Busy Bag: Do-a-Dot

I finally went through and tried to organize and unpack our office.  I was looking for felt for a new project, and ended up getting motivated enough to finish the whole room.  Doing so, I found several of the busy bags I didn't finish in February when we originally packed up our old place.  Hopefully I will get some of those done in the next few weeks.

One of our favorite activities lately has been using the do-a-dot markers.  Apparently, these are a great material that are fairly clean but still allow kids to be artistic.  We purchased them months ago, and have used them in free art and also in working on letter formation.  The wonderful link below includes files with all of the letters.  I printed out all the ones in Theo's name and he worked on "dotting" them all.  He and Maci also used them to make birthday art for Eli.  They turned out so cute.  (We also ran into these at Meet-the-Teacher day at preschool, as well as the National Children's Museum.  They seem to be super popular right now.)

Materials:  Do-A-Dot markers found here, and the letter templates are great and can be found here.
Assembly:  Put the markers and templates in a bag.
Activity:  Have them use the markers to fill in templates, working on dexterity, hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills and recognition of numbers or letters.  These can also be used for a variety of art projects.

Another ABC Book Part 2

As I mentioned a while ago, I'm working on making Theo another ABC book, this time with verb based phrases for each letter.  With the more alliteration the better.  I snapped a few candid photos recently that I am sure will be included...

eXamining X-rays

Inspecting Insects

Hanging in a Hammock

Another ABC Book

We have really enjoyed reading the alphabet book that I made for Theo.  At the time I made it, he was starting to really blossom with speaking, saying lots of words.  He can read every word in the book, which is what makes it so fun to read.  Since he wasn't really saying a lot of phrases at the time, I chose to make most of the letter's stand for one word nouns (17 of them), and only added phrases for a few special letters that included his cousins (kissing Kyen, hugging Annalyn, reading with Maci, napping with Aydan and Picnicking with Chloe). 

I'm in the mood to make another book already, this time using "ing" phrases, with as much alliteration as possible.  I started looking for recent pictures that could work, and am already running into a problem... mainly that everything starts with "P".  I can't decide which is my favorite.

Patting Pepper

 Piecing a Puzzle with (Grand)Pa

 Posing with a Pumpkin

 Pulling with a Puppy

This one probably won't be ready for a while (X may be a problem this time), but it's going to be fun to create.

ABC Book: Words

This book was a lot of fun to put together.  I basically just tried to use photos we already had, and gave each page one picture with one noun standing for each letter.  I did use a couple of verbs, so I could be sure to include all of Theo's cousins in a picture (and a few aunts and uncles).  Theo is able to "read" the entire book on his own.

Click here to view this photo book larger

Shutterfly photo books are the new way to preserve your memories. Create your own today.