S and T

So, I love Mother Goose Time buuuuut I had to do something different for S because while Sheep (the animal they chose) technically is spelled with an S at the beginning it does not actually start with an /s/ sound.  I found a cute, free Snake coloring page on the internet and printed off three copies.  I started by showing the girls pictures of snakes and pointing out the different patterns. I had the girls chose 2-3 markers and come up with their own repeating patterns.  For Littlest, I did a simple pattern for her, coloring every other stripe red, and then let her decorate the rest of the picture on her own.  Miss M chose a pattern of four blue, one brown and got a little tired of coloring the four blue after a while so to help her maintain the pattern, I colored the blue stripes and she did the brown one.

The concept review game was fun for the girls.  Since I wanted to reinforce the /s/ sound and we were also doing activities from T is for Tiger, I chose to use letter magnets instead of a small toy to hide under my paper cups.  I randomly placed cut up cards on top of ten overturned cups and hid both letters while the girls closed their eyes.  They then took turns choosing a cup and looking for the magnet letter after telling me about the card on top.  If they chose a number card, I made them count to it.  If they chose a letter card, I made them tell me something that started with that letter.  They had a lot of fun with this game.  Littlest is making good strides with her speech but still can't quite name letters so she just made the sounds and I directed her to identify numbers and shapes instead of choosing them on her own.

These cards could be used in lots of ways.  You could put them in a little Tupperware (to keep them corralled) facedown and use them when playing board games like Candyland and have every player draw one and name it before taking their turn.  You could have your child pick a card, then find something in the room that starts with that sound or is the same shape or color (you could make it into a scavenger hunt for older kids).  For numbers, they could collect that many of a certain object (or different kinds of objects that add up to the total).  You could also use the number cards with coloring games, having them take a number and then color that many items on a page red, for example.  You could do a version of the alphabet car game but have them use names of objects or family members for each letter of the alphabet.

They loved the tiger masks and they turned out so cute!!  I didn't help them at all except to tie the yarn on (I cut it in half first so it was easily adjustable).  After they finished drawing on their stripes and had donned their feline alter egos, all three started growling and prowling around the living room, climbing on the back of sofas.

We finished off the day with masks firmly in place and dancing away to the ABC Zoo Dance N Beats DVD.  We started with the T is for Tiger song and then they chose their favorite letters from there.  I think my favorite was watching them run around like quick quail, especially Littlest who still has that adorable whole-torso toddler run.  It was a fun morning for us.