Monday, June 6, 2011

Our Alphabet Hunt = Backyard Treasures + Sidewalk Chalk

A few thoughts spring to mind when I think of spending the summer with my kids:

Anticipation of fun; apprehension about the change in routine
         Books to read; boredom to battle
                 Creative outdoor activities; creepy crawlies to study up close...

Last summer we made up songs and had fun together, with a bit of structure thrown in to keep the time from slipping away too haphazardly.  I intend to return to the summer activity calendars from Thriving Family again, but also am looking for more ways to spur fun and learning.

And happily, now I've got another resource in The We Teach: Summer Learning E-book. Join the We Teach forum and you can download it for free.  Click on the button below if you would like to go and get it for yourself:



we teach summer ebook button
 
The e-book is brimming with 25+ ideas to get our summer off to a great start. Today I'll share our variation on an idea from the literacy section of the e-book.  I loved Amy Mascott's idea to have a backyard alphabet hunt.  We simply made our hunt paperless.

What we did:

1.  Instead of a roll of paper we used pavement and sidewalk chalk.  We made a grid to write in the 26 letters.



2.  We filled in the grid with corresponding objects.
                                                                                                         
"R" is for rope,"V" is for vine, "W" is for wrapper, "S" is for stick...

Our "A" specimen was prone to wandering off the grid.





























3.  We took Amy's idea one step further and tried to see what words we could spell with just the filled letters.  For a kinesthetic experience, we jumped on each letter square while spelling the word.  Fun for all!



Find more inspiration at Show and Tell this week!

2 comments:

Katie said...

What a fun idea! Can't wait to do this with my kids.

teachmama said...

love it!! totally using this idea later next week.
thanks for making the hunt so much more earth friendly. :)