Transportation alphabet matching cards

Alphabet Matching Cards by Angela Wells

Alphabet Matching Cards I-P by Angela Wells

Alphabet Matching Cards Q-X by Angela Wells

Alphabet Matching Cards Y, Z, Letter Circles Caps by Angela Wells

Alphabet Matching Cards, Letter Circles Lowercase by Angela Wells

U is for Unicycle

• Shape craft
• Pretend play: Circus time! Be a clown, paint faces, tame lions, ride a bike
• Go to the circus if it is in town
• Sensory bin: circus peanuts and animal crackers with letter U's mixed in
• Letter U craft: glue printed circus peanuts and animal crackers to paper in U 

  Circus Pics by Angela Wells

In case you missed the letters outline before:

  A outline by Angela Wells

O is for Ocean Liner

• Ocean liner shape craft (I will be saving each craft and the letter art for the week to create an alphabet book to keep for review)
• Pretend play: pack a suitcase for a cruise, make a big fancy dinner and dress up (I'm pretty sure the bigger kids will like this part too)
• Sensory bin- head to the bath tub with lots of floating boats and bubbles
• Letter craft: tear blue construction paper (great fine motor activity) and glue to O drawn on paper

• Since this letter is planned the same week as U, I have a sensory bin for sorting both letters and a bin just for U. The bath tub sensory play is fun, but I wanted something for review to use in between our weeks of tot time.

Transportation pack from 2 Teaching Mommies (there is a boat puzzle in this pack for this week, plus other great printables to be used later

Printable links:

I is for Ice cream Truck

• Ice cream truck shape craft
• Make ice cream in a ziplock bag
• Ice cream cone colors lapbook

  Ice Cream Matching by Angela Wells

• Pretend play: scented playdough, make ice cream sundaes, ice cream cookies, etc.
• Sensory bin: mini erasers that are ice cream shaped (something like this) , spoons, bowls, shaving cream (messy, but fun!)
• Letter art cut and paste 
    I Letter Craft by Angela Wells

E is for Engine

Create a train from shapes 

• Sensory bin: train painted rocks, pretend coal (black pom poms), little toys for train to carry, letter E's

• Read The Little Engine That Could
• Make train tracks outside

• Make a name train

A is for Ambulance

• Each week includes a shape craft to do together- we will create an ambulance with construction paper.  

• Talk about community helpers.  Now is a great time to start talking about what to do in an emergency and start memorizing things like child's full name, parent's names, address, and phone number.  
• Pretend play with bandages, doctor kits, and stuffed animals.  
• Sensory bin- cotton balls, tweezers, tongue depressors, different size jars, letter A's

• Letter A craft- use band-aids to create a letter A

All the letters are in this file for future use.  

  A outline

Some printable links you might find helpful:

Community helpers from Miss Kindergarten

Police unit study  from Lawteedah- has a great printable for information sheet about child's information, also useful when you get to P is for police car

A little more scheduling

Here's the order I decided to work through the alphabet.  Since I am not concerned with actually writing the letters, I am just following a schedule where themes match up and I think my son's interest will be highest at the beginning to get him excited about tot school.  I will start with vowels since that is how I typically teach reading, but feel free to put it together as you like.

I plan on 3 days a week of activities, remembering of course that it will be broken up throughout the day and just for fun.  There is plenty of time for mastery (he's only going to be 3 this year!).  Right now is all introduction and enjoying time together. The sensory bins created for each 2 week session will be available for play during the older kids school time.

I will add the lesson plans in their own posts, but will post again when we actually do all the activities with pictures of us doing them!  If you'd like to follow along, we'd love to have you join us.  

Week 1: A
Week 2: E
Week 3: I
Week 4: O and U

Week 5: G and review

Week 6: Y and K

Week 7: T and W

Week 8: D and X

Week 9: L and review

Week 10: C and N

Week 11: P and F

Week 12: H, J, and Z

Week 13: Review

Week 14: R and S

Week 15: V and B

Week 16: M and Q

Weeks 17 and 18: Review all

How to get it all done....

Since I also home school my older kiddos, I've been thinking about how to best fit all our stuff in a school year.  My conclusion: year round schooling. I know many families manage to fit all the housekeeping, schooling, entertaining the littles, and keeping their sanity....a traditional schedule could work for many.  I am having a hard time getting it all done and feeling like I have enough to give attention to all the fun stuff I used to do with the older girls when they were little.  Pudding and jello painting, crafting 3 or 4 times a week, long walks to the park, reading lots of little books, singing songs and nursery rhymes...the list could continue indefinitely.  I am just admitting my struggles here, but I can't seem to find the time to do it all (okay, I'm too exhausted with the free time I find.  As I write, I am not doing the dishes or laundry that needs to get accomplished today....).  So enter, year round scheduling.  I will focus on the older kiddos schooling for 4 weeks, then they get a break to pursue some hobbies while the little ones get 2 weeks of "schooling". Of course I'm not going to ignore either the older or younger ones when it is the other's weeks on, but the focus will be geared towards each respective age group.  I've added in breaks for vacations together and a couple of weeks will overlap simply because we've got to fit all our allotted days, but I'm excited to try it out.

Here's the example schedule in case you're interested in trying it out....we are part of a school for homeschoolers also, in case you are wondering what the Arrows portion is about.

  Year Round School Schedule 2013

Tot School Plans

In my planning for next year, I am excited to include Tot School time yet again.  Having an 8 and 6 year old, our family has moved into more academics and less play time in our homeschooling.  I really have missed the fun, hands on crafting stage of preschoolers.  Thankfully, there are a couple more kiddos who are still not there yet so I get to enjoy the stage over again! :)

My boy  (3) is REALLY into all forms of transportation.  In searching for ideas in the blog world, I found some great ideas.  The only problem is that I want to theme the entire alphabet around transportation and I didn't find anything that was completely set up that way. So here's my addition to the blog world, an entire year's worth of alphabet activities related to "Things That Go".   I will link to printables related to the activities of the week from other sites where appropriate.  Some awesome ladies shared all of these on their blogs and I am grateful to not have to make many myself.

For starters, though, here's a link to my transportation alphabet cards.

  Transportation Flash Cards

Each week I will post a painted flashcard I've created from some of my own artwork that can be printed and  used with the letter (s) of the week.

Here's a quick peek sample....you have to wait and follow along to see them all :)

 I think we will post them on a bulletin board as we go and the clip art flashcards will be on a board kind of like this Pinterest idea for practice and review.