A Teacher at Heart: playroom

Friday, May 20, 2011

Playroom Decor: Alphabet Charts

I have one very large bare wall in my playroom that just taunts me daily. Its like begging for art. Or something.

I have all these ideas for it:

I want to find large old wooden frames from garage sales and paint them and hang them on the wall. Then tack my kids artwork in them. Cute right? But that would involve having the time to go to thrift stores, and goodwill. (I am determined to still do this one day!)

Image from here

Sometimes the nerdy teacher in me wants to go into the attic and dig out my old blue pocket charts and staple them up to the wall. I have visions of using sentence strips and putting little black dots under each syllable of every song I hang up. Then I daydream about getting out all my pointers for them to use. And then... I get a block thrown at my head and I realize we aren't there yet.

However, today, Kimberly, from Custom Nursery Art posted a link to a free alphabet printable. FREE. CUTE. ALPHABET. I have picture hanging wire I could string across the wall, and tons of wooden cloths pins. I love it. I really do.

The Handmade Home

But there is one, little, minor, problem. I am neurotic about alphabet charts and ABC books. It is pretty much my only pet peeve with teacher stuff. The rest I let slide. These things are created by people who have never taught little children to read.

For example: The letter Ee will have a picture of an elephant. Great right? Elephant starts with the letter Ee. What is the problem you ask? It isn't the right sound. In Elephant the e makes the /l/ sound. There needs to be a picture of an egg. Get it. E /e/ egg

Or my other favorite:

Ii, and they show a picture of Ice. Then you have to teach the kids about 'magic e' and how the e at the end of the word makes the vowel before it say it's name and not the letter sound. So I would rather see a picture of an igloo... at least there you get the correct sound.

Which brings me to my post.... I decided to get an alphabet chart to hang up there! I will make it a teachable wall rather than just a cutesy wall.

Here is my favorite alphabet chart of ALL time. This company was founded by a teacher. She has done workshops for my old school. Her stuff is awesome.

Steps to Literacy