What is alphabet summer? A great way to entertain your kids of any age and continue the learning into the summer months. While I would like to claim that is my original idea, odds are I probably read it or saw it somewhere. After all, I am a teacher, and am continuously exposed to learning/teaching ideas. Regardless, it’s a super fun way to continue the learning or even use it as a guide to plan fun summer activities.
Here is an actual explanation of alphabet summer. You use the alphabetical order to plan thematic days. For example, day 1 or A will be dedicated to Animals and therefore activities related to animals. Day 2 or day B will be dedicated to Bubbles, and so on. When planning the activities here is what you should keep in mind:
-What are your child(ren) interests? What works for a preschooler (like my 3 year old) would not work for a second grader or an older child.
-Consider what you want them to gather from this experience. I wanted my 3 year old to learn and practice skills like tracing, drawing, cutting, coloring, gluing. However, a 4 or 5 year old may need more academic content like actually learning the name of the letter and the sound.
-You don’t need a teaching degree to come up with these words. You know your child and what they like. Make sure you plan activities that are fun and capture their attention.
-Include reading as much as possible. You don’t need books in all topics, and remember that you can find almost every book as a read aloud on Youtube.
-Use what you have at home. Aside from a couple of books (because I love all books and I can’t resist), I have not purchased a lot of other things. I have used some of my kids’ toys and things I already had at home.
-Make sure you include activities that require movement and exploration. If you make it all about worksheets, the kids will get bored.
Here are some of letters and activities we have worked on so far:
And we will be working on:
K-kites
L-learning
M-movement
N-numbers
O-obstacle course
P-puzzles
I definitively plan on continuing this every summer, with a new list of words as the kids grow up. So far, Yoyi loves it and gets super excited when I say we are working with our letters. He has only learned the letter B, but is having so much fun with all the other skills. If you want to see more of the activities planned for the remaining letters, you can follow me on instagram.
