Feb 1st is "A" Day!

I know that it has been forever since I wrote anything. Our upcoming month is going to be full of learning and adventure, so I figured it would be the perfect opportunity to start writing again. 

I decided that February is going to be Alphabet Month in the Sitko Home. Dylan has almost mastered his letters (except for E, G & J for some reason) so I thought we could take it a step further. Thanks to Pinterest and some other amazing websites, I have found an incredible amount of activities and ideas to last us the entire month. For my other mom-friends out there who are looking for a great resource for educational kids’ activities, check out http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/. It’s pretty much amazing and I printed off tons of stuff from there.

[Disclaimer: I know that most people aren't going to care about every little activity we did today, but some of my Mommy-friends might like some ideas, and some of Dylan's grandparents might like to gawk over him a little. The rest of you can stop reading now. I promise to not be offended. And please forgive my obsessive attention to detail. ]

Today is A Day!

We, obviously, started off our alphabet month with A! When I told Dylan that today was “A Day” he jumped off his chair and said, “Yay! I so happy!” and did a little happy dance. He didn't have a clue what “A Day” meant, but he was already excited. It made me really excited about starting our alphabet adventure. My main focus today was teaching Dylan about lowercase a. He recognizes A immediately, but we hadn't worked on any lowercase letters yet. 

One of the printouts/ideas on Confessions was Do-A-Dot sheets. Perfect for comparing A & a and working on his dexterity. It was his first time using Do-A-Dot painters (mine too!) but it went better than I expected. We were both pretty happy with it.

Do-A-Dots get an A rating!

Our next activity was capsule growing animals.

I remembered thinking they were awesome when I was a kid, so when I saw them in the dollar bin at Target, I couldn't resist. I had no idea that those little sponge animals would be the hit of the day. He played with those simple, sponge animals for hours today!

Onto another A project! We teamworked and made an A alligator. But first, Dylan showed me how to make an A:

"Look, Mommy! It's A!"

Dylan wasn't extremely interested in putting the alligator together himself, so we compromised on him telling me where to put all the teeth. Once we were done, he loved the finished product.

A for Alligator

Chomping Dylan's head!

Our last morning activity was, yet another, Confessions one. (I'm telling you, there are so many great ideas and activities there!) Dylan was pretty good at putting the ants in order by size. We did it a few times. He called it his "Ant Puzzle."

Before naptime we read a library book (Alligator Boy by Rylant & Goode) and watched the Letter A episode of Sesame Street. And, thankfully, there was a little something in it for both of us (yes, that is Ryan Reynolds as the Letter A).

I figure that every single craft/activity can't be a screaming success...and we had one of those today. 

I saw a post on Pinterest that showed an Ants in my Pants craft. It seems so simple - tape 3 Q-Tips together and paint ants on a cut out of pants. Well, it didn't look awesome, and Dylan was tired of it pretty fast. But he said he liked it, so, whatever.

Time for another Confessions activity - apple puzzles. My kid may not be quite up on his colors enough yet to name every single one, but he can sure pair them up like a champ.

Next was an airplane. 

This time, Dylan was all about putting the pieces on by himself. We colored it later (after the glue dried) with colored pencils. He liked using the pencils a lot, but they didn't show up very well. I think he either thought the pencils made him look like a big boy, or he thought they were magic wands. Either way, he enjoyed himself.

We took the adventure into Dylan's room to look for all the A stuff we could find. Dylan found the A on his wall (the one I painted for his name above his bed). We quickly came to the realization that he doesn't have an alligator or ant or any A animals, so we decided to just get all of his Animals! If you have ever had the pleasure of getting stuck in Dylan's room playing, you probably had to play with all his animals (he is kind of obsessed). 

After we took the photo he rolled around and tore the pile of animals down. But he immediately wanted to rebuild the pile and take more photos. 

My favorite find from Confessions was perfect for my attempt to differentiate upper from lower case letters. the apple tree had apples with A's and a's on them. He had to match up his apples with the ones on the tree. Awesome!

Today's snack was brought to you by the Letter A! 

Can you tell we watched Sesame Street today? Dylan had apple slices, apple sauce and apricots. I knew that the apricots weren't likely to go over well, but we tried. At least I enjoyed them. 

I had also rented a movie from the $1 area at Family Video. I can't even remember the name, but it was an animal movie and it turned out to be pretty cute. So, our finale to A Day was an A movie before bedtime.

I know I went a little overboard today, but I really wanted to get Dylan excited about our Alphabet month. He already told me that he wants to do another letter tomorrow. I'm so proud.

*We were planning on going to the "A"irport to see "A"irplanes take off today, but it was so cold that we decided to stay inside in our warm house instead. Oh well.