We started the week with a handprint zebra!

Little Bug did marble painting to make zebra stripes on the letter Z! We dipped five marbles into white paint and then Little Bug rolled the marbles around in the box to make the zebra stripes on the letter Z.

Once the paint dried I cut the letter Z out.

Little Bug and Sweet Pea wore their matching zebra pj’s!

Little Bug did the Zebra cutting practice. I finally bought Little Bug a kid pair of scissors. This was a difficult thing for her to do. It was her first time cutting something with scissors! (I had to answer some questions about what Little Bug can/can’t do for her preschool evaluation and realized I’d never given her a pair of scissors – which, really, is probably a not a bad thing considering who we are talking about! At age 2, with scissors, there is NO TELLING what this girl would have done….) Anyway, I need to find her a “lefty” pair of scissors. I looked at Wal-Mart and didn’t see any but these that I bought her.

She worked at cutting for quite a while, although, she did get frustrated. It was a good lesson for me to teach her that this was the first time she was doing this and it was just going to be hard the first time! But that once she practices more and more, it will get easier and easier.

Several times throughout the week she would ask me, “Mommy, may I cut?”.

Little Bug is loving Do-A-Dot letters and patterns! She loves to make patterns with the Do-A-Dot markers. We did an AB pattern with the capital Z and an AAB pattern with the lowercase z.

We played Zoo Bingo which was made special by Grandma! The one I found searching the internet turned out to not be a free printable, so my mom offered to just make one! She did a fabulous job!

She found actual pictures of zoo animals (and some animals that aren’t necessarily zoo animals) and made 6 Bingo game cards!

Little Bug LOVED playing Zoo Bingo! She requested to play again right before her nap, so we did.

Little Bug did the Z size sort. She put the zebras in order from smallest to biggest.

We read the story of Zacchaeus in the Bible.

Then Little Bug spelled “Zacchaeus” using the letter tiles. I had her identify each letter as she put it on the paper. She knew every letter!

We played with these Animal families (click on the “Animal Families” link).

First, we grouped the families together (male, female, baby). Little Bug learned “male” is boy and “female” is girl. We noticed the baby lion and baby bear are both called “cubs”. We noticed the female duck is plain while the male duck is colorful. We did some letter recognition as I asked her to identify several of the letters on the cards. She thought the name for the female sheep – ewe - is very funny because it sounds like you are saying, “Ewwwwww!”. There were lots of fun, teaching moments in these cards!

Little Bug wrote the letter Zz!

Little Bug read the Little People Go to the Zoo book during her room time.

When I went to try and get a picture of her reading she was reading one of the other Little People books and this pic was too cute to not post (even though it’s not the zoo book)!

This is the Little People Zoo book. We LOVE these books! They have all kinds of flaps for the kids to lift and see what is underneath. Great for doctor office visits and travel and…room time!

We took a trip to the ZOO! Grams and Gramps joined us!

Little Bug took a picture of the zebras because…they start with the letter Z!

We wanted to take Sweet Pea to see the elephants. That was her favorite animals when we played with our plastic animals and I wanted her to see a real one. Little Bug found the elephants on the map and we headed that way first!

Sweet Pea was fascinated! I love watching my babies see and discover something for the very first time.

Our favorite! The giraffes! Well, it wasn’t Sweet Pea’s favorite. She did not like being that close to a giraffe.

A highlight of our zoo trip – the carousel!

A squirrel joined us for our picnic lunch!

We ended our trip to the zoo with a walk down the dock to see the water.

And this ends our “Alphabet Weeks”!

A letter a week has been so much fun which was my number one goal! I think Little Bug learned a few things along the way, too!

Learning Time with Mommy doesn’t end here…

more on that coming soon!

- Elaine