Letter of the week: Aa

I am getting ready for this week and, since its fall, have decided to do the letter A so that we can do apple and autumn. Using index cards I wrote "I see a/an/the" (one word on each card).  Now I am printing pictures off the internet of words that begin with the letter A: angel, ark, animals, aardvark, alphabet, acorn, ant, acorn, apple, and ape.  I will put one picture at a time at the end of the sentence and let Lillian "read" the sentence.  The first couple I will need to demonstrate, then we can do a couple together, and then she should be able to read the sentence on her own by the third day or so.
I have also gathered up some Arthur books for us to read.  I am planning a trip to the orchard to get some apples and we'll be making apple ring (flatten biscuits, put a little cinnamon, butter and sugar on them, top with an apple ring and bake.  Easy for kids to make!  In addition, we can cut an apple in half to see the star shape inside, examine and count the seeds, and do floating experiments with the apples.
Another activity we'll do is play matching the alphabet (an "a" word!) - simply matching uppercase and lowercase letters.
We went out in the woods this past week and picked up acorns in preparation for this weeks activities.  We can also use the acorns, along with the apples, to do science (float, magnifying glasses, etc), but in addition we can use them for math: adding, subtracting, cover up a number and have her tell me what number is covered; they can be used lots of ways.
I have an apple cutting sheet to provide cutting practice, and am making a large apple cut out so we can write fall words on them as we think of them the next couple of weeks.  This way if she wants to write about a fall activity she'll have the words to refer to!
It's such a fun time of year and there's so much to do its hard to get it all in!