“Maaaaagic letter rabbit,” intones Miss Nicole (aka “la señora de story time”), “What is the letter of the week?!”

Our closest library is small and, compared to others around, has few toys & games. Still, we prefer it to any of the bigger, newer ones mainly because of Miss Nicole’s story time (also because it’s one block from our house).

As she leads the crowded room in an enthusiastic round of clue guessing to figure out the letter of the week, I think (not for the first time) that I have been slacking a little on mom-led educational activities for my girls.

When my oldest daughter was born, I had a full Pinterest board of things to do to improve motor skills, teach letter recognition, etc. etc. Being a rather precocious child (as well as an only child), she talked early, learned her letters young, and in general required very little from me to become pre-literate.

Then I had my second kid!

And even though hija mayor (now 3) goes to preschool twice a week, the other day she momentarily confused a letter she used to know perfectly. Cue the mom-guilt!

So I figured that the start of summer vacation was an ideal time to dust off my Pinterest board and figure out a plan for summer now that all of the learning is on me again for a couple of months.

From past experience I know that I can only set myself up for success if this kind of activity is simple (for me) and relatively quick. This Letra de la Semana sequence is both of those things, and perfect for the preschool crowd to work on letters this summer.

LA LETRA DE LA SEMANA

How it works:

You focus on one letter for a whole week. My daughter’s attention span for this kind of thing is about 15 minutes right now, which IMO is an ideal amount of time as it’s not overwhelming for either of us and easy enough to squeeze in after breakfast before we leave the house, or in the evening after work.

Lunes – Introduce the letter and brainstorm examples. We normally follow pretty much the same script: “Mi nombre es ___ y soy la letra de la semana. El sonido que hago es ___ y en inglés soy ___.” Then we think of words that start with that letter and write them down.

Martes – Recolectamos. We look for things around the house or outside that start with the letter.

Miércoles – Buscamos. We search for uppercase and lowercase examples of the letter in any print materials we have a la mano (junk mail, magazines, books, pretty much anything will work here).

Jueves – Escribimos. Mainly this involves me drawing a big letter and having her fill it in with watercolors or crayons (and one time with beans!). This summer I might try to have her do more writing/tracing.

Friday – Get crafty. I’m not naturally a very crafty person but for the sake of my kids I’m trying to be a little more creative. There are hundreds of ideas on Pinterest, and a quick Google search pulled up this, this and this (just to start!).

My favorite part about this is that since we focus on the same letter all week, if we miss a day here and there it’s not a big deal. And having a set activity for each day makes it easy since I don’t have to figure out what to do— I just have to remember what day of the week it is. 🙂

And! If you happen to need a dedicated activity to do only in Spanish with your kids, this would fit the bill rather nicely. Let me know if you decide to give it a try!

(Top photo of Vince and Soph free alphabet printable.)