Fun learning the alphabet

Being that our oldest is preschool age, we're just getting our feet wet with homeschooling. This also means that the ABC's are a pretty popular topic in our home with all of the children.

Our four year old has been working on letter sounds and writing the alphabet and the little ones are having fun with letter recognition.

There are so many resources out there to help with these skills as well as creative ideas to do at home.

As shown above, these are a few items that have been really helpful in making learning the alphabet fun at our house!

The Dora the Explorer: ABC Game (which I actually scored at a garage sale last summer) is a game they really enjoy and uses pictures to help teach the sounds of each letter.

LeapFrog: Letter Factory is a fun DVD which helped our oldest learn the sounds of almost every letter of the alphabet before we even started preschool with her.

This LeapFrog: Fridge Phonics Magnetic Letter Set helps teach letter recognition and sounds and it is great to keep little hands busy while mommy works in the kitchen : )

What resources or creative ideas do you use to help your children learn their ABC's?

(Note: the links in this post are my referral links.)

Where's Doodle? Second edition

This is our third daughter… a sweet and very compliant one, who has inherited the nickname "Doodle". She takes naps and goes to bed like clockwork. She enjoys most everything from riding in the car to playing with her sisters and even entertains herself for long periods of time. She is such a joy to our family!

Let’s not be mistaken, however. She is full of energy and adventure. As to keep up with her older sisters, she began walking at eight months. We were so proud and she….oh so delighted.

Since then, she has been known to climb the stairs – on the inside and outside of the staircase….GASP! She has also scaled tables, chairs, drawers, the fireplace hearth, desks – you name it. We have found her in the most inconspicuous places. Each Wednesday, I will share a glimpse of them with you in the "Where's Doodle?" segment.

This girl is on the move, which means so are we.

Tiny tots at "school"

As I said last week, I want to dedicate Tuesdays to discussing topics about homeschooling, curriculum, resources, crafts ideas, etc.

Although in the past two years I have searched through many books, followed several blogs, observed homeschooling families and prayed about and researched the whole idea of

homeschooling....we are just rookies this year. We are just skimming the surface of this journey.

With three of our four children being under the age of three (2 1/2, 1 and 2 months), it can be pretty interesting, at times. While working on preschool activities with the oldest, I try to find fun and engaging activities for the younger ones - the baby tends to prefer sleeping ; )

Below are a few of the activities that they enjoy and that keep them somewhat occupied.

(I'm not sure who likes these Do-a-Dot Art Markers more....the kids or myself?!)

(Everyone likes to play with these Guidecraft Rainbow Blocks . The kids even discovered that when you put the different colored blocks together that the primary colors make secondary colors.)

(These Counting Bears are great for sorting, counting, learning colors or just to play with.)

Another tidbit: I got two of these three items FREE using Amazon gift cards that I got using my Swagbucks, which I will discuss in a future post.

How do your tiny tots participate in your homeschool activities or if you don't homeschool, what fun activities do you do at home with little ones? We'd love to know.

(Note: the links in this post are my referral links.)