The letter "X" is a tough one to teach! Aaron asked me to tell him what things start with the letter x, but the list is short and sometimes the x makes a different sound in each word. One approach is to teach words that end with the letter x, like box, mix, and fox. I decided to do a quick x-ray craft and then turn it into a pirate theme with "X marks the spot." I have the book Twenty-Six Pirates, which is a great way to review the whole alphabet, and Aaron pretended to be Pirate Xavier!
X-Ray Craft
He really liked this craft! I traced his hand and arm with a white crayon, and we glued on the "bones". As we did this, we felt the bones in his hand and arm. As a connection to the pirate theme, we talked about how the pirate flag usually has a skull on it. We talked about how that's the bone that makes up a person's head. He thought it was hilarious that pirates would have "x-ray flags." Ha!
Alphabet Review & Writing in the Sand
We read through Twenty-Six Pirates together, and he wrote each letter in the sand as we went.
Then, I dressed him up as a pirate, and we went on a treasure hunt!
Alphabet Treasure Hunt - Practicing Upper & Lowercase Letters
Click here to get this free printable! You can choose to match uppercase letters or lowercase letters to the map. I'm slowly introducing lowercase letters to Aaron, so we tried it as an extra challenge. I cut out the lowercase letters and spread them through the house in a long, winding path leading to our treasure chest. He had to pick up the letter, say the letter name, and stick it to the map. To make it a little faster, I was in charge of the glue.
He finally got all 26 letters, and it led him straight to his treasure chest (an empty dryer sheet box works great!). Inside, he found coins of all colors.
Color Sorting & Counting
Click here to get this free printable! I had 10 treasure chests for him with 10 different colors. First, he sorted the colors by gluing on the coins to their matching treasure chests. Then, I pulled out two chests and asked him which one had more coins and which had less. I put the one with more (let's say it had 8 coins) to the right, and one with less (let's say it had 3 coins) to the left. I pulled out another two chests and asked again which one had more (7 coins or 2 coins). Once he told me that 7 is more, I asked him to compare 7 to the first chest with 8 coins. Out of the two chests that have more, which one has the most? And we did the same with the two chests with less. Which one has the least? Then we had a line-up of four chests all in the right order. We repeated this until we had all 10 chests sorted.
To finish it off, I asked him, as Pirate Xavier who wants lots and lots of coins, which chest would he choose if he could pick any. His gut reaction was to pick the green chest just because that's his favorite color, but we talked through the concept that 10 is the most, and that would make a pirate the most happy.
Then, I asked him if he would be happy, sad, or in between if he was given the chest with 6 coins, or only 2 coins, or the one with 9 coins. We repeated this through all the numbers so that he could process the meaning of the numbers.
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