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!

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Have fun!