sandbox letter find

I finally got a free minute to read a bit of email (I have a ton still to sort out). I read a request for Letter/Number teaching ideas on the yahoo homeschool group. This question made me realize that I haven't posted anything about our "school time" in a very long time. I have a hard time keeping my blogging even or well rounded. I want to keep my blogging multi purpose between sharing crafts, games, preschool ideas, grade school, struggles, joys, play time, pictures for family, family news, baby's milestones, and so on but I have a hard time doing this. I am going to try harder at this!

Yesterday Demi played a letter find game in one of our sandboxes. All I do to make this activity is take a set of letters and hide them in the sand. We used magnetic letters. The letters we have in our sandbox right now are not even a matching set. We have upper and lower case letters, jumbo size down to tiny. Travis and Demi picked out one magnet of each letter of the alphabet and I just tossed them in the sandbox and covered them over for her to find. She uses a shovel to dig out the letters and sometimes she sifts the sand to find the letters this time she didn't do that this time. It is just a find, name, and make sound of the letter kind of game. When we first started playing games like this I would take a turn and often "make mistakes" on letters she knew so she could help me remember names or sounds. She loves to "teach" her mommy.

I hope this clip will play for you. I have dialup and can't get it to all play for me so I am not sure I even got it all uploaded.




My daughter is 3. She mixes up letter sounds or names sometimes. If you have an older child who mixes up letters or doesn't know them PLEASE don't feel your child is behind!!! My daughter is NOT able to do MANY things your child can do!!!! When my children take an interest in something we go with it and by doing it this way she is able to jump ahead with somethings but at the same time she isn't learning others. OH! A good example is HOT and COLD. She ALWAYS mixes them up. Stop by my house anytime and I promise you she will say she is cold when she is out in the hot sun. Then she will shiver and say she is hot when she gets out of the pool. That is just one of MANY things she hasn't figured out yet. I feel that all children are always learning something so if my child doesn't know something other children know it is OK (and even expected in our house). My children are homeschooled and in NO race with anyone! I am in no hurry to rush them into adulthood. I don't feel a child who reads as a toddler is any better than a child who learns to read at 7. I feel comfortable letting my children move fast with things they are good at and taking time getting the things they struggle with. I am sharing this to show some of the HOW we do things NOT to show WHAT she knows. KWIM? Well I guess for family members out of state you can see our daughter is learning but that isn't the reason I am sharing this.