Check out the Smithsonian’s Virtual Tours

While we’re all at home at the Smithsonian Institution’s museums, galleries and the National Zoo are closed, there are still plenty of options for taking in some learning from home.

Smithsonian magazine has a list of virtual tours and activities you can take part in from their 19 member sites. Take a stroll through the National Portrait Gallery, learn more about Abraham Lincoln with an exhibit from the National Museum of American History, learn about the oceans with the National Museum of Natural History and more.

Or you can download coloring pages and color some of the exhibits, listen to podcasts from the Air and Space Museum (among other places) or explore Open Access, where you can search, download and use more than two million images from the Smithsonian collections. That should keep your kids in collage materials for a while.

This just scratches the surface of what’s available; head over to the Smithsonian website to check it all out.

[Photo: Smithsonian magazine.]

I did a post earlier this year with activities and ideas for teaching the alphabet, but a lot or learning letters and recognizing them just has to do with seeing them and working with them a lot.

That means coloring, tracing, identifying things that start with different letters and more.

One way to reinforce the letters is through little activity books like these cute printable alphabet books from Life Over Cs.

These are available for free when you subscribe to her newsletter, and I’d say that’s well worth it if you have a little one (or a group of little ones!) working on the alphabet and letter recognition.

Each mini book includes a collection of things that start with that letter to color, color and read with words that start with the letter, tracing the letter, finding the letter in a grid and other coloring pages with objects that start with that letter.

These little books are super useful reinforcing the different letters and giving kids different activities related to the letters.

If you do a letter of the day or letter of the week you can use a new book for each one, and then keep the copies in your reading center or in a basket where kids can look at them again.

And of course you can add in all the other letter activities you like, go on a scavenger hunt for items that start with that letter, read alphabet books, practice writing letters in rice or with pompoms or playdough or whatever sensory activities you like.

You can grab the free printables when you enter you email address at Life Over Cs, and check out her other great alphabet resources and activities while you are over there.

Do you have favorite activities for teaching letters to kids? I’d love to hear about them!

[Photo: Life Over Cs]

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