Seriously, the easiest idea ever.

I wrote big letters on a sheet of paper, made a few copies, taped them to the outside of a sliding glass door (facing in), gave the kids some dry erase markers, and told them to color the letters, while naming the letters and saying their sounds.  When they were done they erased their masterpiece and started anew ... or moved on to a new project and gave another child a chance to color.

This doesn't have to be a letters project ... anything would work - draw a picture frame and ask them to draw themselves in it, use it for a 1st or 2nd grader as a silly way to do math facts, color in shapes. 

Most certainly, the biggest enticement of this project was the awesome opportunity to write on the door with markers and then erase (why is erasing so wonderful?). The letters and their sounds are totally secondary, as they should be at this age.

I chose the letters "m" and "s" for this idea this week because this is the first time we've learned about specific letters and those are the first two letters used in Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.  It's easy to start teaching with A, then B, and so on, and then move on to the next project ... never quite making it to the end of the alphabet (well, easy for me anyway!). I thought this would give us a chance to at least introduce different letters, knowing that the book goes through all the letters eventually. Next week we'll leave "m" and "s" up on the door, or we'll color them more permanently and hang them somewhere, and add two more letters.

The book itself is a standby in our house, having been used, successfully, to help teach three of my kids to read (I hadn't heard of the book for the first two kids). We've never actually gotten past lesson 50 or so with any of the kids, they're usually reading reasonably well by then and have moved on to easy readers, though I wouldn't hesitate to use the book in its entirety.