A is for Awesome: Letter A Crafts and Fun at Absolute Dance

Every Tuesday, momstown Calgary is fortunate to be able to use a beautiful dance studio at Absolute Dance - A Complete Dance Experience for our Music and Movement program, and they are now generously allowing us to use the space every second week for our Alphabet Play event as well.  We could not be more lucky to have such an awesome location to meet in.

This Monday, we kicked off our Alphabet Play adventure by learning about the letter "A".  There are so many wonderful "A" words that could be used as inspiration, and we tried to incorporate as many as possible, reinforcing the idea that the letter "A" is a symbol that represents the "ah" and "eh" sounds. We started our gathering by brainstorming all of the "a" words we could think of.  There were lots of wonderful suggestions from the kids, including "arm", "animal", and "alligator".  We then thought of what deer and moose have on their heads: antlers!

With that, we got started on our letter "A" craft -"Antlers starts with 'A'":

We started with the outline of a letter "A" on coloured paper, and paper strips cut to the length of each section of the "A".  We glued one side on first:

And then the second:

And finally the we glued on the strip across the middle:

 Just like building a puzzle (for the younger kids, we had the full letter precut):

Then we added cut out antlers, and our masterpieces were complete:

While they dried, we headed back into the studio to sing the alphabet song, practice counting, enjoy free play, and read stories.  We started with "Art", a sweet book by Patrick McDonnell, about a boy named "Art" who loves art, and produces it prolifically. The rhyming text keeps the story moving while teaching kids about different types of lines (squiggles, zig zags, curlie cues etc.) dots, and other shapes that can be created.

Then, after reading "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault (what alphabet playdate would be complete without it?) it was back out to the craft area to make our own hand print antler headbands, and enjoy a snack of apricots and almonds:

A huge thank you to Absolute Dance for hosting us (and enduring the noise!) I am already looking forward to our next Alphabet Play event.  Come join us as we journey on to letter "B"!