End of Week #1 Letter A

The first week of my educational endeavor with my son has come to an end. Yes weekends are family fun time so we will start off Monday with the Letter B. I'm glad to be done with the first week because the hardest part of a goal is actually starting it and if you keep at it enough the follow through will happen naturally.

I want to make something clear before I go on... I know that just because the week is over and we studied A's does not mean he has "A" ingrained in his mind perfectly and is beyond super pro but hopefully these weeks with letters will set the stage for that to be true soon. 

I wrote about what we did on Monday in a previous post  Learning here we come and here is what we did the rest of this week:

Tuesday: On Tuesday I wanted to work with munchkin on writing out his A's so I tried out this method I saw on pinterest where you use a highlighter and write out the letter on paper then you have them trace over the highlighter so as to be making an A on top of the highlighted A. I didn't know if it would work but he loved tracing the letter A over and over again. And it got better and straighter every time.

Wednesday: On Wednesday we went to Play and Learn at the Central Library and while there we looked at books and found A's in them and used the magnetic letters there all scrambled to pick out the A's from there too. He is really good at identifying them. His one problem is if there is a small or tight V he thinks it looks like an A until he realizes its missing a line in between and upside down. But I see what he means. P.S someone who is 3 got his first library card that day! We then came home and made letter A's out of cheerios. Just tracing the letter A and then gluing them on top to form the letter. He was surprising good at making straight lines using glue.

Thursday: On Thursday we went to Play and Learn at Forest Hills Library and again looked for A's in books and signs. For an activity that day at home We used half an apple (the other half got eaten) to make apple prints with paint and paper. Just using various colors we painted onto the apple and then pressed it onto the paper to create a print. They came out quite cute. Here is a collage of the best apple prints.

Friday: On Friday we took out our wooden alphabet blocks and spread them all over the floor and I asked him to pick out the A's for me. He found them easy in between the other letters and we had fun building things with them. He did a little more of the highlighted letters but I found a problem to them, he didn't want to write the letter without tracing it out over highlighter now. He said he couldn't do it. And I wanted him to feel confident just writing it out alone but It wasn't something he wanted to do. I eventually got some A's out of him but for some reason unknown to me he would make some of them sideways (must work on that problem).

Overall I consider this first week a success! My son can pick out an A from a jumble of letters and he can say A really clearly and as far as writing an A he can make a pretty straight one. I am very proud of my son for all he has showed me this week on his learning capability. He really put an effort with the letter A and that means the world to me. We are going to keep at it with this goal of learning the alphabet and trying to find what works best teaching wise and will keep you updated. Wish us luck! Please send me tips that worked for you if you've gone through this.