I can hardly believe it, but we’ve reached the end (beginning) of our Letter of the Week journey, begun last September. Twenty-six letter weeks (plus a few holiday weeks) later, I can say I have loved every step of this project. Travis can identify every letter, and understands the concept that letters are connected to words, the very first step toward reading. In addition, these weeks have helped me to be creative and joyful as a parent, deciding what would fill our activities and games based on the current letter each week. So please, go back through all my letter posts and I hope you enjoy as much as we did!

But first, don’t forget to take a look at our A week…

Animals: Pull out all your animal toys of course, whatever you have. You’re guaranteed to have some lying around, whether stuffed animals, plastic animals, puzzle animals, and more. In addition, we went back to old favorite games like an animal safari this week, and then acted out animals with a game of charades.

Put your child’s toy animals in a bag or bin, and take turns selecting. Act out the animal you selected and let the others guess what you are.

Apron: Pop a toddler-sized apron over your little one’s head and have them join you in the kitchen this week!

For bonus points, make sure your main ingredient starts with an A, as in the stuffed baked apples we put together.

Acorns: We used a little collection of acorn caps (gathered at last week’s bird sanctuary!) and turned them into acorn jewels. Acorns lend themselves to any number of arts & crafts, so if “jewels” aren’t your cup of tea, fashion them into whatever your child will like best.

Aquarium: For our field trip of the week, we headed to a local aquarium! (Please note that I do not recommend facilities keeping dolphins and whales in captivity).

Alphabet: How appropriate that A week could also be a sort of recap week, since alphabet begins with (of course) A. We put together an alphabet flower garden, played with alphabet tiles, and searched for alphabet beads in a big bin of colored rice.

And some extras…

Fine art: The suggestion from Letter of the Week was to assemble paper bag animal puppets. I wanted to Travis to have full range of creativity, so rather than assign him a specific animal to make, I let him create and then built off his design to finish our puppets. He loved using glitter glue and stickers, and we wound up with an alligator and a tiger.

Food: In addition to painting with apples, we ate them in the form of applesauce. Travis also enjoyed animal crackers, avocados, and alphabet soup

Songs: Ants Go Marching is a big hit around here, and we also watched the clip of April Showers from Bambi (which brought back nostalgic memories!).

Books: Some favorites this week included apple books (Secrets of the Apple Tree and The Apple Pie Tree by Zoe Hall), Let’s Be Animals by Ann Turner, Eating the Alphabet by Lois Ehlert, and Alligator Wedding by Nancy Jewell. Check out your library’s non-fiction section for a cute intro to astronauts as well!

Math: An abacus was the perfect tool to help Travis visualize his age. I started by showing him two beads for his own age, then showed my age, my husband’s, and the ages of his friends and cousins. He loved seeing two ages in comparison (i.e. himself versus his 6 year old cousin). For preschoolers, you can use your abacus for early addition lessons as well!

All’s well that ends well… Thanks for reading along on this journey!