Letter E Week: William Edition (Work In Progress)

Letter E is the first letter we've come to thus far that William frequently identifies incorrectly, so I'm going to want to be less lax on this letter.  We've taken a big break for the holidays and I am only just now feeling the motivation to get back into planning, enforcing, and documenting this work each week. 


Books:
Piggie and Elephant series by Mo Willems
Elmer series by Dave McKee (Elmer is an Elephant)
Little Elliot, Big City by Mike Curato (Elliot's an elephant, too)
Green Eggs and Ham by Dr Seuss
Eggs, 1, 2, 3: Who Will the Babies Be? by Janet Halfmann
 Roly-Poly Egg by Kali Stileman
An Extraordinary Egg by Leo Lionni
Fish Eyes by Lois Elhert
Eye Guess by Phyllis Limbacher Tildes
The Earth Book by Todd Parr
I Am Planet Earth by Jean Marzollo
Funny Ears by Liesbet Slegers
Whose Ears? by Jeannette Rowe
Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet Ahlberg
Now I Eat My ABC's by Pam Abrams
I Will Not Ever Eat a Tomato by Lauren Child
How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food by Jane Yolen
The Everything Book by Denise Fleming
Shhhh! Everybody's Sleeping by Julie Markes
The Great Escape from City Zoo by Tohby Riddle


One of the things I'd like to work into our program is Natalie reading to William, so I think I'll have her give Green Eggs and Ham a try. 

Key words:
eat, egg, eyes, ears, Earth, elephant, end, exit, echo, ever, every, Easter

Movies/TV/Characters:
Elmo, Ernie, Ewok, Emperor, Eve (from Wall-E), Edith (Despicable Me)


Letter E Playlist:
Here is our letter E playlist. 



Full Alphabet Books:
A B C Kids by Simon Basher
Star Wars ABC
ABC of Cookies (Sesame Street)
Eating the Alphabet by Lois Elhert
Max's ABC by Rosemary Wells
Kipper's A to Z by Mick Inkpen
Shiver Me Letters by June Sobel
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr
LMNO Peas by Keith Baker
Hidden Alphabet by Laura Vaccaro Seeger



Here is our full alphabet playlist.  


 Games / Apps:
WallyKazam: During our hiatus for that last several weeks, William has fallen in love with this show.  Its very similar to Super Why, but with more personality.  The app is also similar to Super Why.  It has letter identification and tracing that we have explored so far.  
Super Why Alphabet Adventures.    This was perfect for us.  William enjoyed the four alphabet song videos, as well as Woofster's tracing game with the bones and paw prints and Pig's game finding the letters and taking their picture.  The other games were harder for him because they involved a stronger knowledge of letter sounds and Super Why's game involved greater fine motor control.
SesameStreet.org Cookie Monster's Alphabet soup.
SesameStreet.org Elmo's Keyboard-o-rama

Activities:
I'll highlight the ones he really enjoyed this week.   

• Read books.  (see above)
• Play games/apps on computer or tablet. (see above)
• Trace letter with manipulatives (rocks, buttons, pom poms, cereal pieces, etc), stickers, or Do-a-Dot markers
• Magnet pages
• Playdoh.  
• Watch playlists.  (We did this every morning before watching any other TV).
• Sing alphabet song
• Tracing letters with a finger in books
• Finding letters in environmental print
• Alphabet stampers
• Play with toys from letter bin.
• Tracing sheets (We typically do these with the dry erase markers on page protectors, but I'm starting to amass such a collection of these sheets that I might just let the kids do them for real).
• Lacing cards
• Puzzles.  I had some paper ones that made a simple picture with one sentence featuring the letter.  He also enjoy a full alphabet puzzles, both upper and lower.  
• Hand print animals
• Lego letters
• Painting over taped off letters or crayon resist with water color.
• Rubbings 
• Matching.  Matching same case or different cases.   We can use magnet letters for this or print outs.  
• Watch letter related movies.   
• Eat foods starting with letter. 

Letter D Week: William Edition (Work in Progress)

Letter D week turned out to be the week of Thanksgiving.  William and Mike were still sick from the previous week, we had a big snow storm, and then we traveled for the holiday.  So, we extended letter D an additional week.

Its especially nice when a book will have a title with the letter of the week as well as one of the author's names.   We are especially lucky with books by Emma Dodd for all the d's!

As always, there are extra books because you never know what will be available when you go to the library.  The books here focus a lot on dogs, because that is William's thing now. 

Books:
If You Give a Dog a Donut by Laura Numeroff
Dog's Noisy Day by Emma Dodd
Dog's Colorful Day by Emma Dodd
I Don't Want a Posh Dog by Emma Dodd
Big Dog and Little Dog series by Dav Pikley
Good Dog, Carl by Alexandra Day
Go, Dog, Go! by P D Eastman
Busy Doggies by John Schindel
Circle Dogs by Kevin Henkes
Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion
Doggies by Sandra Boynton
Dogs by Emily Gravett
Digby Takes Charge by Caroline Jayne Church
Danny and the Dinosaur by Syd Hoff
Dinosaur vs series by Bob Shea
How do Dinosaurs Say series by Jane Yolen
Dinosaur Roar by Paul Stickland
That's Not My Dinosaur by Fiona Watt
Edwina, the Dinosaur Who Didn't Know She Was Extinct by Mo Willems
Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs by Barton Byron
Bones, Bones, Dinosaur Bones by Barton Byron
Little Dinos Don't series by Michael Dahl
Doctor De Soto by William Steig
Do Donkey's Dance? by Melanie Walsh
Elephants Cannot Dance! by Mo Willems
Barnyard Dance by Sandra Boynton
Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! by Mo Willems


Key words:
dog, dinosaur, dot, donut, doctor, dance, drive, dig, dump, draw,

Movies/TV/Characters:
101 Dalmatians, Daniel Tiger, Dinosaur Dan,

Letter D Playlist:
Here is our letter D playlist. 

Full Alphabet Books:
A B C Kids by Simon Basher
Star Wars ABC
ABC of Cookies (Sesame Street)
Eating the Alphabet by Lois Elhert
Max's ABC by Rosemary Wells (features ants!)
Kipper's A to Z by Mick Inkpen
Shiver Me Letters by June Sobel
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr
LMNO Peas by Keith Baker
Hidden Alphabet by Laura Vaccaro Seeger - William  knows almost all the letters when we read this book.  The mistakes he makes are all logical, and sometimes are based on the artistic representation of the letters.  For example, the C looks a bit like a small e.  After spending a week plus with this book, I feel we can be very lax in our work on the alphabet because William knows most of it!  If we push academic work, it will be more focused on lowercase letters, sounds, and writing (which he doesn't have a lot of interest in right now). 



Here is our full alphabet playlist.  


 Games / Apps:
Super Why Alphabet Adventures.    This was perfect for us.  William enjoyed the four alphabet song videos, as well as Woofster's tracing game with the bones and paw prints and Pig's game finding the letters and taking their picture.  The other games were harder for him because they involved a stronger knowlegde of letter sounds and Super Why's game involved greater fine motor control.
SesameStreet.org Cookie Monster's Alphabet soup.
SesameStreet.org Elmo's Keyboard-o-rama

Activities:
I'll highlight the ones he really enjoyed this week.   

• Read books.  (see above)
• Play games/apps on computer or tablet. (see above)
• Trace letter with manipulatives (rocks, buttons, pom poms, cereal pieces, etc), stickers, or Do-a-Dot markers
• Magnet pages
• Playdoh.  
• Watch playlists.  (We did this every morning before watching any other TV).
• Sing alphabet song
• Tracing letters with a finger in books
• Finding letters in environmental print
• Alphabet stampers
• Play with toys from letter bin.  (DOGS - He played with these a lot, but one day we lined them up along the letters D and d).
• Tracing sheets
• Lacing cards
• Puzzles.  I had some paper ones that made a simple picture with one sentence featuring the letter.  He also enjoy a full alphabet puzzles, both upper and lower.  
• Hand print animals
• Lego letters
• Painting over taped off letters
• Rubbings 
• Matching.  Matching same case or different cases.   We can use magnet letters for this or print outs.  
• Watch letter related movies.   
• Eat foods starting with letter.  (Donuts, thought this was a coincidence and William always took a bite and said that it looked like a C like Cookie Monster says in the C is for Cookie video).

Letter C Week: William Edition (Work in Progress)

This week, I've made an effort to consistently point out titles and authors to William.  Of particular interest is when we read a book by a favorite author, and sometimes we'll even read the author bio on the back flap of the jacket, especially if it has a cool picture.  The title page is a great place to point to review letters because it doesn't interrupt the flow of the story. 

Last week, we read Biscuit, which of course William loved because he is very into dogs right now.  Natalie is currently learning to read and excited to read a book to us each night.  Biscuit is just beyond her grasp right now, but it got me thinking that each week I will try to find a book for her to read to us featuring the letter of the week.  We have some Disney's Cars level 1 readers, so I'll check those out as well as the Rigby reader section at the library. 

Books:
I'm a Caterpillar by Jean Marzollo
Ten Wriggly, Wiggly Caterpillars by Debbie Tarbett (Also 1-10 counting)
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
Ten Little Caterpillars by Bill Martin Jr
Cinderella (Little Golden Book)
Disney's Cars (many title choices)
My Car by Byron Barton
Cars Galore by Peter Stein
How Made this Cake? by Chihiro Nakagawa
Bunny Cakes by Rosemary Wells
Cupcake by Charise Mericle Harper
If You Give a Cat a Cupcake by Laura Joffe Numeroff
Splat the Cat series by Rob Scotton
My Cat Likes to Hide in Boxes by Eve Sutton
My Cat Just Sleeps by Joanne Partis
Top Cat by Lois Elhert
Cat's Colors by Jane Cabrera
Crictor by Tomi Ungerer
Circle Dogs by Kevin Henkes
Clifford by Norman Bridwell
Good Dog, Carl by Alexandra Day
The Cow Loves Cookies by Karma Wilson
Cookie's Week by Cindy Ward
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff
Creepy Carrots! by Aaron Reynolds
The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss
Little Cloud by Eric Carle
Cloudette by Tom Lichtenheld



Key words:
car, cat, caterpillar, candy, cookie, cake, cupcake, circle, cloud

Sadly, we did letter C the week of Thanksgiving, so while we had already started talking about Christmas, it was too confusing too talk about it too much with another major holiday that week. 


Movies/TV/Characters:
Cars, Cinderella, CP3O, Chewbacca, Cookie Monster, Clifford, Copper (The Fox and the Hound)

Letter C Playlist:
This is our letter C playlist.


 
Full Alphabet Books:
A B C Kids by Simon Basher
Star Wars ABC
ABC of Cookies (Sesame Street)
Eating the Alphabet by Lois Elhert
Max's ABC by Rosemary Wells (features ants!)
Kipper's A to Z by Mick Inkpen
Shiver Me Letters by June Sobel
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr
LMNO Peas by Keith Baker

Here is our full alphabet playlist.  


This week for letter bin, Natalie helped me find many of the C items around the house.  She struggled a bit differentiating hard C and K sounds. 

 Games / Apps:
Super Why Alphabet Adventures.    This was perfect for us.  William enjoyed the four alphabet song videos, as well as Woofster's tracing game with the bones and paw prints and Pig's game finding the letters and taking their picture.  The other games were harder for him because they involved a stronger knowlegde of letter sounds and Super Why's game involved greater fine motor control.
SesameStreet.org Cookie Monster's Alphabet soup.
SesameStreet.org Elmo's Keyboard-o-rama

Activities:
I'll highlight the ones he really enjoyed this week.   

• Read books.  (see above)
• Play games/apps on computer or tablet. (see above)
• Trace letter with manipulatives (rocks, buttons, pom poms, cereal pieces, etc), stickers, or Do-a-Dot markers
• Magnet pages
• Playdoh.  
• Watch playlists.  (We did this every morning before watching any other TV).
• Sing alphabet song
• Tracing letters with a finger in books
• Finding letters in environmental print
• Alphabet stampers
• Play with toys from letter bin.  (Cats riding in cars).
• Tracing sheets
• Lacing cards
• Puzzles.  I had some paper ones that made a simple picture with one sentence featuring the letter.  He also enjoy a full alphabet puzzles, both upper and lower.  
• Hand print animals
• Lego letters
• Painting over taped off letters
• Rubbings 
• Matching.  Matching same case or different cases.   We can use magnet letters for this or print outs.  
• Watch letter related movies.  

Letter B Week: William Edition (pics soon)

I have to get back into the swing of things!  I almost forgot to start getting letter B ready for the following week.  Looks like we might miss library day again to babysit for a friend, so I'm going to try to get letter B book and A books at the same time. 

I'm trying to just stick with books and series our family, particularly William, likes this time around for my book lists.  So, there are many other titles that others love and are great for this letter, but I'm going to choose to leave off.  Also, keep in mind that I like to make a really long list because you never know what is actually going to be available when you go to the library.  Better to start with too long of a list than to only have a few and have none be available. When looking for B books, I  only found about half of the titles I went searching for. 

Books:
Buddy and the Bunnies: In Don't Play with Your Food by Bob Shea 
Buiscuit 
Bumblebee, Bumblebee, Do You Know Me by Anne Rockwell
The Amazing Adventures of Bumblebee Boy by David Soman
I Love Bugs! by Emma Dodd
Bye-Bye, Big Bad Bullybug! by Ed Emberley
Bob the Builder
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr
Bear series by Karma Wilson
The Wheels on the Bus
But Excuse Me That is My Book by Lauren Child (Charlie and Lola)
Sleepover with Beatrice and Bear by Monica Caresi
Goldilocks and the Three Bears (We like Byron Barton's version)
Baby Bear Sees Blue by Ashley Wolff
Little Bear series by Else Holmelund Minarik
Bear's Birthday by Stella Blackstone
Bear on a Bike by Stella Blackston
Old Bear by Kevin Henkes
Birds by Kevin Henkes
There's a Bird on Your Head by Mo Willems (Piggie and Elephant)
Batman: The Story of the Dark Knight by Ralph Cosentino
Big Bad Bubble by Adam Rubin
A Big Guy Took My Ball! by Mo Willems (Piggie and Elephant)
I'm the Biggest Thing in the Ocean by Kevin Sherry
Knuffle Bunny trilogy by Mo Willems
Bionic Bunny Show by Marc Brown (Reading Rainbow)
Two Bunny Buddies by Kathryn O Galbraith
Peekaboo Bunny by Holly Surplice
Boats by Byron Barton
Ball by Mary Sullivan
Banana by Ed Vere
Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey
Pete the Cat and his Four Groovy Buttons
Belly Button Book by Sandra Boynton
Bambi (Little Golden Book)

Key words:
bear, bug, bee, bike, bus, birds, Batman, ball, bunny, boat, butterfly, banana, blue, button, bed, bath, bye

Just a funny little note: I can tell I have a girlie girl daughter because when I searched "ball" in Goodreads, everything that came up was ballet related!

TV / Movie / Characters:
Brave, Brobee, Big Bird, Baby Bear, Beauty, Beast, Barnacle, Bubble Guppies, Air Buds, Knuffle Bunny, Bambi, Boba Fett, Boo,

Brave was on our DVR and William asked for it as I went past.  It was a great fit for the week since it features bears!  Later that morning, we read Blueberries for Sal while eating blueberries. 

Full Alphabet Books:
A B C Kids by Simon Basher
Star Wars ABC
ABC of Cookies (Sesame Street)
Eating the Alphabet by Lois Elhert
Max's ABC by Rosemary Wells (features ants!)
Kipper's A to Z by Mick Inkpen
Shiver Me Letters by June Sobel
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr
LMNO Peas by Keith Baker

Here is our full alphabet playlist. 

Games / Apps:
Super Why Alphabet Adventures.    This was perfect for us.  William enjoyed the four alphabet song videos, as well as Woofster's tracing game with the bones and paw prints and Pig's game finding the letters and taking their picture.  The other games were harder for him because they involved a stronger knowlegde of letter sounds and Super Why's game involved greater fine motor control.
SesameStreet.org Cookie Monster's Alphabet soup.
SesameStreet.org Elmo's Keyboard-o-rama


Letter Craft:

Uppercase B into a bear (William chose this, and it matched many books we read this week).
Lowercase B out of buttons (I planned this knowing he loved this activity with Pete the Cat).

Activities:
I'll highlight the ones he really enjoyed this week.  We were all sick with a terrible cold for the week. so we didn't do as much as usual.  William known B well, so it worked out okay.  

• Read books.  (see above)
• Play games/apps on computer or tablet. (see above)
• Trace letter with manipulatives (rocks, buttons, pom poms, cereal pieces, etc), stickers, or Do-a-Dot markers
• Magnet pages
• Playdoh.  
• Watch playlists.  (We did this every morning before watching any other TV).
• Sing alphabet song
• Tracing letters with a finger in books
• Finding letters in environmental print
• Alphabet stampers
• Play with toys from letter bin.  (We played with the babies feeding them bottles).
• Tracing sheets
• Lacing cards
• Puzzles.  I had some paper ones that made a simple picture with one sentence featuring the letter.  He also enjoy a full alphabet puzzles, both upper and lower.  
• Hand print animals
• Lego letters
• Painting over taped off letters
• Rubbings 
• Matching.  Matching same case or different cases.   We can use magnet letters for this or print outs.  
• Watch letter related movies.  (For letter B we watched Brave, but also could watch Bambi)

Letter A Week: William Edition

Going into William's first official week learning the alphabet, I have mixed feelings.   I wonder if Natalie's success in school has anything to do with the fact I spent this time with her.  I worry that William won't like to do these activities, though I have hope that he will enjoy them if I make it about special time we spend together.  I know William already knows uppercase A, so if we have a little bit of a rough time the first week, like Natalie did at first, then at least he already knows this letter. 

I forgot that our regular library day was a holiday, so we got a late start on Letter A books. 

Books:
Alligator Alphabet - Stella Blackstone
Little Apple Goat - Caroline Jayne Church
Snip Snap, What is That? - Mara Bergman
Alligators All Around - Maurice Sendak
Ten Apples Up On Top - Dr Seuss
Aladdin (Little Golden Book)
I Am an Apple - Jean Marzzalo
Alligator Arrived with Apples - Crescent Dragonwagon (HUH?)
Airplanes - Byron Barton
Hooray for Amanda and Her Alligator - Mo Willems
But I am an Alligator - Lauren Child
I Want to be an Astronaut - Byron Barton
The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot - Margaret McNamara
Apple Farmer Annie - Monica Wellington

Key Words:
apple, airplane, apron, alien, alligator, astronaut

TV/Movie/Characters:
Abby, Aladdin, Anikin, Amadala, Aurora, Ariel,

Full Alphabet Books:
A B C Kids by Simon Basher
Star Wars ABC
ABC of Cookies (Sesame Street)
Eating the Alphabet by Lois Elhert
Max's ABC by Rosemary Wells (features ants!)
Kipper's A to Z by Mick Inkpen

Here is our full alphabet playlist. 

Games / Apps:
Super Why.  (I'll get more info on what it is specifically called).  This was perfect for us.  Had tracing letters and finding letters, including the sounds.  

Letter crafts:
One change with William is I'm going to introduce upper and lowercase together.  So, we are going to do an upper and lowercase paper craft to hang in the hall every week.  This will mean making them half the size if we have any chance of them all fitting.

I was going to have William make uppercase A into an anthill with finger print ants, but due to the library being closed and my getting sick, we couldn't get Max's ABC, so we did an alligator instead.  

Uppercase A - alligator
Lowercase a - apple

I'm excited about this part of letter of the week.  Natalie really enjoyed making these, and since William loves the crafts at the library, I think he will, too, especially if he gets to practice cutting and gets to glue stuff.  I made all of Natalie's letters into a book when I took them down, and I am looking forward to making William his own special alphabet book, too. 

Activities:
I'm anticipating William to like working with objects even more than Natalie did since he doesn't really enjoy coloring or drawing, though I will still encourage coloring and writing.  Here is our list of options, and I'll highlight the ones he really enjoyed. 

• Read books.  (see above)
• Play games/apps on computer or tablet. (see above)
• Trace letter with manipulatives (rocks, buttons, pom poms, cereal pieces, etc), stickers, or Do-a-Dot markers
• Magnet pages
• Playdoh.  He loved this.  We used the A cookie cutter as well as an Abby (from Sesame Street), two apples, and an airplane.  We also pressed the upper and lowercase magnet letters into the playdoh. 
• Watch playlists.  (We did this every morning before watching any other TV).
• Sing alphabet song
• Tracing letters with a finger in books
• Finding letters in environmental print (We had a great talk about letters reading the engraved sign at the park. He found the A's, but then asked me the sounds of many other letters). 
• Alphabet stampers
• Play with toys from letter bin
• Tracing sheets
• Lacing cards
• Puzzles.  I had some paper ones that made a simple picture with one sentence featuring the letter.  He also enjoy a full alphabet puzzles, both upper and lower.  
• Hand print animals
• Lego letters
• Painting over taped off letters
• Rubbings 
• Matching.  Match A to A or A to a.   We can use magnet letters for this or print outs.  
• Watch letter related movies.  (For letter A it was Aladdin and Aristocrts).

Here is the link to William's letter A playlist. 

 

I have ideas for games that involve the whole body, but most of them won't work yet because this is the first letter.   

• Build block towers with letters with know
• Tape letters to floor; jump on letter called out
• Place letters on floor or tape loosely on wall; race to find letter and bring it back (could also use letter magnets)
• Toss bean bags featuring letters 
• Scavenger hunt.  Can do this either hiding the letters or looking around for items that start with the sounds.  

Sadly, this was a great idea, but I never got to it...
Near the end of teaching Natalie the alphabet, I came across sheets that had a story a few sentences long with many uses of the highlighted letter.  Natalie liked looking for the letters and circling them.  This time around, I think making my own to use in addition to those would be fun and more likely to engage William.  The idea is to make story pages with items in house starting with letter of the week.  I'll take a picture and print the story with the letter of the week in color.  William circles / colors / do-a-dots all the letters, and then we act out the scenario with the toys.

Tentative A stories:

• Aladdin and an alligator fly an airplane to get apples from Applejack.  
• Amadala, Ariel, and Auora gather acorns under the arch.  
• An ambulance drives through the arch to get Anikan who hurt his arm.  
• An astronaut flies an airplane full of angry aliens.  

Even though I didn't make these sheets, William did spend a lot of time playing with the toys in the letter A bin, especially covering them in playdoh and then decorating the playdoh with letters and acorns.  

Natalie's Alphabet Book

Almost exactly a year ago, I started teaching Natalie's the alphabet by focusing on one letter a week.  Each week, we made a letter craft and hung it in our hall.  We hung the last letter in April.  Recently, they've started falling down and we get Mike to press them back up for us because he is tall enough to reach without a chair.  But, a year is long enough to hang a craft projects.  It was time for the letters to come down.  When J fell down again, I tossed it.  But both Natalie and Mike commented on me throwing it away!  Now, I felt guilty.  So, I decided to make the letters into a book.

All of our letters were based on a single sheet of construction paper, so they were close to the same size.  I had some poster board in the house, and found that they fit well on the small pieces.  I then discovered that the small pieces were exactly a quarter of a full sheet.  When I added a front and back cover, I had exactly enough for the pages.  I made the covers out of the the card board on the pack of a pad of Melissa and Doug paper.  To make them prettier, I lined the inside covers with paintings I did while the kids painted to use up the paint!  And, for the record, I used about four glue sticks to stick them all down, and Mike broke the hole punch on the front cover. 

Here is Natalie's finished alphabet book:

 

Letter Y Week

Books:
Yummy: Eight Favorite Fairy Tales by Lucy Cousins
Yo! Yes? by Chris Raschka
Yes Day! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
Yes by Jez Alborough
Young Mac Donald Had a Farm by David Milgrim
Yesterday I Had the Blues by Jeron Ashford Frame
Yes, Please! No, Thank You! by Valerie Wheeler
The Little Yellow Leaf by Carin Berger
Little Blue and Little Yellow by Leo Lionni
No No Yes Yes by Leslie Patricelli
Yummy Yucky by Leslie Patricelli
Yawn by Sally Symes
Hide and Seek in the Yellow House by Vladimir Radunsky
Extra Yarn by Marc Barnett


Idea Words:
Yellow, You, Yes, Yoda, Yarn

Activities:
Read letter Y books
Watch letter Y playlist
Yarn Y
Kitty and Yarn matching game

General alphabet review

Letter Y Playlist:

Letter Z Week

Books:
Zorro series by Carter Goodrich
Zoom! by Diane Adams
Zen series by Jon J Muth
Zelda Varigoose by Sebastian Loth
Za-Za's Baby Brother by Lucy Cousins
The Z Was Zapped by Chris Van Allsburg
Z is for Moose by Kelly Bingham
ZooBorns by Andrew Bleiman
Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin by Llyod Moss
Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears by Verna Aradema
Two at the Zoo by Danna Smith
If I Ran the Zoo by Dr Seuss
On Beyond Zebra by Dr Suess
Vroomaloom Zoom by John Coy
Peta's a Pizza by William Steig
A Plane Goes Ka-Zoom! by Jonathan London
Robot Zombie Frankenstein by Annette Simon
My Heart is Like a Zoo by Michael Hall
No Zombies Allowed by Matt Novak
Llama Llama Zippity-Zoom by Anna Dewdney
The Hair of Zoe Fleefenbacher Goes to School by Laurie Halse Anderson
The Great Fuzz Frenzy by Janet Stevens
The Great Escape from City Zoo by Tohby Riddle
Color Zoo by Lois Ehlert

Idea words:
zoo, zoom, Zoe

Letter Z Playlist :

Letter X Week

So, X is the hardest letter.  I've decided to go with books that have X at the end of a word, general alphabet books, and the number 6.  Even though it was hard to find books, Natalie really liked several of them and asked to hear them over and over.  Each week, I'm adding more non-letter items because we are so close to the end of the alphabet.  I asked Natalie what she would like to learn about when we were done, but she just looked across the table and said "William."  I'll need to ask again. 

Books:
Ox Cart Man by Donald Hall
Max and Ruby series by Rosemary Wells (several have "box" in the title)
Felix Feels Better and Felix the Worrier by Rosemary Wells
My Cat Likes to Hide in Boxes by Sue Sutton
Goldilocks Has Chicken Pox by Erin Dealey
Turkey Pox by Laurie Halse Anderson
A Fox: The Sound of X
The Adventures of Taxi Dog by Debra Barracca (series) - the dog is also named Maxi
The Crayon Box that Talked by Shane DeRolf
The Taxi that Hurried  (Little Golden Book)
Mem Fox (author)
Beatrix Potter (author)

A good pirate story with "X marks the spot" could be fun, too. 

Here is my post listing our favorite alphabet (and counting) books. 

Idea words:
x-ray, xylophone, fox, fix, Max, box, Sox, ox, mix, six, pox, next, galaxy, taxi, saxophone, T-rex, wax

Activities:
Put the pieces on the xylophone

This is an X related counting game from COAH

X out of food and silverware

Watch X playlist (I was surprised there were so many X videos!)
Read X books



Letter X Playlist:

Letter W Week

W made out of Williams!

Books:
Tons of book choices this week.  These are just the ones I found that start with W, not ones with W words elsewhere in the title!  I wish the timing had been better because the following week, we hosted a wind themed mommy and me group. 

Wake Up Engines by Denise Dowling Mortensen
We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen
We're All in the Same Boat by Zarchary Shapiro
We've All Got Bellybuttons! by David Martin
What Animals Really Like by Fiona Robinson
What Pet to Get by Emma Dodd
What Will Fat Cat Sit On! by Jan Thomas
The Wheels on the Bus (various versions such as Jane Cabrera, Raffi, and Paul O. Zelinsky)
What's in the Witch's Kitchen? by Nick Sharratt
When I Grow Up by Mercer Mayer
Where is the Green Sheep by Mem Fox
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
Where's Spot? by Eric Hill
Where's Walrus by Stephen Savage
Who Likes Rain? by Wong Herbert Yee
Who Made This Cake? by Chihiro Nakagawa
Who's Hiding by Satoru Onishi
William's Doll by Charolette Zolotow
The Wind Blew by Pat Hutchins
The Windy Day by Brian G. Karas
Wodney Wat's Wobot by Helen Lester (fun use of the W sound, but possibly confusing)
Wolf! by Becky Bloom
Wonderful Worms by Linda Glaser
Woof: A Love Story by Sarah Weeks
Winter Babies Wear Layers by Michelle Sinclair Colman
Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
Where's My Teddy? by Jex Alborough
Where is Baby's ... series by Karen Katz
What's Wrong Little Pookie by Sandra Boyton
Wemberly's Ice Cream Star by Kevin Henkes
Wemberly Worried by Kevin Henkes
Weekend with Wendell by Kevin Henkes


There are many books with the  word "who" such as Whose Feet?  or Whose Ears?  I avoid the word "who" since it does make W sound. 

Idea words:
week, work, word, what, why, where, when, Wednesday, wheels, wake, we, water


Activities:
W out of Williams!

Read W books and point out the W's and their sound
Watch W playlist

One activity I wanted to do, but it just wasn't in season, was to make W's using the cookie cutter on watermelon slices. 

Just like last week, we did some activities this week that were unrelated to our letter of the week.

A couple fun activities from 1+1+1=1.  Natalie really loved the ballerina activity from the Ballerina themed Tot Pack.  

I got this idea from Pinterest.  Natalie was excited. 

Best scissor practice yet!

I couldn't figure out how to get her to hold the scissors right, but my husband did it.