Involvment

As Levi got further into the alphabet Owen was becoming more involved and independent. No longer could I give him a toy to run around with or sit him in my lap and have him quietly listen; he was grabbing for the glue stick, markers, and scissors saying 'let me do it'. So I had to get creative and I thought I would share. 

Usually (on a good day) we would start our day after breakfast, scriptures, and getting dressed by singing silly wiggle songs, and checking the weather and singing about that, and then the alphabet song while I pointed to each letter, stopping on the letter we were learning about. Levi would then tell me what started with that letter sound, and Owen would try to play along. Then I would give Levi his letter 'workbook' after reading the instructions to him and he would go to his table and work on it alone while I played a game with Owen. Sometimes Levi would wander over and want to play but he knew he wouldn't get a sticker if he didn't finish and he LOVES putting a sticker on his paper, and I promised him we would play the game with him when he was done. And this worked for us! luckily!

{Levi working on his book- it's this one but I picked it up a bunch of random ones at Goodwill and this is the one Levi wanted to do- any book would work}

The games I would play with Owen were color games, as that is where I started with Levi (colors, to shapes, to numbers, to letters). Mostly we would sort out colored items (two colors at a time) onto the matching colored paper either by running them back and forth from me (with the items) to the matching colored paper. But there are lots of ways to mix it up. 

I tried to incorporate the color into the letter topic ie Vv Volcano for Levi was RED lava for Owen so that following the game we could read the topic books, Levi getting exposure to the letter and Owen pointing out the color, and then all sit at the table and work on a similar craft.

Here are the color crafts Owen did while Levi did his letter ones.

{the train one was more numbers than letters, and Levi helped him sort them, Owen was just happy to glue)

It definitely wasn't always easy and sometimes we had a craft mess that lasted ALL day... agh! but they are learning (I think).