Home curriculum for 1 year old- A Letter a week

Baby Reagan is getting really active and my hands are totally tied up by him.  I've to constantly think of ideas and ways to entertain him or drain off his energy especially during the day. Baby Reagan is still doing his daily 5 minutes right-brain home practice and BabyCanRead book before his noon nap but I don't really want to repeat the same home practice again in the later part of the same day. There are more fun activities that I can think of doing together.

So I thought it'll be a good idea to plan my own home learning curriculum, focusing on his favorite phonics alphabets. Each week i will introduced an alphabet and plan activities that are related to that particular letter. Well I hope I will not give up and able to complete the entire curriculum which I will plan weekly till letter Z.

I put all the teaching materials in a box, which I named mummy's "Magic Box.". After baby Reagan woke up, I sat him on the floor and while tapping the box I sang a song that I made up "What's inside mummy's magic box, magic box, magic box? What's inside mummy's magic box , let's take a look!" (from the tune of "This is the way I brush my hair.."
Baby Reagan started smiling cheekily at mummy, he knows it is play-time with her again!

This week I started with letter "A" and since I'm inputting phonics as well, therefore I begin with the lowercase letter. 

 My first item that represent letter "a" is "a", "a" , "apple!"

I showed him a big letter "a" card, the word "apple" and a real apple. Each time I will repeat and stress on the phonics sound "a, a , a" 

Baby Reagan's face lit up once I showed him the letter "a" and immediately lunged forward to reach for the apple.
I let him play with a full apple first, before cutting another one into half and showed him the cross-section of it. Then I gave him time to observe and explore with his hands.

 I tried to teach him how to trace the letter "a" with a marker, but it turned out he is more interested in drawing on himself with it. Luckily I stripped him naked because I knew otherwise he would stain his clothes.

 

Art & Craft time! Today we're going to make printings of the cross-sectioned apple! 

Baby Reagan shows much enthusiasm at first....but 2 minutes later...

..he got bored pretty fast too...

And he left a whole lot of mess which looks more like a bloody crime scene. I don't think I'll be touching paint very soon. 

His "apple" artwork...different from what I had pictured.
 

My next word is "a" "a" "ant!"

Usually I will try to show the real item of the word I introduced, but I'm turned off by the idea of catching real ants, so I used a picture of ant instead.

This activity is much hassle-free. I made a set of flashcards on "How to draw an ant" and flashed it to him a few times and repeat the different parts of an ant. (I wish I can improve on my drawing skill..)

Then I showed him a picture of an ant without legs and guided him to draw and count the 6 legs at the thorax.

It was a fast activity and he actually enjoys the repeat flashing of the cards on ants.

Lastly, since we were using the red paint earlier, I decided to input him the colour, red.

I pulled out the red items one by one for him to touch and feel, then dropped them into this box with the word 'red" inside while repeating the colour "red." I mix them up with other non-red items and do the colour sorting again. I'm surprised he sat throughout my entire "presentation" and focus even much better than the "apple-printing" activity.

I took out 3 pairs of items of different colour and asked him to pick the red one, and he got it right...3 times straight! This was another surprise for me too ! A one year old's brain can truly absorb like a sponge! I know babies also learn through repetitions, so for the rest of this week I'll probably just repeat my demonstration and flash him the letter "a" and words.

 I'm now motivated to plan his new lesson next week!