A few weeks ago, I had this bright idea of creating this learning area in the media room for my daughter. This room served as my son's playroom from the time he was 10 months - 3 years old. Then I decided to make the play area an adult space, and I moved all of the educational things to a guest bedroom and that became his playroom. By the time my son was six, my brother was living with me and I was pregnant with my daughter. Once again, the rooms shifted and I came to realize that the adult zone that I wanted would not be.
My son's room grew into this mishmash of infant, toddler, preteen STUFF. It seemed that each wall represented a different stage of his life from art projects to little league to educational items. Just STUFF EVERYWHERE!
So I decided to redo his room to make it more age-appropriate. At the same time, I felt that my daughter wasn't where my son was academically at the same age. She's an intelligent little girl. I just haven't been as consistent with going over things to ensure that she'll be ready for school. Granted she won't start kindergarten until 2018, but I want her prepared and ready.
On a whim, I gathered card stock, glitter, and other materials and set out to make my own alphabet flashcards. Fortunately, I had all of the supplies at home and my daughter and I got to work.
MATERIAL:
Paper Trimmer
Card Stock (7 sheets)
Ruler
Hole Puncher
Pen/Pencil
Glue
Glitter
Ribbon
I took individual sheets of card stock and folded them in fourths. Then my daughter helped me cut the sheets using the paper trimmer.
Using the ruler, I marked the center of the fourth-sized sheets and we punched holes in 4-6 sheets at a time.
I thought I had more glitter. Unfortunately, I could only find gold glitter and dried out paint. So I used the next best thing: SALT and FOOD COLOR.
I had a pack of craft sticks and we used those to blend the salt and food color.
While my daughter was mixing the salt and food color, I began making VOWEL block letters.
I used the ruler again to create capital letters that were about 3 inches high and the lowercase letters were half that height.
We covered all of the vowels with our homemade green glitter. I wasn't too thrilled with how the sand glitter looked and I may redo these letters soon, but it works for now. However, it does make it easier for her to differentiate between vowels and consonants.
Once we finished the vowels, we began doing the same for the consonants, and we used the gold glitter for these letters.
Initially, spreading the glue and sprinkling the glitter was very calm and therapeutic. For a brief moment, I had that feeling This is the life. Somewhere along the way, my daughter left me to watch cartoons and I was questioning my decision to do this.
Really.
Why hadn't I gone to the dollar store to purchase alphabet flashcards? I could have jazzed them up. I really, really, REALLY wanted to quit and throw the cards away.
52 letters
Who decides to draw 26 capital letters and 26 lowercase letters when I could have printed or purchased them?
But I was midway through and I thought about how hurt my daughter would be if I threw the letters away that she had worked on. So I pressed on.
Literally.
Draw-Glue-Sprinkle-Draw-Glue-Sprinkle
After the letters were finished, I cut approximately six 8-inch strips of ribbon per color.
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