Felt Alphabet Fun!

What is very versatile, easy & fun to make, and works well for both little ones and bigger ones?

Well, if you guessed a felt alphabet set, you are correct!

Recently, I made a felt alphabet set primarily for Little Bro to use as an extension to his language objects work.
Little Bro has used the felt set to sort language objects, to do ABC order, and to sort magnetic letters (both upper and lower case).

When Big Bro saw Little Bro having a blast doing his work, he actually wrapped up his own work and joined in the fun. Big Bro then wanted to see what he could do that would involve using the felt alphabet set. We decided that it would be a great way for him to do a variety of language tasks as well, albeit differentiated than how the set would be used by Little Bro.

Both boys love using our felt alphabet set!!!
Also works great for our foreign language studies, as they can do ABC order in French as well as English with this felt set.
They both like to choose to use it in conjunction with their specific work.

Big Bro has been using the felt set for higher level work, including putting dinosaur names in alphabetical order, putting reading, science, and math vocabulary into alphabetical order, and putting the names of countries that are on a World Stamps Set into ABC order. He has also worked at putting the various elements from the Periodic Table into ABC order.

When it comes to homeschooling, it is always great when you make something that both your younger child and your older child can use and enjoy.

This work feels and looks nice, only takes a few hours to make, and has been very well received by any child who has seen it in use.
If you have a much younger child, you could also use this set to tie in with all kinds of Alphabet themed books, such as Chicka Chicka Boom Boom or Alphabet Adventure. 
Here is a link to an entire collection of alphabet themed books in case you want to make a felt set and tie it in with books.

Here are some photos of the felt set I made, along with the boys using it in a variety of ways:

Since both boys like the feeling of the soft felt that I used for this work, have been making other neat felt homeschooling items as well...will share some photos of some of the other items I have made out of felt.

Have you tried making materials from felt for your children?

Would love to see and hear about what you have made out of felt.

 Do you have activities that work well in your home or classroom for both younger and older children?

Please feel free to share your ideas in the comments section of this post.

Also, hope that you will consider following me on Pinterest, as I have all kinds of neat crafts and homeschooling materials pinned to my boards, some of them are Montessori and some are just very creative, fun, play based ideas.

Here is the direct link to my Felt & Flannel Board Project Ideas Board. 
If you are on Pinterest, please let me know so that I can check out your neat pin boards too.

Have a happy weekend!

Some Fun for Little Ones From Sunflower Schoolhouse!

A while back, I happened to come across a neat blog called Sunflower Schoolhouse.

Honey Brown, the mommy blogger behind Sunflower Schoolhouse, had come up with an awesome unit all about Canada. Then, I was blessed to win some neat penguin games that she had made!

We used them this past winter and they were a hit in our homeschool!

Well, while trying to get things ready for this coming school year, I came across some neat freebies on Honey's website and made up two of them.

The first one is called The Army Alphabet Game - The Phonics version.

For this game, you print out and laminate the game board and cards made by Honey and then, head to a dollar section of your choice and buy some green plastic "Army guys"...we found our Plastic Soldier Playset in the dollar spot at Target.
There are extra cards for you to add additional cards. We added some so that both boys can play together. The cars Honey has provided in her freebie print out of the game go over the letter sounds and some rhyming word activities as well.
With the blank cards, I added in some activity cards for Big Bro:
Alphabetical order, parts of speech, synonyms and antonyms, and analogies.
Adding in these extra cards works for our family as then, both boys can play and have fun together while practicing some skills.
Little Bro seems to need a little extra time working on sounds.
He is progressing in his reading, but he struggles with "hearing the sounds" so this game is great in that it has him practice without it feeling like he is practicing.

The second game that I downloaded was for Brick Building Activities.
These are idea cards that can be used with any sort of brick type toy, in our home, that means Lego!
The boys love to build Lego structures!
For this, I added some additional cards to go with particular Lego themes that we have been doing here in our home: Pirates, City, Hero, Kingdom, and Star Wars.
Added in some challenging cards that went with these themes.
Then had Dear Hubby create a little Lego box with a hinged lid to store the cards.
If you want to make a similar box, you can usually find and then order the hinges from Brick Link.
They make it easy to build a structure with a hinged lid or door.

Had Dear Hubby glue the pieces together so that the box will stay in tact.
He used Krazy Glue and it worked very well...
The idea is that the cards can then stay in the box on the table and the boys can open the box and choose a card for themselves when they finish their school work or else just for fun when they feel like building something.

It is so nice that there are so many wonderful mommy bloggers who share their wonderful handmade homeschooling materials with fellow mommies.

Thanks so much to Honey Brown!

Please be sure to check out her Sunflower Schoolhouse blog and see the neat things she creates.
She also sells on Etsy  as well as Pinterest and Twitter.