Alphabet Mazes ~ Little Hands-on ABC’s and 123’s

 

Emily loves doing mazes and working with the alphabet, so I thought that this would be a fun way to put the two together. 

 

(click on the picture above to download)

I started with the letter “A” and continued with the whole alphabet in order, but it zig zags around the page like a maze, until you reach “Z” at the bottom of the page. 

Emily really loved using her Do-A-Dot Markers to cover each letter.  You can also have your child cover the letters with letter stickers or just color in the box with crayons or markers.

For more Alphabet and Number Mazes you can check out the printables page on my blog!

Little Hands-on ABC’s and 123’s is a bi-monthly feature that focuses on practical and simple ideas that you can do at home to help your tot develop their letter and number skills.

Little Hands-on ABCs and 123s ~ Addition with the Duplo Montessori Number Rods

In my last Little Hands-on 123s post, I talked about using Duplos to make Montessori number rods.

The traditional rods can be used to introduce addition facts to ten.  The Duplo version can be used for addition facts up to your longest rod.  The longest rod in the photo is five, but hopefully you have more Duplos or Legos than we do and can go all the way up to ten!

I'll present for the addition facts to make a five rod:Move the five rod down and place the 4 rod (it's backwards in the photo - I put the 1 first but should have put the 4 first) up against it.  Then place the one rod against the four rod so it is equal to the five rod. Run your finger along the two rods and say, "four plus one equals five."  Then move the three rod under the four rod and place the two rod next to it (still backwards in the photo).  Run your finger along that row and say, "Three plus two equals five."The Montessori table number rods comes with two sets so you can show the cummutative law of addition (that the order of the addends doesn't matter).  If you had enough rods, you can proceed to put a two rod below the three rod and line up a three rod next to it.  Then run your finger along that row and say, "Two plus three equals five."  Now place the one rod below the two rod and line up the four rod next to it.  Run your finger along this last row and say "One plus four equals five."  Thus demonstrating the cummutative law of addition.  If you didn't have enough rods, just remove the rods you placed and repeat under the five, this time in the order shown in the photo.

You can do this presentation of addition facts with any of the rods.  In the photo above, I show it with the four rod.

Another use of the number rods is to teach one less than and one more than, as well as two less than and two more than.Choose a rod, lets say the 4 rod and show it to your child, asking her to name the rod.  Then ask her to find a rod that is one less than the rod you are holding.  Once she can do one more and one less with ease, for any number rod you choose, begin to ask for a rod that is two less than or two more than.

Little Hands-on ABCs and 123s - Fly Swatter ABCs

 

When Bear was little, we used to practice the letter sounds by having our puppet, Dudley the dragon, eat the sounds I called out.  I had gotten this idea from Carissa (1+1+1=1) who had Krash and PacMan play a similar game with their alphabet bean bags.

 

I forgot about Dudley with J-jo until recently when I was looking back on my blog for ideas.  However, I came up with another fun way for him to practice identifying the letter sounds.  Being a little boy, he likes to be rough and thus the idea of having slap his letters with a fly swatter was born.

I call out a letter sound and he swats it.  Simple, yet effective.

 

Little Hands-on ABCs and 123s - Simple Sandpaper Letters

I am forever drooling and hoping for these beautiful sandpaper letters from Polliwog on Etsy.  However, we don't own these; we own a homemade version that is infinitely less beautiful, but that serves the purpose well. Bear solidified her knowledge of letter sounds with these and J-jo is on his way to learning them too.

There are many tutorials on how to make traditional sandpaper letters, but most involve printing out a template, and then tracing the template on the back of sandpaper and cutting it out.  My sandpaper letters are much simpler and your child or children will enjoy helping you make them.  Their delight in helping you will most likely result in even more interest in using them (or at least, it did with Bear).We made a through z but also the phonograms ee, ai, ie, oa, oo, ue, ar, er, or, ou, oy, sh, ch, th, and qu.

 

What you'll need:

• cardstock - my package said 90lb, but it wasn't as flimsy as my recent package of 90lb cardstock is.  The thicker, the better.  Mine have held up through 2 kids.
• liquid school glue
• sand (used beach sand for the first ones while we lived in Costa Rica and play sand from our sandbox for our phonograms)
• a paper cutter is nice, but scissors work too.
• a tray to work on

1. First, cut your cardstock into smaller rectangles.  Ours are 4-1/4 by 5-1/2 inches.

2. Next, use the glue to trace out the first letter (you'll need to decide if you are doing lower case or upper case - Montessori starts with lower case). I used my finger to smooth the glue and make the line wider; you could use a cotton swab.  I didn't do this with my phonograms and I don't like how they turned out as much.

3. Pour sand over the glue.  This is where your children can participate.  Bear is the one who poured the sand and then tilted the card to discard the excess sand into a tray.

4. Repeat for the rest of the alphabet.  If your child is younger, you don't need to make the phonograms right away.  The whole process doesn't take too long - the longest part is cutting the cardstock.

 

Now you can use your sandpaper letters for sound sorting, and all sorts of other letter and letter sound games.

 

 

Little Hands-on ABC’s and 123’s is a bi-monthly feature that focuses on practical and simple ideas that you can do at home to help your tot develop their letter and number skills.

Little Hands-on ABC's & 123's - Montessori Teen Board - Learning Numbers 10-19

Montessori students use something called a teens board to learn their teen numbers.  You can find printable teen boards, but you can achieve the same goal with number cards (nine 10s and the single digits 1 through 9).  Instead of using the Montessori beads, you can use pony beads on pipecleaner .

Lay out the ten card and say this is 10.  Slide the 1 card over the zero of the ten and say "ten and one are eleven."  The numbers are then built with the beads (ten and one).  Then continue with the next number.

When we first started, I didn't have nine 10 cards, so I just swapped out the 10-and-1 tiles to an 11 number card.

Here are links to three Montessori presentations that can easily be done at home with a child working on the names and values of teen numbers.

• Learning the names of 11 to 19
• Learning the numerals
• Placing the quantities and numerals together (as shown in this post)

Little Hands-on ABC’s and 123’s is a bi-monthly feature that focuses on practical and simple ideas that you can do at home to help your tot develop their letter and number skills.

Little Hands-On ABC's and 123's - ABCs at Snack Time

Sometimes the unplanned, simple idea works really well.  I had a different post in mind, but the night I was to write it, this activity happened and I decided it was a better idea for now.

I have a toddler boy who does not sit still for very long so I look for teaching opportunities whenever they can happen, like at snack time, when J-jo is obliged to sit.

 

This particular week, I had the letters c, m, a, t out for J-jo.  So I quickly made a little mat...

...and then started asking him questions.

"J-jo, can you feed the 'a' a grape?"

"Great job! How about the 'c'? Can you feed 'c' a grape?"

"Great job!  Can you give 'm' a grape?"

"Now 't' wants a grape."

"Great, J-jo.  All the letters have grapes.  Now can you eat the grape that is on the 'c'?"

"Next, can you eat the grape that is on the 't'?"

This activity would work for a lot of material - other letters, sight words, cvc words, numbers, addition, subtraction, shapes, colors....  Just make sure the snack is relatively dry:)

Little Hands-On abc's and 123's ~ Teens and Tens Hopscotch

 

I love painter's tape and use it frequently in our house.  Whilst Bear could count past twenty at two and a half, she needed practice recognizing the numerals.  This is when I came up with our very own teens hopscotch board taped to our floor.

If your child is ready to start learning numbers beyond 20, a hopscotch board can be made with tens.  Instead of 10, 11, 12...20 in the squares, put 10, 20, 30...up to 100.

Come to think of it, you could do a hopscotch board for skip counting twos, threes, fours, fives, etc. 

Ways to play: 

1. Call out the numbers as you jump the grid.

2. One calls out a number and the other has to jump onto it.

3. Collect the number of items of each square of the grid and place them on the hopscotch board.

 

Another great way to incorporate active play as you learn.

Little Hands-On abc's and 123's - Upper Case and Lower Case Matching

 

There are countless ways of practicing lower case and upper case matching. 

Puzzles, purchased or homemade.

Matching uppercase stickers with lowercase stickers on paper. This has the added beauty of fine motor development.

 

I love these magnetic ABCs because they come in upper and lower case. 

I use them for many things (they live in my alphabet drawers) and one of those things is an extremely simple active lowercase/uppercase matching activity.  Kids love to be active, and I try to use this love of movement in a lot of our learning play.

Here's how to play:

I place all the upper case letters at one end of the room and keep the lower case letters with me.  I hand my child one of the lowercase letters and she goes to collect the matching uppercase letter from across the room.  If she brings back the incorrect one, she just tries again, or I may give her a clue. 

You can start with just a few letters so as not to overwhelm the child.  Using only four or five letters at a time certainly works much better with my two year old!

Little Hands-On abc's and 123's ~ Duplo Tower Race

I love when games combine different skills.  This game focuses on counting and fine motor skills, but can also focus on colors if you add a color die.

You'll need Duplos (or Megablox or Legos, or even wooden blocks,) a number die, and possibly a color die if you want to add that element to the game.

Roll the die, count the dots (a jumbo die would be great, but isn't necessary), then add that number of Duplos to your tower.  If playing with a color die as well, you would need to add the number of the correct color.   The person with the tallest tower wins.

By placing the Duplos at the opposite end of the room from where you are tossing the die, you can add some exercise to the game as well.

Many children, especially boys, learn much better by being active.  This is a great example of how you can achieve learning while mixing in physical activity.

Another extension would be to cover the dots with numerals written on Post It notes - this could extend the game well in to the teens, though it may be hard to find enough Duplos!

Little Hands-On abc's and 123's - ABC Prewriting Center

My daughter writes a lot of stories.  I have set her up with a writing folder to keep her blank papers and finished stories organized. This made me think about my almost two year old and how I could set up a similar idea for him.

I came up with the ABC prewriting center:
markers, ABC stickers, blank paper, a basket full of foam and magnetic letters, ABC stamps and an ink pad

  It's very simple.

  Yet very engaging.

  It was just a matter of taking things I already had and putting them all at his reach in one place.

 

 

Little Hands-on ABC’s and 123’s is a bi-monthly feature that focuses on practical and simple ideas that you can do at home to help your tot develop their letter and number skills.