Alphabet Project

Last year my colleague Ms. Johnston and I had the great fortune of visiting the classroom of Joanne Marie Babalis.  The first thing I noticed when I walked into her kindergarten classroom was the beautiful handcrafted alphabet.  Each letter of the alphabet related to the item that was glued to it.  For example, aqua coloured stones were glued to make the letter A and pasta was glued to make the letter P.  What a beautiful art piece for the classroom, but more importantly, what an amazing project for students to have experienced.  

Ms. Marrella and I introduced the Alphabet Project to our students a few weeks ago.  We asked them to look around their homes for toys and other objects that they were willing to donate for this project.  We were truly amazed by the excitement and enthusiasm our students showed for this project.  Each day the the children would come to school eager to donate and show off their found objects.  Because the students were responsible for the creation of the classroom alphabet they were interested. 

Here are two images of students gluing objects to alphabet letters.  

Our Alphabet Project is now completed.  I believe the learning experience during this project was truly invaluable for the children.  The students are aware of the alphabet in the classroom and have an appreciation for it because they were part of its creation.  Rather than going unnoticed, the alphabet now has meaning to the children.  The best part of this project was that students who seemed to have little interest in learning the letter names and sounds are now interested and can even identify most of the letters.    

We are looking forward to showing our handcrafted alphabet to our parents on Curriculum Night.  We want to thank the parents and guardians of our students for helping the children collect items for this beautiful work of art.