The Elusive Letter "X" - {CRAFT}

One of the hallmarks of the girls' preschool is the study of letters.  Each week they focus on a different letter...doing crafts...painting...and saying alliterative rhymes.  Each week the students are asked to bring pictures from magazines and newspapers showing things that start with the focus letter.

My girls LIVE for that activity!!!

First, we often start off by brainstorming things that begin with a given letter.  Sometimes it's easy...and sometimes we pull out our many alphabet books to use as a reference.

We usually start looking for some of the things we've brainstormed, and that often leads to other finds along the way.  I try to encourage them to look in different kinds of publications...magazines, newspapers, and sale papers.

We usually spend the better part of a morning in search mode.  We pile our findings (and I try to keep A's separate from B's), and that afternoon or the following day, we enjoy lots of scissor practice, cutting things out.

Lastly, I have the girls decorate an envelope for their letters.  They aren't always interested, but sometimes I can encourage them to draw a picture of something that begin with the focus letter.  Other times I might give them small stickers to outline the shape of the letter.

And then they use approximately half a roll of tape -- each -- to close their envelopes.

As we've progressed through the alphabet, it's been a way for me to roughly mark the passing of the year.  The letter M happened just after the holidays...and it's downright unbelievable we're on the letter X this week!

Speaking of the letter X...it was our most challenging to date.

I know I've seen a picture of an x-ray before (some kind of advertisement for bone health, I think), but we just couldn't put our hands on it for this week's letter poster.  We also searched the toy ads and catalogs for a picture of a xylophone, to no avail.

The girls weren't feeling 100% on Tuesday, so I kept them home from school.  They were up for some crafts, so I decided we'd just make our X picture.

Their xylophones turned out pretty cute!

They glued ribbon for the base, and then they organized construction paper strips in order from largest to smallest.  I turned them loose with the glue stick (one at a time...I had to have some control!), and they got everything in place.  We used the hole punch to make the dots for the pegs (???).  I'd hoped to find something more tactile for the sticks (probably not the right word?), but we ended up making them out of construction paper, too.

I don't know if these got included on the letter poster at school this week, but we were determined to get our "letter fix" in one way or another!

I'm linking up with Charlene again at "Hey, Mom! Look What I Did!"  She has so many great crafty and educational ideas on her blog every week!