Letter G: Alphabet Activities for Kids

Posted in activities for kids, alphabet activities by Rosemary Lynn

Alphabet Activites for Kids: Letter G {Learning the Alphabet with Roaming Rosie}

Welcome to Letter G Day!

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

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

G is for Giraffe paper craft {Alphabet Activities for Kids at Roaming Rosie}

For our construction paper letter, we made a giraffe with a letter G body, four legs with attached feet and a little head I had cut out.

I used a hole punch to make a bunch of “spots” out of brown paper, which was a lot of fun to attach. One of these days I may even remember to buy and easier-to-use hole punch so my daughter can help me out with things like this!

G is for Guitars letter sorting paper craft {Alphabet Activities for Kids at Roaming Rosie}

For our letter sorting, I made two guitars, and my daughter placed the lowercase Gs on one and the uppercase on the other.

I later realized this would have looked better if I’d cut out the Gs as little music notes. Next time.

G is for Green Glitter printable worksheet {Alphabet Activities for Kids at Roaming Rosie}

Is there anything better than glitter?

Not if you’re a toddler/preschooler/anybody!

The supplies for this included glue and green glitter. Easy + fun = awesome!

You can print the worksheet from my post Letter G: Free Alphabet Worksheets for Kids.

G is for Green Grass printable worksheet {Alphabet Activities for Kids at Roaming Rosie}

For this I cut a bunch of small pieces of “grass” out of construction paper ahead of time, that my daughter attached with glue.

But later, I let her use her little scissors to practice cutting grass, which we used for a different project.

You can print the worksheet from my post Letter G: Free Alphabet Worksheets for Kids.

G is for Green Goo {Alphabet Activities for Kids at Roaming Rosie}

It’s GOOOOOOOOO!

This stuff is great. And boy, did my girls love playing with it!

It’s a little wet at first, but it dries out pretty quickly. Either way, I don’t advise playing with it on carpet.

And you can store it in a closed container for awhile. Depending on how much time they spend playing with it each time you take it out of the container, it might last a few weeks.

G is for Green Goo {Alphabet Activities for Kids at Roaming Rosie}

The recipe is easy, although you may have to help your Little Ones squeeze out ALL of the glue.

You’ll need:

1. 8 oz. white glue {we used 2-4 oz. bottles of Elmer’s}

2. 1 teaspoon Borax {found in the laundry detergent aisle}

3. food coloring {optional}

4. water

First, empty the glue into a large bowl. Add a tablespoon or so of water to the glue bottle and shake it well to help loosen the rest of the glue. Pour that into the bowl, too. Stir in some food coloring.

Mix the Borax with 1/2 cup warm water until dissolved, then add it into the glue and stir.

This will produce a slimy substance within a puddle of water. Pull the goo out of the water and knead it a bit to squeeze out some of the excess water.

It’s pretty much done at this point. A little more water will probably leak out as the kids start to play with it, so I suggest playing on a mat or plastic tablecloth or something similar the first time, to help catch the extra water.

We stored ours for a few weeks, playing with it now and then. After a while, it became stiffer and pieces would break off that we could then knead back into it. But my girls enjoyed both the slimy and stiffer versions.

G is for Green Glitter Goo {Alphabet Activities for Kids at Roaming Rosie}

Green Glitter Goo is a combination of

1. clear hair gel {from the dollar store}

2. green glitter {sometimes available at the dollar store}

3. a few drops of green food coloring {optional}

Mix up all that stuff in a plastic gallon-size freezer baggy {freezer bags are sturdier} and let the kids go at it. We traced all kinds of letters and shapes in the goo.

It lasted quite a while, too, before I even worried about it leaking. Just make sure no one jumps on it or anything, and it should last at least a few weeks, if not more.

G is for Gears {Alphabet Activities for Kids at Roaming Rosie}

They spent some time playing with their Melissa & Doug Caterpillar Gear Toy.

While they were playing, we talked about how gears starts with the letter G.

G is for Gardening with Grandma {Alphabet Activities for Kids at Roaming Rosie}

My girls do a LOT of gardening with Grandma.

Today we pointed out how all of those words start with G.

G is for Gnocchi with Garlic and Gruyere {Alphabet Activities for Kids at Roaming Rosie}

For dinner, we made some Gnocchi. I love me some gnocchi.

Anyway, since it was letter G day, we made it with Gruyere and garlic.

My girls like to help with shredding the cheese – at least for a minute or two – and also with using the garlic press.

G is for Gnocchi {Alphabet Activities for Kids at Roaming Rosie}

Gnocchi with Garlic and Gruyere

Ingredients:

1 lb. gnocchi
6 oz. shredded Gruyere cheese
2 to 4 cloves pressed or diced garlic
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup milk

In a small saucepan, melt the butter. Add the flour and stir until smooth.
Add the garlic and let cook on low for a few minutes. Don’t let it burn because it will become bitter.

Add the milk and let it come just to a boil over medium to high heat, stirring occasionally. As soon as it starts to bubble, stir in the cheese (except for a handful) and turn to low.

Cook the gnocchi according to directions in a separate pot. Once done, drain and stir into cheese sauce.

Place in a serving bowl and top with reserved cheese.

Note: the garlic taste is strong. If you don’t like garlic, you can reduce the amount or omit it altogether.

Here is the free printable PDF of the recipe:

Gnocchi with Garlic and Gruyere

G is for Ginger Spice Cookies {Alphabet Activities for Kids at Roaming Rosie}

I loooooove spice cookies!

SO much awesome food at one time!

Anyway… we used my Norwegian Spice Cookie recipe, but added in some extra ginger in the form of ginger crystals.

I liked the taste of the extra ginger, although I’ll probably just stick to the normal recipe when I usually make them in the future.

If you want to add in a little crystallized ginger, crush it up a little and throw about a tablespoon or two in when mixing in the other spices.

And, as you can see in the photo below, we not only made traditional gingerbread men, but also some letter Gs with out alphabet cookie cutters.

G is for Ginger Spice Cookies {Alphabet Activities for Kids at Roaming Rosie}

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

Don’t forget to follow me on Facebook and Pinterest to see all of our latest crafts and recipes!

Have fun!

Roaming Rosie Signature

12Feb2015

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!