Letter of the Week

Hulk and Goblin are following my variation on the popular "Letter of the Week" curriculum this year.  It's a work in progress, getting a little more finished as time goes on.  Of course, now that I feel pretty solid in how it's working overall, I want to change to something else. (Such is my habit.)  We will be sticking with it, right up to Z, but I am very excited for what's in the works after we finish.

Our primary goal for this program has been matching letters with their sounds.  I have only been using the primary/ most common sound for each letter, which makes this incomplete, but I think it has still been very successful in starting both boys on their road to reading.  Hulk is already reading words with short vowels very well, even ones with blends, which makes me feel like we have been making some significant progress.

In my opinion, the letter crafts are what make the LotW curriculum so fun and so appealing.  We make one uppercase letter craft and one lowercase letter craft each week based on the most common sound for each letter.  The boys really enjoy this, and after we finish them, they go up on the wall, so the boys can use them as a reference for how the letters look and sound in the future.  Most of our ideas have come from other blogs and websites but there have been a few I have come up with myself, since choices are limited based on my pickiness.

We also use quite a few paper resources.  I did not want to work on writing with the boys yet at all, which challenged me to find pages that I like. Hulk adores worksheets, so I wanted to give him a good variety without including the "print the letter so many times" pages that are so prevalent.  I found quite a few that we have really enjoyed around the internet for free (or very very little).  A bunch come from education.com, but many also come from other homeschooling blogs.  We do mazes, dot-to-dots, letter hunts, coloring, circle/match the sounds, etc.

We also do some simple activities each week.  I task them to find items around the house that begin with the letter of the week.  (Not including the first few weeks) we read a group of short words.  We play with Alphie's letter cards.  We watch old Sesame Street songs and skits on youtube.  We sing songs.  They play Boggle Jr and build words for the pictures.  Usually the boys come up with plenty of ideas of their own, so we go off on little tangents.  Each week is different and most of the time, the boys are asking for "more school;" it doesn't get much better than that.

--Little Miss Crazy

Some great links for Letter of the Week resources:

education.com 

Confessions of a Homeschooler 

No Time for Flashcards 

Totally Tots

1+1+1=1 

Spell Out Loud

Ultimate Alphabet Craft Collection