My sister recommended a book to me and it was all about simplifying your life. The main point of the book, which I have heard time and time again, was to only keep things you know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.

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Well, that book has resulted in bags and bins that have been shipped out of my house and I really must say, what a lovely feeling! Closets are organized, we have tons of space and breathing room, and we all feel more relaxed.

The book is quite extreme, and I certainly did not follow it to a ‘T’, but the principals and methods are brilliant. If you are interested it is called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. 

How is this relevant to my pebble alphabet?

Good question!

You see, with all my tidying and re-homing of things I did not find to ‘bring me joy’ I parted with a few things I actually needed. Such as our alphabet cards.

They were useful, but not very pleasing to look at, and so I sent them off. I wanted the alphabet cards to be front and center in our homeschool room, and I did not want to be looking at those brightly coloured train cars all day long. Plus, I had another idea.

I had made a pretty sandpaper alphabet that we use upstairs and had thought I would make one similar except have each letter on a separate piece of wood.

We (John) purchased two pieces of 8 foot 1×3 wood. (Blocks like these would work nicely too.) Next, we (John) chopped the wood into 4″ lengths with a mitre saw, though a handheld saw would work nicely. The handheld saw would actually make this a great little woodworking project with the kiddos.

I was not feeling the woodworking project with the kiddos on this particular day. So John chopped them all in minutes.

Once chopped into 4″ lengths I had plenty of little helping hands to sand the cut edges of the wood.

While we were sanding Madeline, who is now so wise having had her 14th birthday, mentioned it would be cool to use pebbles to make the letters. And since we have a whole pebble patio it was far to easy not to give it a try.

I lined up those pebbles and it looked perfectly pretty. Exactly the type of thing I would like to spend my day looking at on the mantle. Plus, the letters are nice and tactile for my little ones to gently trace with their fingers.

The dark pebbles stand out nicely on the light wood making them easy to see from a distance, perfect for little ones to spot when needed.

I clearly drew the letters onto the wood pieces and then hot glued the pebbles on to the letters I had drawn. Superglue would probably work even better. This alphabet is mostly for display, so I was not too concerned about them holding up to being handled.

Since we will be reviewing the letters slowly I decided to just do the first two letters and intend on adding another two or three each week.

Fingers crossed I will keep this project going all the way to Z!

I hope you are having a great start to your week friends. We are officially starting our homeschool for the year this week, so I will be sure to check in to let you know we are surviving thriving. Thank you so very much for reading.