Alphabet Fun

Quick, Cheap, Easy... Cut up your cardboard packages (cracker boxes, cereal boxes, waffle boxes.. you get the idea). You can just start with capital letters for little ones just learning their ABCs. Cut out the individual letters, until you have a nice pile like this (we keep ours in an empty butter tub):


Then hand over the letters, a glue stick, and a sheet of paper and let them have fun!


If you have time to sit down and name some of the letters for them, even better. Cali's favorite letters happen to be M for mommy, C for Cali and D for Daddy & D

Cali's Calendar

Yes, I know she is a little young to really understand concepts of time but I wanted to do something to help her understand that Daddy is not here and help her visualize when he will be here. Luckily, Dave is close enough he is planning to come home for the 4th of July weekend so we can go to the parade! Cali is so excited about the parade, she has been talking about it for months and seems to remember going last year with her friends. Since she is so young I figured the best way to do this was to draw a picture to make each day distinct and put a photo of Daddy on the days he will be here. I explained to her that Daddy will only be here on the days that you see his picture. Each day we look to see what we're doing that day, we count how many days til we see Daddy, we name the day of the week and sing our little "Days of the Week" song, at the end of the day she gets to scribble over that days activity and we talk about what we will do the next day. It seems to really help as she hasn't been too upset about him leaving but often asks "how many more days til we see Daddy?" and attempts to count the days on the calendar or count off on her fingers. Plus if she asks about Daddy or says something like "Daddy will be here tomorrow" I can show her visually how far away Daddy's visit really is.