One of my busy activities this month has included Tot School! Tyler is 17 months and has shown much interested in doing different learning activities. So of course I have been busy trying to plan a special learning activity each day. I have learned about much of these activities and ideas from some fellow home school bloggers. These activities have been fun and does not take up to much time in your day, especially if you have them all planned out. Some of the activities are simple things like coloring, but even the most simple activity can provide tons of needed learning. Plus it helps you and your little Tot spend some quality time together each day. What could be better than that?
Here is one of the activities I started with Tyler. Something every kid will eventually need to learn.....the Alphabet! This activity took some time planning and sewing and since I am new to the sewing world it took even more time! I found this really cute idea from the Happy Together blog, she is a awesome sewer with some really cool tutorials for you to try out. What she did was make the entire alphabet out of material to turn them into Rag Quilted Letters. These adorable letters are tons of fun and easy for your little tot to throw around, while learning their alphabet.
Here is what I used.....
26 different colored material from the dollar section at Walmart
Quiting Batting
1 yard of Terry cloth for the back of my letters
Bright colored thread to stitch together
I printed off the letters from the Happy Together blog, then traced the letters onto a huge poster board and then cut them out. This way I will always have the letters ready to use for the next set of letters to be sewed or ready to pass along to a friend. Then I traced each letter onto a different colored scrap piece of material, layered the quiting batting in the middle and the terry cloth on the bottom. Then I sewed them together, cut them out and then threw them into the washing machine and dryer to give them the "ragged" look.
Word of advice if you choose to use the Terry Cloth.....when I threw them into the washing machine every thing got tangled together.....it was a huge mess and I was close to tears thinking my letters were ruined after all my effort to sew them together (remember I am new to sewing so I thought all my work was ruined). But I was able to untangle them and cut off the extra frayed pieces and they turned out GREAT!!! I am so happy that I used the Terry Cloth for the back! It really gives them the ragged look and the texture I was looking for.
When I gave them to my son, he instantly loved them! We sat down and went through each letter and he would try in his own little way to repeat each letter after me. Then he loved throwing them all over the place (typical boy) and then bringing me each letter, one at a time, 26 different times.....uggh :) It was really sweet to see how much he loved them and it was also rewarding that all my hard work paid off. I look forward to all the activities I can come up with to include these rag letters.
If you notice the K is missing...I have no idea where it went! This was 2 seconds after I gave them to Tyler....hmmmm.
This is the back side with the Terry Cloth
