P is for. . . Pizza Word Family Activity

Cristi from Through the Calm and Through the Storm and Meg from Adventures with Jude are hosting this great weekly party called Blogging Through the Alphabet. All are welcome to join in, just make sure to keep your posts family-friendly. I am determined to stay faithful this time around. I might not always post on the same day of the week, but I have every intention to post something each week.

Here is how I decided my "theme" for this round of Blogging Through the Alphabet. As I was going through old blog posts recently, I noticed I have some neat ideas for activities and crafts that I did with in the past. Unfortunately, I always included them in my weekly wrap up posts or more recently in Poppins Book Nook posts, so they sort of got buried. I can't really share them as individual activities or create pinnable images to promote them and share my ideas, which is why I started this blog in the first place (to share my ideas with others who work with children). So, I am going to make new posts for these ideas.

I have found there is a huge benefit in this strategy. I am remembering  ideas that I had forgotten, which means I can now do these activities with the younger children. I will be sharing the old pictures and possibly sharing new pictures of the younger children participating.

I used to enjoy coming up with fun activities for the girls to practice reading using word families. Several years ago we were doing a pizza unit and I came up with these.

P is for. . . Pizza Word Family Activity

In order to make these I took brown construction paper and cut out 8 pizza slice shapes. Then I took white paper, cut in the same shape but with the crust cut off. I then colored a tiny bit red for the sauce and the rest yellow for the cheese.

I knew I wanted to start with the short a vowel family words so I decided to cut out some pink paper to represent ham (short vowel word). Then I made a list of words for each family (at, am, an, ap, ack, ab, ag, and ad) and wrote them on the ham pieces. 

I placed them in a bowl and grabbed a die out of a game we have.

In order to play the game we took turns rolling the die and counting out the number of toppings rolled. Then we sounded out the words one at a time and placed them on the pizza. The first ham piece got placed on any pizza slice. Then for the following pieces we would see if the word rhymed with any that were already on the pizza. If they rhymed they got placed on the same slice. If they didn't rhyme they got placed on a new slice.

As there is no winner or loser in this game it is fun for the children. They get to listen for rhyming words and because the rhyming words are all on the same slice the children can see the similarities. 

I had every intention of creating toppings for the other vowels, but I never got to it. I think when we get to the letter P this time around, I am going to do this again. Here were my ideas for the toppings to go with the other vowels:

Short e-pepperoni

Short i- olives

Short o- broccoli

Short u- mushroom

C is for...Caterpillar Word Family Chart

I began this Blogging Through the Alphabet journey a couple of weeks ago, and I am determined to stay faithful this time around. I might not always post on the same day of the week, but I have every plan to post something each week.

Cristi from Through the Calm and Through the Storm and Meg from Adventures with Jude are hosting this weekly party. All are welcome to join in. You don't have to be a Schoolhouse Review Crew blogger or a homeschooler, but you do have to keep your posts family-friendly.

Here is how I decided my "theme" for this round of Blogging Through the Alphabet. As I was going through old blog posts recently, I noticed I have some neat ideas for activities and crafts that I did with in the past. Unfortunately, I always included them in my weekly wrap up posts or more recently in Poppins Book Nook posts, so they sort of got buried. I can't really share them as individual activities or create pinnable images to promote them and share my ideas, which is why I started this blog in the first place (to share my ideas with others who work with children). So, I am going to make new posts for these ideas.

One of the benefits in doing this is, I am remembering these ideas that I had forgotten, which means I can now do these activities with the younger children. I will be sharing the old pictures and possibly sharing new pictures of the younger children participating.

Several years ago I created a fun way for the girls to work on their word families. We were doing Letter of the Week, and were up to the letter C.  Caterpillars were quite popular while we were doing that unit, which is what led to this activity.

C is for . . . Caterpillar Word Family Chart

First I made the background by taping together some blue and green construction paper. I then made the caterpillars by tracing a circle onto the green grassy area. I made some short and some long as you can see. I then used different colors of construction paper to make the caterpillars heads. I cut out more circles in the same colors as the heads and wrote the words on the circles. Each caterpillar focused on one word family. These were used to word on C-V-C words. Lastly, I attached Velcro to the caterpillars and to the backs of the word circles.

The girls enjoyed building the caterpillars as they read the words on the circles.

Time to go cut out some circles so Hannah and Harold can start building caterpillars.

You could laminate the circles to help them last longer. I usually use clear contact paper for lamination purposes. This is a trick I learned while working at the Montessori. I didn't laminate these as I figured it wasn't that difficult to cut out more circles.

Toddler Idea Tuesdays:

We haven't been doing much as far as lessons go lately. As you can well imagine the baby is keeping me a tad busy. But we have plans on starting school back up on August 13th, the week after Vacation Bible School. Tabitha is 5 years old and starting kindergarten. I really can't believe that. It seems like just yesterday I was trying to figure out how to start a blog so I could share all the fun activities and crafts we were doing when she was 2 years old. 

Now, I have been struggling with what I should be working on with Hannah. Some will say she is too young to be doing structured lessons with. The thing is, I have seen the fun Tabitha and Amelia have had during our "lesson time" and this has been reinforced at times when they have asked to have lesson time when I had stopped it for a while. So I have every intention of continuing to involve Hannah in our lesson time. The question still remained, what do I do with her. She has been tagging along this past year with the sporadic lessons. She loves coloring, scribbling and gluing. 

Then I remembered, as mentioned above, this blog was started to share the activities I was doing with Tabitha when she was TWO. Sort of a duh moment. Hannah is quite ready to start participating more. So, while we are doing My Father's World she will be tagging along and I have started digging into my archives to remember what I was doing with the older girls at this age.

And why not share the ideas with my readers?

So, without further ado, here is my first in a series of things to do with Toddlers.

I decided to start by sharing different ideas to help build a foundation for reading.  Reading is very important to me and more than that, I want to instill  a love of reading in my children. It still bugs me to no end that my older children, who went through the public school system still have trouble reading. This was one of the huge reasons I decided to homeschool. This is what I focused on from the very beginning. I admit, I was a little crazy. I wanted Tabitha to be reading as early as possible. I even purchased a book titled, Native Reading by Timothy D. Kailing. I have since calmed down and come to my senses that it is not imperative for a child to be reading before the age of 2 in order to be a successful reader. I am glad that I never pushed Tabitha. But there are some little tidbits of information that I hung onto. 

• Let children play with letters. Magnetic letters, foam letters and alphabet wooden blocks are all great ways to make letters real to children. 
• Give the child the name of the letter and what sound it makes. I have read or been taught conflicting views on this. Some say just teach the letter name. Others say teach the sound. I have combined both quite successfully. In the book Native Reading it is emphasized to make these letters another play toy. We name the toys for the children, we also need to name the letters, make them a real and important part of a child's world. 
• Combine letters into words. 
• Let children play with words. I actually made some word magnets out of painted cardboard onto which I wrote words with marker and then glued magnetic strips to. There are word magnets out there, some that even come with separate picture magnets. We just couldn't afford them.
• Set aside special time every day to play with letters to make them an important part of their world.

Hannah actually enjoys playing with the magnetic letters we have. 

Here are some that I recommend:

Melissa and Doug Magnetic Wooden Alphabet

Things I love about these letter magnets:

They include both the upper and lower case letters. 

The letters are formed the way children are taught to write letters (see the "a" above).

The entire letter is a magnet, unlike the plastic magnetic letters that only has a little magnet in the back. 

LeapFrog Fridge Phonics Magnetic Alphabet Set

Things I love about this product:

(Actually, this isn't the style we have, but it works the same)

The children get to hear the ABC song if there is no magnet in the holder. 

If they add a letter magnet they hear the letter name and the sound it makes.

You can use the letter magnets without the phonics holder, so the children can form words on the fridge.

We also have a set of magnetic letters that have the Braille equivalent of each letter on the letter.

I believe I found these at the thrift shop. We don't do anything with the Braille, but I thought it was neat. I actually purchased these because I wanted a set of letters the girls could play with and I would not be as concerned if they got lost. 

Another fun activity I made for the girls using magnetic letters involved a cookie sheet, some blank pieces of paper and the letters shown directly above. I wrote letters on the paper (3 down, 3 across) and had the girls match them using the magnets. We would match upper case magnets to upper case. Then I would write the lower case so they could match upper case to lower case. I'm sure Hannah could do this now as she has been showing greater dexterity in putting foam puzzles together.

Besides these few great ways to encourage children to play with letters we also have foam letters for the bathtub. I will have Hannah give me a letter and tell her the name and the sound for it. The older children will build words. We have a small set of foam letters for the bathtub and a larger set (letters are about 4 inches tall) for the girls to just play with. Needless to say, there are a lot of letters surrounding these girls.

It is very important to me that the girls have a strong phonics foundation and I believe starting with games and activities where I emphasize not just the letter but the sound as well is extremely important. Not only do we learn the sound for the letter, I also play a game in order to encourage phonemic awareness. This was a game we used to play at the Montessori. For this game you do not show the letters. It is making the children aware of the sounds in spoken words. Say, for example, "I hear 'mmmm' when I say 'mmmoon,' 'mmman,' 'mmmouse,' etc." Probably would be a good idea to have objects to show to represent the word, but I don't always do that. Don't forget to have the child try to think of words that start with the letter. I love playing this with them at a young age, but they don't usually join in until they are older.

I also need to recommend one book set that I have had for years (poor thing has seen better days)

I love the Sesame Street ABC Board Books

Each book is dedicated to one letter of the alphabet. I love the rhyming text that a lot of the books are written in. Even at the age of 2 the children start to recognize which letter is in each book and start recognizing the letter from the cover in the book itself.

There are some of the fun things we did to reinforce the importance of letters and sounds. Before I even started my blog I had been doing Letter of the Week with Tabitha. These days of focusing on one letter for a week or two really helped the girls learn

Join me next week for some of the hands on crafts and activities we did during our "Letter of the Week" lessons.

For now, do you have any tips for encouraging a love of reading in toddlers? Do you have any posts you would like to link up? These could be older posts as well. I would love for you to share.

Easter Basket Phonics Hunt

I had this brilliant idea (okay, I think it is a brilliant idea) for a new phonics hunt game. A while back I shared with you our Great Phonics Hunt. The other day I was looking at an Easter basket and thought that the grass would be fun for some sort of sensory activity. But what could I have the girls hunt for. That was when I remembered the Phonics Hunt. This is what I came up with the

Easter Basket Phonics Hunt!!

What do you need for this fun activity?

An Easter Basket filled with grass

12 plastic eggs with letter stickers

12 small objects to represent those 12 beginning sounds

Label the eggs with the letter stickers.

Here is a close up of objects.

I then hid the objects in the grass:

And the girls got to find them.

First I reviewed the letters on the easel, making sure they could tell me the name and the sound. I figured they could, they went beyond what I was asking for by adding a word to go with each sound.  Then I showed them the eggs in the egg carton.

They took turns reaching inside the basket for an object.

They told me what it was.

And found the correct egg to place it in.

After we filled all the eggs the girls put the objects back in and they told me what to find (with my eyes closed). I had to tell them the letter and the sound. I tell you, some of those things are hard to find in that grass, especially when you are searching for a specific one.

The girls seem to think it is a great new activity. The were upset when I had them get out their workbooks because I couldn't keep looking for objects when the baby needed to nurse.

Linking to:

 

Word Family Pizzas

One of the reasons I wanted to continue our pizza unit was because I wanted to make these Word Family Pizzas. I came up with the idea while we were doing the unit back in January. Unfortunately, with my lack of energy and motivation I never got it ready. Suddenly, last week, my energy level and motivation were both back up. So, I made these to go with our second pizza week (which I will post more about at the end of the week).  

In order to make these I took brown construction paper and cut out 8 pizza slice shapes. Then I took white paper, cut in the same shape but with the crust cut off. I then colored a tiny bit red for the sauce and the rest yellow for the cheese.

I knew I wanted to start with the short a vowel family words so I decided to cut out some pink paper to represent ham (short vowel word). Then I made a list of words for each family (at, am, an, ap, ack, ab, ag, and ad) and wrote them on the ham pieces. 

I placed them in a bowl and grabbed a die out of a game we have.

In order to play the game we took turns rolling the die and counting out the number of toppings rolled. Then we sounded out the words one at a time and placed them on the pizza. The first ham piece got placed on any pizza slice. Then for the following pieces we would see if the word rhymed with any that were already on the pizza. If they rhymed they got placed on the same slice. If they didn't rhyme they got placed on a new slice.

As there is no winner or loser in this game it is fun for the children. They get to listen for rhyming words and because the rhyming words are all on the same slice the children can see the similarities. 

Next I am going to make toppings to go with the other short vowels.

Short e-pepperoni

Short i- olives

Short o- broccoli

Short u- mushroom

Also linking up to: