Take a peek at our letter A activities this week!
You’ve seen my giant resource for Letter of the Week, right? We’ve shared crafts, books, math connections, sensory play, fine motor, and more for every letter of the alphabet. But it took us almost two years to put those resources together. What does Letter of the Week look like in a typical week?
Our youngest son just turned three. I’ve begun a Letter of the Week with him, and each week I’ll be sharing our activities.
Time for letter A!
First, I introduced letter A with my letter book of rhymes and songs. This was a favorite! We also read My Letter A book, a simple word book with bright photographs. Finally, we read the letter A book that comes with This Reading Mama’s Learning the Alphabet.
He really enjoyed using dot stickers to complete the whole A is for Apple page. After he was done, I laminated it and set it aside for a homemade alphabet book.
We didn’t do any handwriting pages, because he’s not ready for that. (If your preschooler shows an interest, you might want to start with my beginning handwriting pages.) Instead, I printed a giant letter A and invited my Three to put alphabet stickers on it.
We did some simple art and crafts. Since my toddler loves vehicles, I knew he’d love this ambulance craft.
I drew an apple and put glue all over it with a gluestick. Then my Three enjoyed putting on the red paper.
Finally, we did a process art activity: apple stamping! We laminated this project and are going to make it into a letter book. Learn more about that here!
We also did some simple math. He loved finding numbers he knew on this page from This Reading Mama’s Learning the Alphabet curriculum.
For another math activity, I printed some giant shapes and told him which animal to put on each shape. He loved this! You can get a big set of printable shapes and find more ways to learn math with toy animals in this post.
This activity from Learning the Alphabet was a huge hit, and I’m thinking it’s one we’ll be doing with nearly every letter. I slipped the printed A’s into our learning cube, and my Three rolled it. Whichever letter landed on top, he placed on the ladder. Little a won! (You can also use the words “uppercase” and “lowercase,” but my Three is not quite ready for that.)
Sensory play is a little tough for my type A personality, but my kids love it. We put some apple number cards in a bin of dried oatmeal, but for this first go at it my Three was much more interested in scooping and pouring than finding the numbers. His little sister couldn’t resist joining in. You can get the printable cards in this post.
As always, we read a lot of books. Here are some of our favorites for letter A. Check out the rest of our letter A picks in our letter A book list.
Letter of the week is a lot of fun, but it’s always important to bring it back to the whole alphabet! This week we did a simple foam alphabet puzzle I got at The Dollar Tree.
Finally, we’re always focusing on the letters that are most important to my preschooler: the ones in his name. This week we did a simple name parking garage like the one we saw at Growing Book by Book.
All your links in one spot!
- Little Letter A Book (songs and rhymes)
- Letter A Dot Sticker Page
- My Letter A Book (with photos)
- Letter A Crafts
- This Reading Mama’s Learning the Alphabet: get the whole series for just $10 or get Letter A for free
- Letter A Book List
- Giant letter A to print
Is your child ready for more of a challenge?
My little guy just turned 3. If you have an older child or one who’s simply ready for the next step, try some of these!
- Try more toy animal math.
- Do some letter A handwriting pages.
- Try Beginning Sound Cover with poker chips.
- Clip the pictures on our beginning sound clip cards.
- Practice beginning sounds with our match mats.
- Do a beginning sound coloring page.
See the whole series …
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Meghan
What a great post! I just love all your ideas. My son also just turned 3 so it so nice to see what other 3 year old boys are doing. My older daughter was little miss queen of fine motor, coloring in the lines, etc (total perfectionist!) and it is so hard not to compare them! My son is also not ready for handwriting pages so we look at letters and he *tries* to trace the letters with his fingers 🙂 Your little alphabet books are perfect for that and somehow I missed them when you put them out. We are already obsessed with your nursery rhyme books-me and my 3 children (ages 2, 3, 4) all absolutely LOVE them! Definitely going to print the abc ones for my son as well. Thank you so much for all you do!
Anna Geiger
I’m so glad to hear you’re enjoying the little letter books, Megan! I have a special place in my heart for those, as I created them before I started blogging. I hope you enjoy following along with the rest of our alphabet series!
Johana
Such an amazing idea! I have a 2and half year old, im gonna start soon with this project i love it
Holly B.
Another great post! Curious… where do you get all your great clipart? I know you give credit in your printables to all the great graphic designers out there, but how do you find the amazing clipart?
Anna Geiger
HI Holly! If you want to use clipart for yourself, and not commercially (such as sharing on a blog post), you can get a subscription to Clipart.com, which is affordable considering everything you get. I used them for a lot of my earlier printables, but they have new ownership now and do not permit their clip art to be used on pdfs on websites. You can also look at Graphicsfactory.com. Now that I can’ t use Clipart.com, I mostly get my clip art from individual sellers on Teachers Pay Teachers.
Mihaela
Think we’ll be starting letter of the week too this year, probably in autumn. Love seeing the variety of activities you did with letter A!
Anna Geiger
Hopefully if you start in autumn we’ll have the whole series done and you can have a great resource to help you out. 🙂 Thanks for reading, Mihaela!
Lori
Hi, Anna! I love your website! Thanks for sharing so many great resources. Quick question: How long do you spend on these activities per day? How do you decide what to work on each day? And do you do them every day of the week or just a few days of the week? I really want to get going with my 3 and 4, but I am not sure how to proceed. You probably have a post about these questions somewhere…
Thanks,
Lori
Anna Geiger
Great questions, Lori! Honestly I have not gotten into as much as a routine as I’d like, because I have five kids and this blog. However… my goal is to do 10-15 minutes per day, 4-5 days a week. Sometimes we get there, sometimes not. We read books at any old time, so I don’t include that in the time.
I just go through my Alphabet page and click on a particular letter, where I’ve listed a HUGE variety of activities for crafts, books, math, etc. Then I choose the activities best suited to my son, his interests, and his ability level. I also print materials from Learning the Alphabet that I think he’d enjoy.
Here’s my alphabet page: https://www.themeasuredmom.com/learning/
Let me know if you have more questions!
Lanie
This is such a god send! I have been trying to come up with something to do with my 3 year old son and needed something that had structure. This is such an awesome resource! Thank you so much! You have no idea how much this means to me!
Anna Geiger
You’re very welcome, Lanie! I need structure, too, which is why I did this series. 🙂 Soon I’m going to start one with his little sister, who is going to do a modified version at two years old.
Kim
Hi Anna,
When you purchase the $18 curriculum book (to print) does it also come with the printable activity sheets or just the description of the activity.
Thanks!
Kim
Anna Geiger
Hi Kim! Because it has links to many, many free printables, it has links instead of the printables themselves. (Also, some of the printables are not from my website, so I could not legally include them.) You can see sample pages to see what I mean in the product description: https://www.themeasuredmom.com/product/letter-of-the-week-curriculum/
Julie
I’m so excited I found your letter books! I’m going to try some if these in my pre k class 🙂
Anna Geiger
That’s great to hear, Julie – I hope your students enjoy them!
Salma
Hi Anna…I just love your blog. Finally I found something that suits me.I have four kids..8,6,5 and3 years old… Elders ones are school going.I always end up ignoring one of them… Just wanted to ask how do you manage to work on each one of yours (m presupposing you do)… How much time do you spend on each one each day… What’s your routine
Thanks a lot
Anna G
That’s a great question, Salma! I admit that this is a struggle for me. I try to read aloud to all my kids, so that helps. We haven’t gotten into a new routine yet with the new school year, but that’s my goal. In general I am trying to be more attentive when they talk with me and give them what they need when they need it… the kids have different days when they are more in need of special attention.
Gloria
I have a 4 year old who I think has ADHD, she just can’t remember the letters she can recite them but when I ask her show me the letter B she doesn’t know where it is any suggestions?
Kate Dowling
Hi Gloria!
This is Kate, Anna’s assistant. Anna has a podcast on this topic: “How to help learners who struggle to learn the alphabet.” Please listen to it for some great tips!
https://www.themeasuredmom.com/how-to-help-learners-who-struggle-to-learn-the-alphabet/