The free membership printable this week is an apple letter sorting activity for letter recognition and review. I printed the sorting cards and letter squares on cardstock paper and then cut them out and laminated them. 

I attached velcro circles to the letter cards and to the back of the letter squares so that the letter cards would stay secure on the cards but you can do this activity without using velcro. I have also used self-adhesive magnets and metal trays with these activities and those have also worked well.

In this activity children put the matching letters squares on the apple cards with the same letter. They can do upper to upper ... lower to lower ... upper to lower ... and lower to upper. The activity comes with both black and white as well as color patterns.

You can download the patterns below until September 20th. After that date they will only be available in the member's section which is also where I have added an apple shape match and clip activity.

apple letter sorting patterns

I am running a back to school special on my membership printables from now until September 30th!! When you purchase a twelve month membership you will get another twelve months free ... when you purchase a six month membership you will get another six months free. If you already have a membership your membership will be extended. 

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Here are September's number tracing calendars and other September calendar items.  You can download the patterns from the link below.

September number tracing calendar patterns

I made a teddy bear color sorting activity for color recognition skills and fine motor development. I printed the sorting cards and color squares on cardstock paper and then cut them out and laminated them. 

In this activity children pick a sorting card and then place the same color squares on the card. You can use velcro circles to make the pieces a little more secure to help prevent the pieces from sliding. The are six color squares per card. For more of a challenge you can mix the squares up.

This activity is currently located in the member's section which is also where I have added:

letter tracing sheets and cards

We made paper plate ladybugs this week and they turned out super cute. We did this project over a two day period to make sure we had enough time for the paint to dry.

To make the lady you will need red paint ... glue ... scissors ... black construction paper ... wiggles eyes ... and paper plates. We used the thicker chinette brand for our paper plates.

The first step is to paint the back of the paper plates red. You can do this by using a paint and paint brush or a paint dauber. After we painted the plates we let them dry for the rest of the day.

We cut head shapes out of black construction paper and glued them on to the bottom of the paper plates.

The next step was to glue wiggle eyes on the heads. If you do not have wiggle eyes a different color of construction paper such as yellow or blue cut into small circles will work fine.

We cut circle shapes out of black construction paper and glue them on to the painted paper plate. You can put as many or as little spots on the ladybugs as you want.

We cut black construction paper into 3-4 inch lengths and folded them back and forth (accordion style) for the legs.  We glued three on each side of the paper plate.

We hung our ladybugs up around the room.  The children got lots of fine motor practice through the use of scissors and gluing pieces together.

You can see a video of this project below:

I made a butterfly and flower shape match for shape identification and fine motor development. I printed the patterns on cardstock paper ... cut them out and laminated them. I then separated the butterfly cards and flower cards into two different piles.

Children pick a butterfly card and then find the flower with the same shape and clip them together with a paper clip or large plastic paper clip. To make this activity self checking the children would clip the cards back to back so that when they flip the cards over they can see it is the same shape.

I have also include individual shapes that children can place on top of the cards. We used velcro to keep the shapes attached.

This activity is currently located in the member's section which is also where I have added:

butterfly and flower number match
butterfly and flower color match
butterfly and flower letter match