Ah, the letter E! I actually like this one. I thought I was so creative because although this verse doesn’t actually begin with the letter E it has 6 inside of it! You can see I let Lydia circle (ok, I circled them) each letter E and then let her draw some E’s. So, even though it’s not exactly an “e” verse, I still think it’s a good one to learn and practice. Not just that we’re all created to praise, but that we need to be purposeful in doing so!

I really liked making the letter E from popsicle sticks. You could do this with any letter—as long as you don’t mind some block letters.

But my favorite is the elephant. What, you don’t see it? It’s that little orange hamburger looking thing on the right. I cut out a head, two ears and a trunk. Then I let her piece it together. I’m not sure if it was my horrible artistic skills or the fact that my daughter was just 2 years old, but she did not put that animal together correctly! I didn’t correct her because I thought it was cuter her way!

I actually think this would be super cute to do for kids–make your own animal puzzles. You could cut out a few circles, some rectangles and triangles and let the kids make their own animals. Here’s a few we tried out today:

1. spider?
2. owl
3. bunny/bear/caterpillar head
4. bug

Pretty cute, right? Maybe I’ll try some ears and trunk and see if my  now 4 year old Lydia can put together an physically correct elephant!

I’m thankful for new beginnings… after my struggles last week with the letter D, I was fully ready to move on to the letter E, with all new activities and verses….

I found a new website that I am having a fun time poking around on… Christian Preschool Printables.  I got the printout of the earth on that site – it also has a wonderful memory verse on it… “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1).  He’s already memorized this one, and I’m still mentally chewing over how the Bible verse is going to work for us and why I’m the one struggling with it.  I’ll let you know when I have it all figured out.

So, E is for earth, elephant, envelope, egg, and, of course, EJ!  The letter E is one he’s known from the beginning, since he’s seen it in association with his name for such a long time.  One thing that I think is really interesting – because he’s so allergic to eggs, we don’t have them around much, and he’s never seen one cracked open and raw.  So when I showed him a picture of one, he had no idea what it was. 

But the earth… we hit the jackpot with this one!  EJ loves space and the things in it as much as he loves dinosaurs and sports. So we’ve done a lot with the earth this week. 

I found some paper bowls in my pantry, and I grabbed our blue and green paint.  When I discovered that we were out of cotton balls, I found some little white craft pom-poms… and we made our own earths!

Glue once again reigned supreme – at first, there was not much paint on EJ’s earth – gluing the pom-poms down was the most fun.

Then, when he discovered how to squeeze the paint out of the paintbrush (it’s in the handle of these great little inventions), the pom-poms were gone, and the earth was covered!  He also used the pom-poms to spread and stamp the paint around.

On the right is what I had in mind for the craft, but I love EJ’s interpretation of the earth. 

And I loved it when EJ wanted to show his earth to Daddy as soon as he walked in the door.  Beautiful! 

I also found other great earth-things online – Look at this!  Isn’t it fun?  Definitely something I’ll save as a reference for years to come…