Little Brother is slightly character-obsessed. He loves characters from various cartoons/movies, so I wanted to put that “passion” to good use by helping to reinforce letter names and sounds by creating a character alphabet book for him. We don’t watch a ton of TV in our house (typically less than an hour a day, although it has been more in more trying seasons of our lives), but these characters are easily impressionable on Little Brother especially. :) I have been notoriously against “character” books in the past, but have found that it is beneficial to use the current interests of a child to guide his/her learning (which is why thematic units are great for young children)!
Alphabet Books have long been considered a valuable tool by educators and parents alike to expose young children to letters of the alphabet in a fun and engaging way. Call me nit picky, but I have found that not all alphabet books are created equal. One of my biggest pet peeves is when authors of alphabet books don’t use things that actually start with the letter sound that you are trying to teach your child (for example, using the word “chair” for the letter “c”…it starts with the digraph /ch/ and not the /k/ sound). I prefer for the short vowel sounds to be used for vowels, but that isn’t always possible. :)
Here are the characters included in our alphabet book:
A- Angry Bird
B- Batman
C- Captain America
D- Donkey Kong
E- Emmet (from The LEGO Movie)
F- Flounder (from The Little Mermaid)
G- Goofy
H- Hulk
I- Iron Man
J- Junior Asparagus (from Veggie Tales)
K- Kristoff (from Frozen)
L- Lightning McQueen
M- Mario
N- Ninja Turtles
O- Olaf (from Frozen)
P- Peter Pan
Q- Queen Esther (from Veggie Tales)
R- Rafiki (from The Lion King)
S- Spiderman
T- Toothless (from How to Train Your Dragon)
U- Ursula (from The Little Mermaid)
V- Vader (as in Darth Vader from Star Wars)
W- Woody (from Toy Story)
X- X-men
Y- Yoda (from Star Wars)
Z- Zazu (from The Lion King)
To make our alphabet book, I searched for images for each of the above characters and made them into a book using Shutterfly. I do not have images or a template to share because that would be a violation of 26 different copyrights…but if you know what you are looking for, it won’t take long to find all of these photos. :)
Jeana this is so cool! I love how you get an idea and act on it and just get it done! You motivate and inspire me! :)
Thank you! You motivate and inspire me too, Crystal! :)
Love this idea!! Starting a list of characters now!
For the life of me I can not figure out how to upload the images into shutterfly. Please help. thanks.
When you go to create a book, there should be a spot at the bottom that says something like “upload photos” or “choose photos from album”. Then you’ll just need to create a new album and upload them there. Hope that helps!
Awesome (y) :)