The Letter Can and the Letter S

This last week, I discovered Brayden apparently has a new LOVE / Obesession...

....it's The Letter Can!!

It's such a simple thing, and I'm sure when his sweet teacher came up with the idea she had no idea the impact it could have on a 4yr old. Well, to Brayden, this last week it was his WORLD. He brought it home on Monday for the first time. In fact, this was the first time I have ever heard of it or seen it. As we walked out of his preschool that day he walked out with a lil extra pep to his step. (No exaggeration!) He was so excited about it, he had to tell everyone that we walked past "I'm the letter can helper." The letter of the week was the letter S....so we discussed some possible things he could take in to show his friends. One of us thought of Seashells and then I remembered the Dollar Tree has packages of Seashells. I thought it would be fun for him to take one in for everyone, plus a good excuse to check out their cheap Halloween decorations. While we were there we picked up our Seashells and I also noticed some Spider rings so we picked those up too. He was so excited to take them both in the next day.

On to Tuesday, when I picked him up guess what the first thing was he wanted to show me...The Letter Can. Yep, he chose The Letter Can as his helper job AGAIN. And he was just as excited about it. We had to think of another S item to put in the can. The day before we also picked up some cute Snowflakes at the Dollar Store so I thought we could use one of those, plus we could make a quick stop into Hobby Lobby for their half off Stickers. We picked up some Snowflake Stickers. He was excited to give a Snowflake Sticker to each of his friends. So we came up with this:

We also talked about how he could tell his friends that his Aunt GiGi lives in Colorado where it snows all the time.

Well since this was two nights in a row, I also tried to have the discussion with him that he might want to share this job and let another friend have it the next night. OMGoodness, you would have thought something TERRIBLY traggic had happened to him. He instantly dropped to the floor and started BAWLING his eyes out, I had never seen him act like this before. I think he was truly heartbroken over the possibility of not bringing this "paint can" home. When he finally composed himself, he managed to tell me with an attitude "Well if I can't be the letter can helper than I'm not going to be ANY helper." I told him that would be a really sad choice and I would hate to hear that choice was made when I picked him up...So fast forward to Wednesday pickup. Before he could even say the words "Hi mommy" he said in a very determined toned "Come here mommy and look at this helper chart!" So I followed him to the lil chart and he says "Do you see my name anywhere mommy? (as I looked) "Nope! You don't see Brayden. I didnt do a job today because I couldn't be the letter can helper." Apparently, he was so distraught because two other friends chose to be the letter can helper before him and he couldn't take it home. So just like he promised, if he couldn't have his way, then he chose to not have a helper job at all. Absolutely NO compromising.

On our way home, I tried to comfort him and told him I had another fun project planned for him to take in the next day for his show and tell. We were going to go on an "S hunt". But first he had to write an "I'm sorry" letter to his teachers for his sad choices from earlier in the day:


He wrote his name all on his own and drew himself...isn't it cute?!?

After he finished that, I pulled out some old magazines that I started saving. Then we started our "S hunt." Thankfully, he had a blast!! I cut out a big S from a posterboard. Then I let him cut out S's and other pictures of items that start with an S from the magazines. We glued all his things down and then we had a fun little discussion about all the S words we found. Here is our finished project:

He practiced all night and on our way to school in the morning recalling all of his S objects so he could share with his friends. I think it was almost as exciting as the Letter Can for him.

On to Thursday pickup...I'll let you take a wild guess as to what he had in his cubby on Thursday when I picked him up....

The Letter Can

This time I was fresh out of ideas and time for multiple S items so I thought we would just find something in his room. He decided on his Snake and music Shaker.

I can't wait to find out this week if the letter can is still going to be as big of a deal to him. If so, I think we might be making a trip to Lowe's to create our own home letter can. =)