Today my 4 year old son and I started our first alphabet letter study of the school year by doing some alligator activities to go with the letter A.
We read the book Zack’s Alligator by Shirley Mozelle. The book is about a boy named Zack who receives an alligator keychain from his uncle in the mail with the instructions to water her. When Zack places the alligator in the water she turns into a full sized alligator. They have all sorts of adventures and in the end she turns back into a keychain.
This is a cute book and my son really liked it. When we were finished reading we made alligators out of the letter A.
My son colored a large letter A with a green crayon and then I cut it out for him.
He glued it to a piece of construction paper along with 10 white triangle teeth and 2 wiggly eyes. The letter came from Itty Bitty Bookworms, but I cut it so that there would be more room for the teeth. The idea for the alligator came from No Time For Flashcards.
I printed, laminated and cut out 5 monkeys that I printed from Preschool Alphabet. Then I recited the poem below to my son as he used an alligator (A clothespin he colored green.) to snap the monkeys out of the tree one by one.
5 Little Monkeys
5 little monkeys sitting in a tree.
Teasing Mr. Alligator, “You can’t catch me!”
Along comes Mr. Alligator quiet as can be…
SNAP! that monkey right out of the tree!
Repeat with 4 little monkeys and so on until all the monkeys are gone.
My son loved this activity, so we had to reenact it many times.
For a snack this morning I gave my son some crackers, triangle pieces of cheese, circles of cheese, and some small pieces of fruit leather so that he could make alligators. If he liked celery then that might have been a cute alternative since it would have been the right color.
We had a lot of fun today and I am looking forward to helping my son learn this school year.
