Letter F: Alphabet Activities for Kids

Posted in activities for kids, alphabet activities by Rosemary Lynn

Welcome to Letter F Day!

If you haven’t read the Introduction to the Alphabet Activities, you should start there.

Don’t forget to check out the Letter F: Free Alphabet Worksheets for Kids, too!

This F is for Flamingo paper craft is really one of my favorite letters.

It must be a Floridian thing. I have a special place in my heart for flamingos. :)

Anyway, to make this, I cut out a lowercase F ahead of time and some feet, wings, and a beak, then gave my daughter those pieces and a googly eye and let her assemble the bird.

I also cut out that cute itty bitty flamingo in the bottom corner. Just ’cause.

For our letter sorting activity, I cut out two fish and cut out the letters on light blue paper in the shape of circles to represent bubbles.

These flower fingers were inspired by a similar idea I found in a craft book dating from my childhood.

What I did was cut out some green paper to resemble the shape of uppercase T. That “top” of the letter T would get wrapped around our fingers and the rest would function as the flower’s stem.

I also cut out some flower and leaf shapes, and we glued them all together to form our flowers. Then, after letting the glue dry for a few minutes, we taped that “top” part of the T that I mentioned into a circle so that we could slide that part over our fingers.

Of course, the flower petal part of our finger puppets were a little heavy. They drooped a bit, but, really, the girls didn’t mind. It was still a lot of fun for them. To fix that particular problem, though, you could use thicker paper (card stock instead of construction paper) or add a Popsicle stick or something for support.

Now, this F is for Footprints project was a really, really huge hit.

And super simple.

One of my favorite combinations. :)

To make the paint for the footprints, you simply combine 1/2 cup cornstarch with a 1/2 cup of water, and mix it together with a fork. Then drop in a bit of food coloring.

{If you’re using a nonstick pan to make the paint, be sure to mix it with a plastic fork.}

I made two colors in two cake pans, because the cake pan was big enough to hold my kids’ feet. But they were both pretty young the first time we did this – so be sure to check your pan/bowl against your kid’s feet.

Anyway: throw the cornstarch paint container out onto a driveway or sidewalk or deck, let the kids step in the paint and then trek colorful footprints everywhere.

And to really highlight the letter of the day, I made an outline of a giant F on the driveway with painters tape. The girls had fun filling the F with messy footprints.

Oh: and you may need to stir the paint occasionally. That’s why you see my daughter carrying around forks in the photo. The paint IS – technically – edible. But I wouldn’t suggest testing out the taste. Ick!

Okay, okay … this was kind of cheating.

We had some foam frames and foam stickers left over from a birthday party craft … so I just let the girls go ahead and make another frame apiece.

I guess you could get really into the alphabet thing and just stick letter Fs all over the frame, but we kinda just added this into our activities as a fun little project, putting their names at the bottom of the frame and going to town with the flower, animal, and instrument stickers over the rest.

Another option, however, would be to just use the foam flower stickers. Which would also look nice.

This worksheet was really fun for them.

I picked up some feathers at my local dollar store, but they were kind of long. Longer than the letter F if you laid them horizontally on the paper. So I cut them into pieces for this project.

That may have something to do with my OCD, though. You could also just use 3 feathers to make an F.

This is one of the free printable worksheets I made, which you can download at Letter F: Free Alphabet Worksheets for Kids. If you have feather stickers or a stamp, you could use that instead, but I find that the texture of the craft feathers is part of what made it really interesting.

As you may have noticed, we live in Florida.

So, coloring Florida’s Flag was a natural for Letter F Day. But you could also do Finland, Fiji, and/or France instead, if you preferred.

Either way, you can get some printable flag coloring pages at World Free Printable Flags, including the Florida Flag.

We don’t actually make Sound Boxes for every letter.

We probably should, but the reason we did it for F is because F is a big letter for us. It’s the first letter of my oldest daughter’s name. So it’s a pretty exciting letter in our house.

Our F Sound Box included flowers, forks, fruit, fish, an F alphabet block, some paper flags, and a Ferrari.

Our Sound Box was inspired by the “Sound Box” books the series by Jane Belk Moncure. They’re kind of hard to find now, so I’m glad I picked up a couple when I did years ago, although you can still sometimes find them on Amazon:

F is for Food :)

We used the Pepperidge Farm Goldfish Honey Whole Wheat Bread. You COULD get it on Amazon, which is what I linked to, but it’s kinda seriously pricey, so I suggest checking your local stores first. I only include the link because it helps me to visualize what I’m looking for if I can see it first.

What I actually suggest is – if you can’t find the Goldfish bread in the store – just use fish shaped cookie cutters to make your own fish shaped bread, kind of like when I made Fall French Toast in the shape of Autumn leaves.

This was a simple lunch. I warmed up some frankfurters {turkey dogs count!}, sliced them into three pieces, and formed an F with the pieces on the plate.

Then I added some fruit. A mixture of fruit would have been nice, but the only fresh fruit we had that day was watermelon, so that’s what we ate.

Since we did so many activities for Letter F Day, dinner was also {like lunch} simple.

I threw some frozen french fries and frozen fish sticks on a cookie sheet and baked them up while I made a salad. {A “fresh” salad??}

Anyway, this particular meal is always a hit with my kids, but before we ate it, I made sure to make a game out of searching for all of the letter Fs on the boxes of the fries and fish sticks.

This was a pretty dessert, but also super, super sweet.

Why is it called “Fairy Fudge?” Well, I named it for Fairy Bread, which is a slice of white bread covered with butter and colorful sprinkles. But what we did here was make white chocolate fudge and cover IT with colorful nonpareil sprinkles. My kids LOVE sprinkles.

The fudge pictured above was from a rather unsuccessful recipe {waaaay to sweet and not the right texture at all}, but I’ve come up with my own recipe for Vanilla Fairy Fudge which is SO much better!

Okay – that’s it for Letter F Day, except for my Letter F: Free Alphabet Worksheets for Kids, of course!

And don’t forget to follow me on Facebook and Pinterest to see my latest posts!

Have fun!

5Sep2014

Letter C: Alphabet Activities for Kids

Posted in activities for kids, alphabet activities by Rosemary Lynn

Welcome to Letter C Day!

If you haven’t read the Introduction to the Alphabet Activities, you should start there.

And don’t forget to check out the Letter C: Free Alphabet Worksheets for Kids, too!

For our letter sorting activity, I made two paper cars.

To make it a little easier to distinguish between the capital and lowercase Cs, I cut out the capital Cs in a slightly bigger circle than the lowercase ones.

But kids tend to be more observant than us anyway, and I’m not sure that extra step was necessary.

This paper project goes great with Letter C Day and with a reading of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which we read anyway.

But instead of cutting out circles for the body of the caterpillar, I cut out large letter Cs in different colors.

This is a file folder-type game that I made. And it’s one that my daughter still pulls out of the “file folder” game binder to play.

It’s a simple concept of matching the cats that are the same color, but lets you practice counting as well as color matching.

You can find the free printout on my Letter C: Free Alphabet Worksheets for Kids post.

This was probably my favorite activity.

I know it seems a little strange at first glance – after all, what toddler/preschooler can pronounce “cumulonimbus?”

Honestly, I struggled to say the words, too.

But, with this chart in hand, we lay in the grass and watched the clouds. We talked about the different shapes and which picture on the chart best matched the clouds we saw. We picked animals out of the floating masses and laughed as the shapes fell apart again.

My daughter still excitedly points out shapes she sees in the clouds, and her younger sister is starting to, as well.

I made this chart with photos from the NOAA and you can get the free printout on my Letter C: Free Alphabet Worksheets for Kids post.

After watching the clouds outdoors, we made our own.

I cut fluffy cloud shapes out of blue construction paper, which my daughter smeared with glue and covered with cotton balls.

I punched a hole at the top so we could tie a string and hang them in our living room.

This is a great project, and for many ages, too.

The version of constellations you see here was done when my daughter was a toddler. I made different shapes with glue and she sprinkled the cut out stars over the glue. The stars were made with a craft punch.

Now that she’s a preschooler, we’ve replicated the project, though a little differently. She draws the lines with a white or silver crayon on the black construction paper, dotting on glue and paper stars at important points along the path, such as where the lines intersect.

This corn sensory bin was so cool. Seriously. Have you ever been to a corn maze where they had a giant sandbox full of corn kernels that you could play in?

This was like the miniature version of that. With letter C toys to find.

What I’m trying to say is that it felt really neat. Corn is a great sensory tool because it has a wonderfully soothing feel as you move your hands through it.

And you can reuse it. This is just popcorn kernels, and we did pop them after the project was done.

The letter C items that I hid in the corn included a toy cookie, cat, car, a coin, some crayons, candles, and clothespins.

The next few crafts work for both Letter C Day and for Christmas Crafts.

For this one, I had precut some candy cane shapes from red construction paper and some strips of white paper.

My daughter glued the candy canes onto the paper and the candy cane strips on top of them.

I love using chenille {pipe cleaner} sticks for crafts. Especially since they’re something you can get at the dollar store.

For this one, we took one white and one red pipe cleaner and twisted them together. Then, we hooked over one end to make the candy cane shape.

Mine is the one on the left and my daughter’s on the right.

If you make these around Christmastime, they make adorable decorations that can be hung on furniture or the tree.

With this one, we had some discussions not just about the letter C but also about shapes.

I drew a triangle to represent the shape of a Christmas tree on the paper and we filled it with glue. My daughter filled the triangle with the large green circles for the tree and topped it the the star.

Then we drizzled glue over the tree and she sprinkled on the tiny circles for ornaments.

I cut out the star by hand and the green circles as well. If you have a large hole punch you could use that instead. For the small circle ornaments, I used a single hole punch.

And since it was winter, this decorated our fridge before I transferred it to our Alphabet Activity Binder.

This was a little something we did for fun, after discussing how both of the words Car and Cup start with the letter C.

A variation on a Shell Game, I hid two cars under the three cups, moved them around and asked her to find the cars. Not much of a challenge since the cups are all different, but it was still fun. There were lots of giggles.

These adorable Cinnamon Toast Cs were made by cutting the letter C out of Cinnamon Toast with a cookie cutter.

I made the toast with regular sandwich bread, buttered the warm toast and sprinkled it with my Cinnamon Sugar Mix. Then I pressed in the cookie cutter to get letter C shapes.

And I ate all of the “leftovers.” Of course. :)

These were quick because I used a box mix and store bought icing. I wanted to focus on the other projects and not baking from scratch – we do that enough on other days.

I made mini cupcakes and topped them with some cream cheese icing that I put in a plastic baggie with the corner snipped off. I squeezed it on top in circles.

Then I mixed some icing with green food coloring and a little more with orange food coloring.

To make the carrot shapes I took the orange colored icing, also in a small plastic baggie with the corner snipped off, and drew a squiggle pattern that was thicker at one end and slightly pointed at the other. Then I added a little dab of green icing where the “carrot” was thickest.

For dinner we had a mouthful of letter C: Chili con Carne with cheese, sour cream, and cornbread.

I made my 4 Ingredient Chili and some cornbread baked in muffin tins.

And chocolate chip cookies. Yum. How could we possibly have a day celebrating the letter C and not mention chocolate chip cookies??

C is for Cookie, that’s good enough for me…..

Anyway, while baking your favorite recipe of chocolate chip cookies, melt some chocolate chips in a baggie, snip off the corner, and draw some letter Cs onto waxed or parchment paper. Allow them to set (this only take a few minutes) and when you pull the tray of cookies out of the oven, place the chocolate C on top and press down ever so slightly. The heat from the cookie will melt the bottom of the C to help it adhere.

And here are some of the supplies I’ve mentioned in this post, including the star punch, popcorn, and cookie cutters (for the Cinnamon Toast).

I’d love for you to share if you’ve done any of these projects with your little ones!

Follow me on Facebook and Pinterest to see my latest posts.

Have fun!

22Aug2014

Letter A: Alphabet Activities for Kids

Posted in activities for kids, alphabet activities by Rosemary Lynn

Letter A Day was our first Alphabet Activities day.

My OCD really wouldn’t have let it happen any other way. :)

Anyway, if you haven’t read the Introduction to the Alphabet Activities, you should really start there.

And don’t forget to check out the Letter A: Free Alphabet Worksheets for Kids, too!

One of the first letter projects we ever did was an American flag.

And it really stuck with her.

To this day, my daughter points out the flags, excitedly shouting, “An American flag!”

The project itself was simple: I cut out red stripes, a blue rectangle, and punched out some white stars ahead of time. Then I showed my daughter a flag and she copied it in paper.

There are plenty of other flags you could do, too. Just to name a few: Austria, Australia, Argentina, and Afghanistan. Also, Alabama, Arizona, Alaska, and Arkansas.

I always do a letter sorting project where I print out both capital and lowercase letters ahead of time.

These letters were cut into apple shapes. {Don’t laugh at my apple trees!}

You could easily hand write the letters instead. Honestly, my printer gives me more trouble with construction paper…

This was a fun snack.

I cut some thin slices in an apple and used an A cookie cutter to make little apple ‘A’s.

And I ate all the scraps, too. :)

I’ve made these a bunch of times, usually for potlucks.

I’m not posting a recipe since it was all ready-made supplies {or you could substitute with your favorite homemade recipes}.

Check out the step-by-step photos:

I used a 2-inch flower shaped cookie cutter to cut pieces out of store bought pie crust. I placed the flower crusts in greased muffin tins. Then I scooped a few apples from a can of apple pie filling into the crust. I topped it with a generous sprinkle of my Cinnamon and Sugar Mix, and baked them according to the pie crust directions.

These little pies are always a hit.

Chocolate is a favorite in our house, so these chocolate acorns, it should go without saying, were also a hit.

The great thing is that they also work well for autumn-themed projects. I’m thinking of making them again around Thanksgiving.

As you can see in the photos, the ingredients are Hershey’s Kisses, mini Fudge Stripe cookies, and miniature chocolate chips.

I melted some chocolate chips in a baggy to act as the “glue” to hold it all together. Then we stuck the flat end of the Kisses onto the bottom of the cookies and let them sit for a minute to set. Then I put a drop of melted chocolate on the top of the cookies, and my daughter attached the kiss to the top.

Store covered… if you have any left.

Click here to get the free printable Letter A: Free Alphabet Worksheets for Kids.

And here are some of the supplies I’ve mentioned in this post, including the star punch, letter A cookie cutter, and fudge stripe cookies: