'm making of all the things we did for each of our letter weeks. Most of the pages include the theme words on index cards, the color of the week, a nursery rhyme or poem, and a list of the different activities we did. Some of them include a colored country map or animal or story illustration.