Alphabet Collage - Part 1

If your kids love craft time as much as mine do, this Alphabet Collage is a great little activity to do with your toddlers.

I know I've said it before and I'm going to say it again, but preparation really is the key to ensuring you enjoy these craft/activity times as much as your kids do. You'll feel more in control plus there seems to be less mess involved when our activities have been prepared in advance.

But moving on to our collage. Inspired from other learning blogs, I have tweaked this activity to suit our learning style and what resources I have on hand.

Step 1, print your A, B & C outlines.

Step 2, print off your worksheet with assorted images beginning with the letters a, b & c (hence the part 1 title. As more worksheets are developed they will be posted on this blog). Since I'm unsure how to insert PDF documents, this image below will have to do! Please contact me or leave a reply below for the original worksheet.

Step 3, cut out your letter outlines and all those individual little images. These can be all mixed together since part of the learning process involves sorting through the various a, b & c images and gluing them to the appropriate page.

Step 4, allow your child to colour in or decorate the letter outlines as they see fit. Glue them onto separate pieces of paper (I've used different coloured paper for each letter). As an alternative to this step, you may like to make your letter outlines large enough for the pictures to be glued inside of the actual outline instead of surrounding it like I will be doing. 

Step 5, let your children sort through the images and glue them onto the correct page. For example, all cars, cats and cameras will be glued around our letter C.

And just to emphasise the point of being organised, this is how my planned activites will now live. I have labelled a spare document wallet (now called Planned Kid's Activities), which quite rightly stores any planned activities or craft ideas I may have in store for the kids later on in the day or for tomorrow.

When not in use, our Planned Kid's Activities wallet will now reside in my newly organised and recently beautified errands zone/station (see below). I like to keep my little folder close by so that I can add ideas and worksheets whenever inspiration strikes and have all necessary bits and pieces ready to go when I get a chance to do so. It also makes life easier when I need a stand by activity to keep the kid's amused, particularly during all this wet weather we've experienced.

There you have it. A quick, easy and relatively mess-free activity to perform with your kids. 

P.S. How do you fit in learning/craft activities with your kids? Is it a structured thing or unplanned?