Mini Letter Crafts A B C D

We've been (attempting) to do a handprint and a cut out craft each week going along with the ABCs. I'm creating FREE Preschool Printable PDFs of our cut out crafts so you can play along.

Each page has 4 letters and I'll post as we go.

If you want the sheet with ABCD, just follow the PDF link below for the downloadable file.
(A is for Alligator. B is for Bee. C is for Cat. D is for Dots)

Here's some affiliate links to the supplies we use for our preschool crafts.

Elmer's Disappearing Purple Washable Glue Sticks (because who doesn't love washable).
Home Printer (this is the newer (and cheaper!) version of my Cannon MP560 that I LOOOVE!)
Ink Cartridges. (Because I promise you they're as good as the $30 for ONE you've been buying at the store).

Enjoy!

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE ABCD PRINTABLE HERE.

Mini Letter Crafts A & B

It's already Summer Break for my preschoolers (and soon to be Kindergartener!). To keep busy this summer, we're (trying) to do some sort of craft each day.

We also practice writing our name and holding our pencil.

We're making ABC handprints and I made some mini cut-out-letter crafts for us to add to our Alphabet Books. There's two letters each on a page (to save the trees and have copies for siblings, yo!) but you could enlarge them too if you wanted.

You can download the free printable for letters A and B here.

Mom! I'm gonna draw a guy in his mouthing saying "Ahhhhhh!"

Here's hoping we get through the rest of the Alphabet (because, you know, kids are cray and summer gets lazy. Ha!) 

St. Paddy's Fun

Well, it's been a while. I wanted to share with you a super cute St. Patrick's Day craft I did with the boys last week. I literally had a "Oh, crap. It's St. Patrick's Day. Maybe I should do something" moment. Not that I think it makes me a better Mom, but it makes me FEEL like a better Mom, so I decided to do some Pinterest searching and found this idea found on a blog here.

To be honest, I didn't even look at the blog. I skimmed Pinterest, saw the picture and figured it had basically no prep and my two year old could do it. Boom. Now I'm crafty.

While Little was exploring downstairs in a safely baby proofed room and Big was napping, I quickly gathered up some construction paper and sliced it into strips. Not gonna lie - my strips were pretty big because I didn't want this to take forever.

When Big woke up, we got our craft on. I know two year old's like tape, but Big LOOOOVVVEEES tape. I don't get it, but whatever kid. He really enjoyed putting a strip of paper through the hole of our paper chain and then sticking a piece of tape to hold it together (and then I would stick another piece of tape to ACTUALLY hold it together).

Little loved handing us colors of paper and waving them around in the air. I was actually shocked with how well they worked together. Shocked, I tell ya.

In the end, we hung our "rainbow" on the door so Daddy would see it when he was on his way home. I ended up going back later and cutting out a black pot with some gold gold in it later when Daddy got home and had no clue it was suppose to be a rainbow.

Our rainbow and gold hung in our kitchen for a few days after St. Patrick's day and Big loved pulling at it until it finally fell apart. Overall, I'm glad I could take some time and watch how much my little guys really are growing. They both are impressing us daily.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

(Oh yea - I was also 'that mom' who made 4-leaf clover sandwiches)

Preschool Goals: Revisited

Before the start of 2014, I spent a lot of time compiling Letter of the Day, Theme, and other preschool activities to start doing with Big three days a week. I had it all figured out. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday we would sit down during Little's nap, sing our ABC's and count to 10 with a pretty little poster I made. Then we would do an activity surrounding a letter of the day. For the first day, we were suppose to color and glue five little apples to a cut-out "A" while singing some rhyme about apples falling off of a tree. After our letter of the day, we would do a themed activity. January's theme is winter and hibernation. Like I said, I spent a lot of time putting together activities. The first day's activity was playing with an ice cube in a bin while adding ice and warm water to see what it does. After the themed activity, we would have an awesome snack that was just cute enough to go along with our day. Day One's Snack: Sliced Apples and Peanut Butter.

Cute right! I spent so much time creating lesson plans. I am an educator; I know how things work. However, I am an adult educator and I realized quickly my mistake in planning Big's curriculum: He. Is. Two. He is basically in charge of his own life right now and very into being independent. After I found on that first day of home school preschool that I don't want to spend my day cutting out apples, I realized Big was just as happy to color one apple out of an alphabet coloring book I found for $2. I tried to switch gears and move on to our themed activity, but guess what, Big still wanted to color. Like I said, he's the boss and am I really going to fault the kid for wanting to color? No. Then the baby cried, and I had to nurse him. Mr. M had a fun time playing with an ice cube with Big, but I was lucky that he happened to be home from work and able to help facilitate my unrealistic preschool goals.

After that day, I realized that if I could just sing the ABC's, count to 10, and let Big color one of his alphabet pages for the day three times a week, we are winning at home school.

Sometimes I need to remind myself that he is two. Coloring a page, practicing pronouncing the sounds, and trying not to eat ALL the crayons is my new goal for him. And he's excelling. I predict all A's for Big this semester.

Coloring a banana while eating a banana: Now that takes skill!