Learning the letter a fun activities

Today we did activities all about the letter a.  It was great fun even though Little Boo said that it was not her favourite letter apparently her favourite is the letter w.  I have no idea why as it is not in her name I think it is because it is like a zigzag. Anyway back to the letter a.  We made up our initial sounds tub again which currently consists of an apple, aubergine. arrow and aeroplane.  We are going to add more as we find items.

Little Boo was having a bit of a book day where all she wanted to do was pretend to read to me.  Due to this we then went on to read a few of our books about animals that began with the letter a and alphabet books.  We have this fantastic book from the library where the animal images are life size

We have also had this alphabet train full of books since Little Boo was a baby they are a great set and what is even better is that she can trace the letter a with her finger on the back of the book. 

We are also very lucky as a very nice friend kindly donated the whole set of these Jane Belk Moncure books so we looked at the letter a book.  These books are really nice as the little letter a person goes along putting all the things beginning with letter a into a box.  These are really good books to go with the sensory tubs as it is the same concept.

We also had a game of popping the letter a thank you to the activity mom  for this fab idea we just changed it slightly and used lower case letters.  When we popped them we said the letter sound. 

 I quickly made this very easy jigsaw.  All I did was print out two letter a's backed one onto card and cut it out.  The other one is used  to help place it together.

Our letter a sheet today we used acetate that is smooth and fabric which was furry. Little Boo again picked what images that she wanted. 

This was the most fun though! fine motor alphabet fishing with the big tweezers.  

 Little Boo picked the letter

 Then matched it

She soon got bored of the tweezers though and wanted to get her hands in.  Who can blame her?

This is another little gem that I want to share with you the new Twinkl app for learning the letter sounds.  This app has been created by Twinkl and is amazing! It has been made with parents in mind.  I brought the full package at £4.99 as it covers all the phonics phases.  It is also great for me as it has helped me to learn the letter sounds properly.  

Included in the app is writing the letters when we do this we use the stylus that I brought for a few pounds on ebay.  This is great for learning how to write as the stylus has to be held like a pencil. 

 This is one of the games on there where you have to match the sounds.  This worked well as Little Boo would repeat the letter sound.

I hope that you like all the ideas do not forget to leave some comments if you like them would be great to see what people think. 

Our first experience with waterbeads!

I have seen these waterbeads being used there are loads of ideas on pinterest and they looked amazing so I thought it was about time we had a go! The beads are advertised as being non toxic (however I still would not advise using them with children who still tend to try and eat things) they are also not harmful to the environment.  The waterbeads shown in the pictures cost me £1.98 as they were 99p for 10g on Amazon.

They come packed and are really small all you need to do is add them to water and watch them grow which is a great experience in itself.  Little Boo kept asking to look at them and was amazed watching them grow. 

Once they had soaked they were massive. Little Boo loved the feel of them and could not wait to get started with them. After a quick look in our up cycling bag I found plenty of interesting containers and items that could be used with the waterbeads.

I filled a small box with the beads to make a water themed play area.  Little Boo enjoyed putting the animals down the slide and the Waterbeads! They are really bouncy so that is also fun as Little Boo went chasing after them.

Filling up containers with the Waterbeads.

These beads are wonderful they feel really nice and have so many different uses.  We will definitely be exploring different ways of using them in  the future. If you have not yet used these then please have a go.