I spy Alef Bet, a homemade compass and sandpaper letters

I got this great idea from another awesome homeschooling mom over at Counting Coconuts- but tweaked it with Alef Bet "beads" which are made from white beans. I used a Sharpie to write each letter on a bean and dyed the rice blue using food coloring.

Munchkin uses her Alef Bet chart to mark off the letters she "spies" until she finds them all! We use the same white beans as "markers" for the Alef Bet chart which I laminated for future use.

We also made a compass, just to satisfy The Little Guys curiosity... it was super easy and such a great learning experience.

Just take a saucer or bowl and fill with water. Then take a piece of cork (we used a cork wick holder left over from our oil Chanukah menorah) and place a needle on it, very carefully. Make sure to stroke the needle on a magnet a few times to activate its magnetic energy. Just place it on the cork and watch it automatically face north.

We turned the saucer around, only to watch the needle stay put. We also carefully turned the needle to face south and it automatically turned around by itself to face north. The Little Guy was AMAZED!

My sister in law gifted us with a set of Montessori Sand Paper Alef Bet letters. The kids love lining them up in order as well as feeling the letters.

I went one step further and made script Alef Bet letters out of sand paper and glued them to the back of the corresponding letter to get the kids familiar with script. So far, so good- they love them and its a GREAT introduction to Hebrew writing.

Here's the front:

and back:

Have a wonderful week,

A Purim Activity Pack!

A Purim Activity Pack

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Enjoy!

Some fun activites

Some fun activites that have been keeping the kiddos busy...

Alef Bet wheel, you can add different vowels as well as use pegs to match up the letters. Great for beginners in letter recognition.

Same idea, just with colors:
Used an ice tray and rubber erasers, color sorting. I had tongs but my munchkin got impatient and just used her fingers to place the erasers in each correct hole:)
Beading with pipe cleaners- they can match the beads to the same colored pipe cleaner or make their own design...

Now this was a HUGE hit: Made 2 felt boards using a picture frame and felt (got this amazing idea here), then cut out different shaped eyes, noses, mouths, hair and hair accessories and the little ones created all types of faces, over and over again-
The felt boards:

Self portrait of the little guy:)

Classic Cheerios book with Cheerios... we didn't do this in a long time, so it was fun.

Movable Hebrew Alphabet with board- another great hit, the little guy made tons of words, it was fantastic...
and lastly, Counting Chocolate Chips- you can use anything, really. This is more for number recognition and counting for little ones- you can make lady bugs with spots, bees with stripes, get creative:)
And thats what we were up to today...

Hope to create and post more soon, wishing all a wonderful week,