We’re still moving on with our alphabet theme (even though these letters seem a little sporadic). We actually did a lesson on the letter “Q” this week, but just to thoroughly confuse you (really to help me catch up more), I’m going to post about the letter “G”.

Are you confused yet? :) All the other letters of the alphabet are coming too, but I’m just catching up on these last few and then I’ll be right back on track.

ABC Book: Gingerbread Man

While the letter “F” page was one of my favorites, this gingerbread man just made me hungry. I cut out the gingerbread man shape on a paper bag (remember he is glued to a 8 1/2 x 11 inch paper. Zachary used white paint that had a little bit of cinnamon scent in it to paint “icing” on his hands and feet. He also drew a face on and then we had fun fighting with the glue bottle so that we didn’t have gobs of glue everywhere. Once we had a sufficient LITTLE amount of glue, we sprinkled glitter on for buttons and also a nose.

Alphabet Activities: Gingerbread Baby puppet

Zachary made a gingerbread baby ‘puppet’ also to use when we were reading the book “Gingerbread Baby” by Jan Brett (the book is just too cute) – and I’m guessing now that you realize the letter G was mostly focused on gingerbread.

I cut out a smaller pattern and he added some googly eyes and drew on a face. Zachary decorated it however he wanted (which meant markers everywhere). When he was done we taped a craft stick to the back and he played with it and made it run around everywhere during the story.

For some reason I can’t find pictures of the puppet, but I do have pictures of my son after using white paint again.

Fun Activities: Glitter & Guitars

And I really don’t think I need to give you many more specifics other than to say:

Glitter + Glue = Gobs of Gooiness (if that is even a word).

And before you think I was crazy foolish enough to make a glittery guitar, you may rest assured I had the glitter far, far away when we did this craft!

To make your own guitar you will need:

• a small box (an oblong tissue box works great!)
• some rubber bands
• an empty paper towel roll
• scissors
• tape
• and much patience if dealing with a 3 year old

On one of the ends of the tissue box, trace the end of the paper towel roll and then cut the circle out. Once the circle has been cut out, fit the towel roll into the hole. Depending on how tight the fit is, you may (or may not) have to use tape to secure the roll. Put 4-5 rubber bands around the box long-ways so that they go over the hole in the box. (Listening to your child whine every time a rubber band pops off is optional).

Movement

To get a little energy out we had fun around the house:

• growling like bears
• honking like geese
• thumping our chests like a gorilla
• sounding like goats
• stomping like giants
• jumping like grasshoppers
• played Daddy’s guitar (shhhhhh)

Letter Sheet/Collage

Stories

Even though this house was on gingerbread overload this week, here are some of the books we read:

Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett
Just Grandma and Me by Mercer Meyer
Just Grandpa and Me by Mercer Meyer

We also had some fun computer time with two Mercer Meyer cd-roms that we have for both Grandma and Grandpa. :)

Verse

Using My ABC Bible Verses by Susan Hunt we learned Mark 16:15 – “Go into all the world and preach the good news to everyone.”

Writing

This week we continued using Peterson’s Handwriting. We’re doing a lot of gross motor activities right now to learn how letters are formed, so that when we actually sit down with a pencil and paper it will be a lot easier to recall the hand motions needed to make letters.

For example, “Tall down” = top to bottom movement. You can read more about Peterson’s here.