Fun Ways to Learn the Alphabet: Jump with joy for letter ‘J’!

If you have been following this series on teaching alphabets to your child, you know by now that I try to make learning letters a fun, hands-on, out-of-the box experience for the child. I have never supported rote learning, as I genuinely feel a child is far greater in his ability for learning in that fashion. Instead I like to encourage his natural curiosity and exploration that helps him learn in a way which is more child-driven and interest led.

With this in mind (always), I like to create activities that my child and his friends enjoy. This week, let me share with you some fun ways to introduce letter J to your child! 
 

Here is an overview of our Montessori shelf for letter J works:

We like to start the works, by tracing on the sandpaper letter, which is seen on the shelf. (Picture above).

My son loves to know about different places, and hence I thought it would be a good idea to include some Japan-themed works for him! 

First we looked at the flag of Japan. My son also made the red circle of the flag with his dot marker!

Rice is one of the staple food of Japan, so I used this opportunity to add a rice transferring work on his shelf:-)

After that we went through traditional / cultural picture cards of Japan. 

Japan is also famous for its Cherry blossom tree, and I decided to set up two really fun and easy arts and craft activities:

First one, where we painted flowers on a tree template with pink colour.

For the second one, we crumbled up some pink crepe paper and glued it on the tree template –

How can one forget about the famous Japanese Fan when talking about Japan! For this craft activity, I created the base of the fan by gluing together 4 popsicle sticks. We colored the fan template with some crayons and markers and voila our fan was ready!

Lastly for our Japan unit, we did a super quick Ninja gluing and pasting work – I gave my son a Ninja template, without his face features, and my son had to glue them on:

One more activity we did on the shelf was a Jacket pretend play shop (J is for Jacket)! I hung the jackets on a ribbon (with clothespins) and created customer cards, and my son had to sell them the jackets as per customer requirement. We love pretend plays, and this one was an absolute fun!:-)

My son LOVES animals, and so I had to bring out his jungle animals to the shelf since we are on letter J! 

And lastly a practical life activity – J is for jam! Here we practiced spreading jam on a fruit bread (and of course eating it too!). This was indeed a yummilicious fun activity!

So on that sweet note, I conclude the activities for letter ‘J’. Stay tuned to this space for next week’s activities.

You can catch a video in action for this series here:

You can get the printables to all activities for free on my blog, the link to which will be embedded in the video.

Please hop on to Letter A, Letter B, Letter C, Letter D, Letter E, Letter F, Letter G, Letter H, Letter I in case you have missed out on reading the previous posts!

_{Source for Banner Image: The pictures in this article are original and belong to the author. Reproducing them in any form without the permission of the author will not be allowed.}

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