Teach short a with sensory play!

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Have you lot been following along in our letter exploration?  Nosotros're on Letter of the alphabet A — and nosotros're more than than halfway through.  (That's considering we're taking the alphabet out of order, starting with the letters easiest to write.)

Teaching short vowel sounds can be tricky — which is why I decided to teach short a with sensory play.  My toddler could join in the fun, and both my Three and Five were challenged.  A win-win-win!

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First, we got out our materials.

• Dry oats.I bought these at a low cost from our disbelieve grocery store.  (And since I pack them up later on we're washed for time to come sensory play, we go a lot of use out of them.)  If you have simply one or two kids playing, yous won't demand iii behemothic canisters. Only I have three busy boys.

• Funnels and scoops for pouring. As it turned out the oatmeal got stuck in the funnels.  Merely the scoops were perfect.  As they played, my Five got out a paw-held sieve and my Three establish some measuring spoons.

• Letter A's on blocks and magnets. These were for repeated exposure to the letter — since my Iii and Five have a good handle on their alphabet, this was for the sake of my One. I acknowledge I didn't call attention to it, because he's not interested in the alphabet still.  But if he were fix, I'd ask him to find the A'southward.

• Printed picture cards, apple tree numbers, and words.I designed these cards to be used with siblings of dissimilar ages and levels – after reading an awesome mail service about multi-age sensory bins from The Educators' Spin on It.  The numbered apple cards were an idea I got from Teaching Mama's Preschool Journey e-volume.

I created a gear up of x picture cards: each has a pic of something that begins with the short a audio — starting with ane detail and going all the manner up to ten.

I too made a set of ten numbered apple cards.

Finally, I printed a set of word cards to get with each pic card.

Later we removed our scoops and funnels, the boys each got to dump a canister of oats onto the messages and cards.

Then they dug right in!

The boys didn't fifty-fifty expect at the printed cards for the first forty-five minutes.  That's what I beloved almost a good sensory bin: it may lead to a mess, only it keeps kids happy and decorated for a long time.  I was able to put my feet up (a luxury as I was 7 i/2 months significant when we did this activity).

And I did something I almost never do since I began blogging… I read a good volume!  (It was The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon — the latest in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series.  Y'all oasis't read them?!  Ack! Reserve the first book at your library right now!  They're my absolute favorites!)

It was so fun to see my toddler (22 months) get into this.  He transferred oats with his hands, poured, dumped, and dug.  Afterwards about 45 minutes he also started throwing handfuls of oats across the floor — at which fourth dimension I scooped him upwards and declared it snack time.

My Five, who always finds something interesting to do, grabbed a sieve from the drawer and crushed oats with his easily to make oat flour.  Afterward quite a lot of work he was pleased to have fabricated about iii tablespoons of fine flour. 🙂

When my toddler started snacking – and the big boys were starting to lose interest – I said information technology was time to offset digging for all the picture, number, and word cards.  I helped them run across how each movie started with the short a sound.

My 3 needs piece of work at counting objects, so the math part of this was great review for him.  My Five, who is a beginning reader, was able to identify most of the words.  Even though he couldn't have read some of them in isolation, the movie cues were  a large assistance.

And there you have it!  A fun mode to learn the audio of short a – with some sensory play and math practice thrown in.  It was a hit!

And for many more learning ideas for didactics letter A – including math connections, a book list, and complimentary printables, click on the image below!

Become your free sensory printables!

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Source: https://www.themeasuredmom.com/teach-short-a-with-sensory-play/