Sam and Anna's Alphabet Book

I did it!  I had aspired to create an alphabet photo book for Sam and Anna for some time, and this summer provided the perfect opportunity to capture pictures for every letter.  As anyone who has ever created a photo book knows, though- amassing the photos is only a small part of the work.  Making a photo book can take tons of time, especially if you are a perfectionist like me and take extra time to get the formatting just the way you want.

Shutterfly's free 8 by 8 hard cover book code (SUMMERBOOK, expires Wednesday) gave me the push to get it done asap!

Here it is:

Click here to view this photo book larger

T and U!

For letter Tt, we read books about tigers, turtles, trees and of course, trains.

Sam and Anna's tiger handprints.

 

They made dot marker T and t.

I brought home colorful tape to make tape art.

 

We also made trains by painting paper tubes and attaching them together with paper clips.

 Sam and Anna decorated paper plates and then I put them together to make a tambourine.  They had fun shaking them after I put rice inside!

 (Sam made Thomas and Percy on red railroad tracks on his plate- can you tell?)

We practiced fine motor skills by putting toothpicks into a cheese container.

We explored painted towel tubes and made some shapes with them.

Sam and Anna practiced tracing Tts and coloring objects that begin with t.

They also sorted turtles by size: large, medium, and small.

 

Of course, we had to play with trains a lot (but that's what usually happens on a daily basis around here regardless of what letter we're on).

We had fun wearing tutus (yes, even Sam). In fact, Sam was even more happy as a clam  than Anna to be prancing around in his tutu.  It was super cute seeing them dance together, holding hands.

We ate trains for lunch (the corn is smoke from the smokestack).

We also had to visit two trains near us.  This yellow train car is within walking distance of our house.

When grandma came to visit we took her to the black steam engine Sam and Anna love to climb up on.

 
No train visit is complete without going up on the red caboose!

 

 

For letter u, we didn't do as much because I was back working long hours setting up my classroom.

 

Sam and Anna made umbrella handprints, with thumbprint raindrops.

We matched shapes on umbrellas.

And also put umbrellas in size order.

Sam and Anna traced Uus and colored U objects.

They colored umbrellas by matching the color words.

We did dot marker Uus of course.

Sam and Anna also made underwater scenes with sea animal foam stickers.

They made umbrellas with muffin wrappers, pipe cleaners and dot markers too.

 

Finally, we ate a underground snack: dirt and worms!  This was definitely a special treat for us because we almost always have a healthy snack.

Anna wasn't so sure about the dirt and worms.

 
But my sweet-toothed Sam loved it- especially the gummy worms!

 

R and S!

Even though we were 2 days into potty training, we still did some alphabet activities last week.  At first I was worried we'd be covered in paint when a bathroom emergency would strike, but it mostly worked out okay without problems.  Sam and Anna didn't have any accidents inside while we did stuff, only when we were outside having fun (twice).  Not too bad. 

For letter r, we read books about rabbits, rockets, and rainbows.

Sam and Anna's rabbit handprints.

They made dot marker R and r.

We painted rocks we collected from the North Shore of Lake Superior.

We also ran around outside.  A lot.  Sam and Anna like to play tag and tickle the person once they've successfully tagged them.

We made rockets- this was a super easy project and super fun to blow the rockets around with the straws.

We also made rainbows with tissue papers after reading several rainbow books.  While I talked about the order of colors with them, I didn't make a point of making them stick to the order.  We also added a sun and clouds after learning that both are needed to make a rainbow.

The top favorite R activity was this chalk racetrack I made in the driveway.  Sam and Anna had tons of fun zipping around my chalk road, and it kept me from stressing about little ones running into the street.  They always kept on the road and never went near the street.  Since then I have recreated my road because they kept asking to do it again once rain washed it away.

 I made rainbow rice for a sensory activity.

After exploring for a while, we scooped, poured and filled with different containers.

Then I put 7 letters in the rice and matching letters in an ice cube tray.  Sam and Anna had to  uncover the letter in the rice and then find the matching letter.

But we weren't done with our rice yet!  Finally, we put glue on paper and sprinkled the rice on top for quick art.

(Rainbow rice was well over an hour of fun and we only stopped for lunch.  I highly recommend!)

For letter Ss, we read books about spiders, sleep, shapes, and sheep.

Sam and Anna made spider handprints.

They also did their dot marker S and s.

We colored in new Sesame Street coloring books.

I also took out our Velcro sticks that we haven't used in a while and we made shapes.

Anna wanted to make a pattern, so we did that too.

We also sponge painted shapes.

Sam and Anna explored with paint mixing in shaving cream (Sam still isn't a fan.)

But Anna still loves it and I had to tear her away when the shaving cream started drying up.  She's pretending to "get me" with her messy purple hands.

Big project fail for the week:  spray painting with stencils outside.  It's all fun and games until your brother almost spray paints you in the eye. 

I drew shapes in the driveway and we played "Stomp the Shape" when I called out a shape name.

We also ate rainbow spaghetti.  Yum!

We explored shells and talked about their colors, textures, size and how some were the same and different.

We ended our week playing in the sand on a beach we hadn't been to before.  It was too cold to swim, but we will definitely go back again to do that the next time!