alphabet – Page 2 – Mommy's Lessons

Today for literacy Tuesday my goal was to do a bunch of fun activities with the girls that didn’t involve an writing instruments – no pens, pencils, crayons, pencil crayons, or markers. I borrowed two great ideas from TeachMama and we came up with the third ourselves.

Our first activity was an alphabet scavenger hunt. I pulled out our ABC cue cards and gave Kaitlyn the choice: uppercase or lowercase. I was happy she picked lowercase because she struggles with them a bit more. I divided the pile in half and told the girls to go and hide them around the house. Eileen needed a bit of help understanding what it means to hide something so I walked around with her. Pretty soon she was hiding them in places I would never think to look. After they were both done I told them they were to find all the letters and put them in order on the floor in the kitchen. I let them find the ones they hid along with the ones their sister hid. It was funny that they had forgotten where they had hid some of the cards. It took a good half hour for the activity from start to finish. That was over 5 hours ago – and we are still missing the u and the x, opps. Hopefully they turn up soon. With my luck we will probably find them when looking for Easter eggs in a few weeks.

Our second activity was Alphabingo. I had been meaning to print these off and use them for a few weeks so I took the opportunity this morning when the girls were playing in the playroom. I pulled out one of Kaitlyn’s princess Bingo games for the bingo chips and we got started. Each girl had two BINGO cards. Kaitlyn’s job was to pull a card off the pile, read the letter, make the sound, and identify the picture. She would then pass it to Eileen who would try and match the card to her BINGO card. I helped Eileen a fair bit at first but she got the swing of things pretty quick. I am going to take all the pieces and get them laminate because this could be a great game for the girls to play together when I am making dinner or feeding Michael.

Our third and final activity was letter ‘drawing’ with juice powder. I found a package of juice powder that had been in my pantry for a few years and sprinkled a small amount on two cookie sheets. Rimmed cookie sheets work best as they give the largest area but still have a rim to contain the powder. I set the girls up so they couldn’t see each other’s sheets. I took my finger and wrote a letter in Eileen’s power and asked her to identify it, then she tried to copy my letter with her finger. After hearing the letter, and without looking at her sister’s, Kaitlyn would draw the letter in her power both in lower and uppercase. This was an easy and fun activity to put together and suprisingly was not as messy as I expected. It was funny when Eileen realized the yummy taste on her finger.

A fun Tuesday!

So taking some inspiration from TeachMama we set out to try something new today. This week I received an email from Today’s Parent with a link to simple craft supplies you can make with things in your pantry. I make homemade playdough all the time and might try slime one day but today’s experiment was the fingerpaint.

We paint a lot in our house but usually it is with brushes, sponges, potatoes or other objects. Not often do we use our hands. We have fingerpainted in the past but usually we use the store bought varieties.

Here are the directions directly from the website:

Five Fingers (and a HAND) Paint

For quick fingerpaint, dissolve ¼ cup (60 mL) cornstarch in 2 cups (500 mL) cold water. Cook and stir over medium heat (use a wire whisk to keep it from getting lumpy) until it becomes clear and thick. Add a little food colouring or liquid tempera paint. Cool and apply to shiny paper, a high-chair tray or a tabletop.

This seemed simple enough and I even had all the ingredients in the pantry. The girls were playing in the living room and the baby had just been fed so it was time to experiment. I mixed the cornstarch and water and got it heating on the stove – then the baby started to cry. Lesson #1 – When making fingerpaint don’t leave it on the stove too long, it gets lumpy. I managed to save the creation with a bit of heavy duty whisking. Lesson #2 – You need a fair amount of food colouring to get any colour that is not transparent. Once it was made I let it cool on the counter before letting the girls use it.

It seemed pretty slimy and rather translucent when you used it. Parts clumped up while others were runny. Kaitlyn’s first comment was “Mom this stuff doesn’t work very well”. It doesn’t compare at all to the store bought fingerpaint when trying to make a masterpiece. I do however like the fact that it is totally non-toxic. Eileen is still at the stage where she likes to taste everything so I didn’t worry if she tried our fingerpaint.

The one use that worked O.K. was for practicing letters. Kaitlyn used her finger and our homemade fingerpaint to practice all of her upper case letters. They weren’t the easiest to read but it gave her the practice of writing them.

I would love to know if anyone has had any success creating homemade fingerpaint. There are many uses I would love to explore with the girls, especially Eileen as she works to improve her fine motor skills, and the non-toxic aspect is very important.