Friday, March 19, 2010

Going on an Alphabet Hunt

So you already know how much the girls and I like to step out for a daily walk to enjoy our surrounding neighbourhood and mixing it up ocassionally has seemed to be the key to help keep our walks fun and interesting. Sometimes we just walk and sometimes Miss M takes her scooter for a ride along the tracks. Sometimes I try and run for a little while (and I mean little - I'm getting there!) and sometimes we play games.

Recently Miss M has shown a great interest in words. She likes to know what they say, what letter they begin with and has started trying to write a few of them. I thought I'd follow this interest up so on our last walk we played a game of Alphabet Hunt. You know the game you play in the car on long, long trips! It's also great for little Miss H to get in on the action and hear words being tossed around. It's a whole lot of fun for all of us!

We started our hunt at the letter A which we found nearby on a For Sale sign. From there we checked out letter boxes, street + road signs, car registration plates and tags and community billboards as we made our way through the alphabet. For each letter we found, we talked about words that started with it.

We worked together as a team which was great and almost got to the end of our hunt. Our walk was long enough that we found everything up to the letter Y but rain began to fall softly and there was no way we were going inside if we hadn't found the letter Z (No one here is competitive!! He he he!!).

We did a quick check in our letterbox and what did we find? A local newspaper, so we quickly searched through its pages and it wasn't long before we found the letter Z. Our hunt was complete and we'd had a great time doing it.

Do you have some games to play as you walk and talk with your kids? What are they? Let's share some ideas.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a great idea Amanda. I'll put that one away in my memory for when my kids get a bit bigger. My amost 2 year old daughter and I like to do "hunts" as well, but at this stage, we mostly look for things like a pink flower or a yellow leaf. She has just started taking an interest in numbers and we look for those on letter-boxes etc. She refers to every number as "six" at the moment, but we will get there!

Busy Brissy Mum said...

So cute Julie. It's funny how littlies fixate on certain words or things for a while and then move on. I'm looking forward to all of that again with Miss H (16 months)

PS Tonights sleep session wasn't so good. I ended up cuddling Miss H to sleep in the end. That's something we'll get there with....I hope!

Anonymous said...

sensational idea. I really need to get out and about more and spice it up with the kidlets. You have great ideas

Anonymous said...

Alphabet Walks are a great idea.

We use numbers and either go in order, or search for a specific number. It's easy when you can see the house numbers.

I like your ideas for fun on here!
Thanks!

Busy Brissy Mum said...

Great ideas! Thanks for sharing them. I think we might take on the number hunt this afternoon.

Lilian said...

You're full of great ideas, Amanda. I used to walk a lot more with the children when pushing the pram wasn't such a chore.
This is definitely a good activity to use during the school holidays. DD#1 can do the whole naming thing and teach DD#2 how to pronounce words etc.

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