We sing Cookie Monster's "C is for Cookie" song quite a bit at our house. Surprisingly, I don't remember it from my childhood, but it's a really cute, catchy song! Oliver learned it at his preschool, and we found the video on You Tube, and it's been a family favorite ever since. (If you haven't heard it, you can click here.) So naturally, it was the perfect choice for our next letter lesson!
Oliver decided that he wanted our cookie to look "just like Cookie Monster's." So I cut out a half circle and tried to make it look like Cookie Monster had taken a big bite out of it. :-) For the chocolate chips, Oliver used black construction paper and the hole punch. Then he smeared glue on the cookie, and I applied the chocolate chips with my fingernail. He added the letter C, carefully sounded out and wrote the word "cookie", and we were done!
Pretty cute, I think!
We haven't been doing any letter lessons lately, but every couple of days Oliver gets out his dry-erase letter writing tablet and works on writing his letters. One day he even sat down and copied out all of the letters!
Last week, he was working on the letter G. He'd had some difficulty with it, because he would automatically draw a circle instead of stopping the marker to write a G properly. Well, it's hard to blame him since his first name starts with an O and that's his favorite letter to write!
On this particular day, he sat down and concentrated so hard that the marker was shaking, lol! He traced several Gs properly, and then he tried a few freehand. We were thinking of G words, and I said that gum (one of his favorite things!) starts with G. He wrote a G, then he sounded out the following 2 letters and wrote them by himself! This was only the second time that he's sounded out, spelled, and written a word by himself (not including his name!).
Can you tell that he was just a teensy bit proud of himself? :-) Good job, buddy!! 
One day over the weekend, Oliver randomly asked, "Hey, can we do a letter lesson??" So we sat down at the table to quickly get started before he changed his mind. ;-)
I planned to do P is for Penguin. But, as it turns out, my uppercase P looked more like a lowercase b, so I grabbed Oliver's copy of Curious George Learns the Alphabet to make a cute bumblebee instead. And he loved it! :-)
Buzz, buzz!
We haven't done a letter lesson in a while, so this morning after breakfast, we did W is for Wrench. Oliver practiced writing Ws on the dry erase board and helped me come up with W words, while Buttercup not-so-sneakily dug her fingers in the glue stick and smeared glue on her PJs, her chair, and under the table. Needless to say, it was a hasty lesson this morning! :-)
We skipped an alphabet lesson last week, partly because we were busy, and partly because I couldn't decide what do next. I asked Oliver a couple of times for input, and he usually said something like, "No, let's just work instead!" Gotta love him! :-)
I decided on O for Octopus this morning at 6:15 when I was laying in bed, listening to the cat purr in my ear and hearing thuds coming from Oliver's room (he was "reading" in his bed with a flashlight, but I suspect some demolition was going on as well). I wanted to make it more fun for Oliver (read: not as lame as the past few lessons), so I included pipe cleaners, the stapler, and -- everyone's favorite! -- glitter glue.
We got started after breakfast. Since Oliver's name begins with O, he's had some good practice writing Os. But I was still surprised that his first O (top right) was so good!! He did a great job. He is just something else!
I cut out all of the shapes before I let Oliver out of his room the kids were up, so Oliver got to start gluing right away.
Poor Buttercup is teething pretty hard right now and didn't want to play with anything, so she had an ice pop while Oliver and I worked on the craft.
Next up was Oliver's second favorite thing -- the stapler. We had some trouble getting all of the pipe cleaner/tentacles attached, but we managed! The best part is that they're bendy, so you can wiggle the tentacles in all directions.
Then it was time for glitter glue, Oliver's favorite.
Pretty cute, huh?
This is Oliver's first best friend (of the stuffed animal variety, anyway).
Grandma and Grandpa gave Elephant to Oliver almost 2 years ago, and the two have been almost inseparable ever since.
So, in honor of Elephant and one of Oliver's favorite books, I decided that this week's alphabet lesson would be E is for Elephant!
I wanted to make the craft as cute as possible, so I used this picture from Curious George Learns the Alphabet for the template.
We usually start with practicing writing on the dry erase board first, but Oliver was SO excited about the craft, and we decided to do that first.
Then we went to the dry erase board so Oliver could practice writing an E. But by that point, he had lost all of his patience, and he was ready to move on to something else. He did try an E though, and he did a pretty good job!
Then he said something that I think is pretty smart . . . he said, "Mama, could I just try to make an E with my Lincoln Logs?" So that's what he did. :-)
