Today, I actually used 2 books with the students. I started out by showing them the wordless picture book
Alphabet City by Stephen T. Johnson.
We went through the book and talked about the different letters and where they were found in the city. The smallest children got excited when we got to their initial ("T... That's my letter!).
Then I read them the old classic,
Dr. Seuss's ABC.
They loved the silly rhymes and had fun yelling out words that started with each letter of the alphabet.
The 3-5 year olds created blinged out letters. I had large letters on hand that the students traced onto a piece of paper. Then we gave them: markers, crayons, foam shapes, colored pasta (food coloring and rubbing alcohol), GLITTER, scissors, glue, tissue paper, etc. This was very open-ended and many of them enjoyed it so much that they created 3 or 4 letters each.
The 6-8 year olds used die cut letters (I found mine at Dollar Tree in their teacher section) to trace onto a piece of paper. They overlapped their letters and then used markers, crayons, glitter, pipe cleaners, tissue paper, etc to decorate them. This was quite time consuming, and it was so quiet when I walked into the room where they were working. They were all so focused on coloring in their letters!
The oldest group of students created a 3D letter (
3D Letters). We started out by tracing a letter onto a piece of posterboard 2 times. They cut the letters out and then glued 10 dixie cups (the little ones that you buy for your bathroom) onto on of the letters. After applying glue to the tops of the dixie cups, they placed the second letter on top.
From there, I had a variety of materials on hand for them to decorate their letters: wrapping paper, scrapbook paper, sequins, beads, glitter, markers, crayons. They got quite creative! This was quite time consuming and many ended up having to take them home to finish them.
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Our youngest group then worked on leaf rubbings. I had the leaf pattern rubbing plates that I had bought from Sax (order number 076928). The children did a various rubbings on manila paper and then cut them out. They glued these onto another piece of paper, building animals, people, faces, etc.
The next group used their collected materials to build their own Leaf Man... or butterfly, or flower, or... anything they could imagine. They glued the piece onto paper and added a other scrap materials that we had left over from previous classes. 
The last group built a leaf man face out of air dry clay. I had them place the clay onto a piece of wax paper. They rolled the clay out and built the face first. They used pieces of clay to create their own leaves, berries, grass, etc. Those that had brought their own natural elements used these to add fun details to their faces.
