Crafts for Letter K
I just love this adorable koala puppet! I bought 12 x 12 inch gray scrapbooking paper, which we folded in half and trimmed. The kids had fun gluing on all the pieces and decorating with a Sharpie (something they are not usually permitted to do :)). In this picture, my Six is modeling her puppet. You can get a step-by-step tutorial for this craft at Cindy DeRosier: My Creative Life.
Painting with Kool-Aid
This week marked a first: I bought Kool-Aid for my kids. But after one permitted taste with a wet finger, they didn’t get to eat  it. (Yes, I said eat— I remember when I was a kid we’d sneak into the church kitchen and dip our fingers into the giant Kool-Aid canister for a sugar high! Yikes!)
Did you know you can paint with Kool-Aid? Just dump a packet into a section of a muffin tin and add a little water. Use some water color brushes, and you’ve got a great open-ended art activity. The kids loved it – and their creations smelled great! I forgot to save their best paintings for a picture. We folded them and turned them into anniversary cards for Grandpa and Grandma!
Printable Kangaroo Craft
And here’s a not-so-open-ended art activity. But I think these have value too — they can teach following directions and basic skills (like cutting, gluing, and placing). My Three and Four painted the patterns while doing a little color mixing. After the pictures dried, I cut them out (a few too many pieces for my little guys) and guided the boys as they glued to make their kangaroos. You can get the pattern from Learn Create Love.
K is for King
Did you know I’m doing a craft series over at Crystal and Company? Each of my kids enjoyed making this simple “K is for King” project. To see this craft and the rest of the craft series, visit Crystal and Company.
Key Printing
For this project I printed out a giant letter K for each of my kids. Then I hot-glued an old key to a small plastic container. The kids dipped the key into paint and pressed it onto their letter K’s. This kind of simple activity is so useful for reinforcing the letter and its sound.
K is for Kites
 My Four and Six cut out the letter K patterns. Then they glued on the paper kites and used just a dab of glue at the base of each kite to attach the yarn for kite strings. After adding some cotton for clouds, their simple crafts were complete.
Contact Paper Kites
I saved our favorite for last! Â To do this craft I gave each child a piece of contact paper cut into the shape of a kite. I taped it, sticky-side-up, onto the kitchen table. I added the black cross bars (made of construction paper). Then the kids added tissue paper squares to decorate. When they were done, I added another piece of contact paper to seal the craft. Then we added ribbon for a tail.
Next time I would make the kites a little smaller, as this tested the patience of my Four, who was not satisfied until he had every last bit of contact paper covered with squares. (Oh, my poor kids and their perfectionist genes!)
I thought this would be the end of it, but all the kids couldn’t wait for me to take the kites off the window so they could add long strings of dental floss and “fly” the kites around the yard. This kept them busy for most of the afternoon! It was fun to watch, but I have to say that when my Four started dragging his kite and 20-foot long string around the house, I started going a little crazy!
Alphabet Curriculum for Preschool
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Claudia
I am enjoying your site and with this post am very interested in the kite craft. I do want to ask if you have ever considered emphasizing the lower case letter with your alphabet studies? I am of Montessori background and this approach makes so much sense to me as the lower case is what is used the most in reading and writing. I am very aware that most of the teaching in this country emphasizes the upper case; however Montessori teaching .is very much about considering how the child perceives things. You do such a good job with this already and I wondered if you might find this approach useful since you do not have to abide by someone else’s practices.
Anna Geiger
Hi Claudia! For me it depends on the child I’m working with. I’ve actually started doing more upper/lowercase together now than I used to. But if I’m teaching someone very young (my daughter just turned two) I focus on what’s easier to recognize – capital letters.
I guess I feel that if we’re starting early enough, we have plenty of time to teach both. So we can go through the whole uppercase alphabet and then learn the lowercase later if necessary.
But if I’m teaching a 4 year old the alphabet, I’d definitely do both upper and lower case at the same time.
In general, I’d say that if a child can learn both at the same time, then I’d go for it. But if I’m going to teach just one to start with, I do capital because they are often easier to recognize and definitely easier to write.
Cindy deRosier
I absolutely love your daughter’s version of the koala puppet! Thanks for the link to my tutorial. 🙂
Anna Geiger
Thank you for checking it out, Cindy!
Sharla
That “K is for King” craft is a great one! I never would have thought to do Kool-Aid painting for the letter K…great idea!
Thanks again for linking up to Tender Moments with Toddlers & Preschoolers!
Anna Geiger
Thanks for stopping by, Sharla!
Kristina @ SchoolTimeSnippets
Beautiful Kites!! For Letter K, we did keys; we did key-rubbing, though. It was a bit tough, so I like the key printing idea!
Anna Geiger
Thanks for checking it out, Kristina !
Kali
Love this! Pinning to my alphabet board!
Anna Geiger
Thanks so much for the pin, Kali! You can find links to the rest of my craft posts here:
https://www.themeasuredmom.com/create/
Kate
And one more thing–I shudder at that Kool-Aid memory. Tasted just like pixie sticks, which I also used to love back then. Mom, did you know about this frequent habit?
-Sis
Anna Geiger
Ha! I wondered if you remembered or if you even participated. Talk about gross! Mom doesn’t read my blog as closely as you do… we’ll see if she catches this comment 🙂
Kate
Your garden looks great out the kitchen window!
Anna Geiger
Thanks to my husband’s hard work 🙂
Natalie
Cute crafts! The contact paper kite is awesome!
Anna Geiger
Contact paper crafts never disappoint 🙂 Thanks for checking it out, Natalie!
Debbie @ http://kidsbibledebjackson.blogspot.com/
I also love crafts for the alphabet! Love the projects and I pinned it! Thanks for sharing this also at TGIF!
Anna Geiger
Thanks for the pin, Debbie!