"L" is the Letter of the Week

Learning Letter "L" 

    We are making great progress with our letters! My "littles" (the name I lovingly give to the few toddlers I babysit) have learned colors, animals, shapes, and much more. We have learned to sing the alphabet song and we have learned to identify each letter of the alphabet, but only the capital letters, so far. Our curriculum has graduated to the next stage of "big and little" letters, or as we call them "grown up" and "baby letters." We are also learning the sound for each letter. My goal by next year is to begin popcorn letters and early reading. 

    This week's letter is "L". I have found that spending a full week on one letter and trying a variety of crafts, games, songs, stories, and discussion helps us to really learn and commit our learning to memory... which is basically what learning is, right?... committing the information to memory.  For letter "L" we tried the following activities: L is for Ladybug, Our Favorite Reading List for Letter L, and Helping Baby Animals to find their Grown Up.

   Please scroll down to find each of these projects for the letter "L".

"L" is for Ladybug

This craft requires:

1. Red and Black construction paper for the Ladybug and Green paper (or any color) for the background
2. Scissors
3. Glue
4. Black glitter for the dots on the wings, or a black marker works just as well
5. I used a ruler as my straight edge to create the letters, it's also just as easy to find letter L to print out and trace for free in google images.
6. I used a cup and lid as circles to make the Ladybug wings, but anything round and approximately 2-3" in diameter will do the job.

Image with supplies shown here.

Image with paper colors shown here

I created the letter "L" with the assumption that a thickness of 1 1/2", a height of 5", and for the base a width of 3" would fit well on my background and it fit perfectly. The baby L is 1 1/2"x4". To use the least amount of paper, I tried to fit as many of the letters I need for three kids onto just one page.  

Image of ruler measuring letter base

Image of ruler on black paper

Image of letter outline

Image of letter flipped to trace again

I used all the pieces of scrap to make legs and antenna for the ladybug,

Image of letters cut out

Image of scrap paper

When I had finished cutting out the letters, legs, and antenna, it was time to make the ladybug wings. I used a kids cup to trace a perfect circle for the Grown Up letter L to have ladybug wings and a cup lid that was slightly smaller than the opening of the cup to make a ladybug wing for the Baby letter L.

Image of cup used to trace wings

Image of pencil tracing cup

Image of cup lid on paper

Once I had cut out the circles I had traced from the cup and lid, the only thing left to finish was to cut the circles in halves to have two wings for the Grown Up L and one wing for the Baby l. I had purchased these fancy edge scissors a while ago for scrapbooking and thought they would give the ladybug wings a fun edge that my littles would enjoy and let them try to use them to cut (which is not shown here for sloppy reasons..LOL). I also laid out the images for the kids so they could get an idea of the desired finished results before I handed them glue sticks and glitter.

Image of shaped scissors

Image of cut out patterns laid in place

For the finishing touch, the ladybug dots on the ladybug wings, we used Elmers glue to make the dots and sprinkled them with black glitter before brushing them off to reveal the final product.

Image of glue dots with black glitter

Image of finished Ladybug craft

Our Favorite Reading List for Letter L

     When using books to teach a letter of the alphabet, a favorite game the littles and I like to play is to do something silly whenever we here a word in the story that begins with our letter. In a few of these books there are several opportunities so they are not great "before bed" books. "Willoughby and the Lion", by Greg Foley is NOT one of these. The word "lion appears only once per page. While, in the book "I Love Lemonade", by Mark and Rowan Sommerset, the opposite is true. The word "lemonade" appears frequently. 

    Some of the silly things we've done is to try to say the word that we're waiting to here like "llama" in the Llama llama books, in a silly voice or with a silly expression on our faces while we say the word "llama". When we need to get out the "sillies" or move around, we might jump or wiggle when we here the word. Of course, the sky is the limit with how creative the littles and I can be on any given day of the week.

    I would like to add that the first book in my list, "I Love Lemonade" is a silly book that includes references to pee and poop. My littles and my biggies love this book and think it is hilarious, however it is not for all listeners as I imagine some kids would use the book as an opportunity to embarrass their grown ups. I know my kids well enough that I can trust them to enjoy the content of this book, responsibly.

    Our all time favorite, is "Leonardo the Terrible Monster". If you have the opportunity, I highly recommend this book. 

HELPING BABY ANIMALS FIND THEIR GROWN UP

     Kids love animals, especially baby animals. I couldn't find images to borrow, so I freehand sketched out the Lion, Sheep, LLama, cub, lamb, and baby llama. Because my littles are still working on their ability to draw a simple line, the object of this lesson is to draw lines (an "l" word) that connect the Grown Up animals to their babies. Also, with the exception of the sheep (grown up lamb) all the animals begin with the letter "l". I had the littles write the Grown Up "L" for the grown up animal and the Baby "l" for the baby animal, before drawing the lines to connect the grown animals to their babies.

Image of grown animals and their babies

Copy of image from above with completed work by little

THEMED FOOD ALWAYS SUPPORTS THE LESSON PLAN! 

Even when I worked in an office, the best way to attract an audience was with food. It works well with kids too.

Image of Lemon Jello and a whole lemon