Ocean Alphabet

Well, my oldest has gone off to kindergarten and left us. Boo-hoo. But the show must go on. The younger son and I will be venturing into the world of the ocean for the next few months as we (hopefully) learn some letters--and get them to STICK!

My younger son (hereafter referred to as "my son" seeing as the other one isn't in the picture anymore), is interested in the ocean. He's also interested in bombs and superheros. But I figured an ocean theme would be a little more appropriate for the learning environment. Anyway, his favorite videos on earth, currently, are from the Jonathon Bird website: http://www.blueworldtv.com/webisodes.

On the other hand my son is NOT interested in writing, coloring, reading, numbers, or anything else that even resembles learning in a conventional manner. So, I've had to get tricky. Motivation is the key to getting any little kid I've ever known interested in something they are not naturally interested in, so all I had to do was find a motivation for my son. If his motivation just so happened to be Jonathon Bird, well, then...so be it. I'll have to write a thank you note to that man someday.

So I told my little guy that I would let him watch the Jonathon Bird webisode about anemones if he would practice writing letter A's on a worksheet. I know. So pedantic. But that kid. I'm telling you. He's got to at least learn how to hold a pencil one of these days. Anyway, it turned out to be a cinch. We spent a good 10 minutes writing letter A's and talking about how to hold a pencil (ha ha), and when he was done, we talked about the sound letter A makes--you know, as in a-a-anemone. Then he got to watch the Jonathon Bird webisode entitled "The Real Nemo," which he loved! So everyone was happy!

Here's the link to the worksheet I used, but there are a ton of great choices out there.

When we finished that, it was time for a craft. I think I've mentioned this before, but crafts are not my strong point. This particular son of mine, though, sometimes I worry about his small motor skills, so I think crafts are a good way to go for us to let him gain some dexterity and coordination in his little hands.

I found this anemone craft on "The Crafty Classroom" website and I liked it. The official instructions can be found here: http://thecraftyclassroom.com/CraftCoralReefSeaAnemone.html. All you do is cut a styrofoam ball in half; I just so happened to have one on hand from another time when we were making planets. Then you twist up pipe-cleaners whatever way suits your fancy and smash them down into the syrofoam. It pretty well represents what an actual anemone looks like.  And it used lots of finger work with all the pinching and twisting and smashing it required.

When we had completed our anemones, we got out some toy fish we have and pretended our anemones were stinging them and catching them and eating them. That was pretty fun. Eventually our story turned to superheros using bombs to fight off the alien anemones attacking the earth...but hey, who says you can't mix business with pleasure? Huh?