ABC Bingo

In one of the work books we have there were these 2 alphabet sheets. One is uppercase and the other is lowercase. I mounted them on construction paper and then Laminated them.

We played sound bingo. I would say the letter sounds and they would place a stone on the right letter. In this picture Drake was stumped and Caden was helping him out! I love these boys!!!!!

Small Group

Small group is what we called it when I was a teacher. It was the time where we would split the kids into two groups and would do a teacher led activity together. I recently started doing a little pre-school program in my home and we have 26 days to fill this Summer so I couldn't resist doing a letter of the day!

Our letter A small group was stickers and a letter Aa sheet to stick them on.

Letter B was blue play dough with letter B cutters(bunny, bone, bear, bell, ext.)

C was Colors! We mixed colored water and then put the glasses in rainbow order! The kids LOVED this!

D was counting Dogs and then Dinosaurs with our counting mats.
For the Letter E I filled a cookie sheet with letter E things and then covered it with a cloth. I would take away one thing and the kids would guess what I took away. We will do this again because it was very challenging for them! Oh and we named the little boy Ed and the wood box was Empty:)

I'm not a big letter theme crafty person but the children have been loving the letter of the day! Caden has been talking about the letters of the day non stop and he's know all of his letters for over a year and a half! I'll post more small groups in a week or so:)

Activities We've Been Upto

Our schoolroom is done as far as function is concerned:) It still needs some color and accessories but we have been enjoying it! Jack has been doing some activities in his little booster chair. He really enjoyed this activity that I got at the dollar store.
Drake and Caden have both enjoyed sorting these marbles by size.

I printed off this letter sheet for Caden. I just used little circles in Paintbrush and used them to form the letters. Caden used stickers to fill in each circle. He loved this so I will be making the rest of the letters.

Drake has really been enjoying working with the playdoh. There are shape cookie cutters out right now and after we cut out all of the shapes Drake matched the cutters up with the playdoh shapes.

Spooning Marbles

Letter Mats!

I found these awesome playdough mats on Homeschool Creations! Here's a picture of me and Drake working together:) He didn't get it but he had fun squishing the playdough on to the mats:) (the rings make it so that two children can work on it at the same time:)
Caden loved it but he loved using his magnet letters even more! I used the spelling mat set up that I had already made for him before and just added the extra pages! It was great because all of the pages are stored together and then I can just rotate them around!

Pounding a Puzzle

I found this puzzle at the Dollar Tree and I got the idea to use his hammer to pound the letters in from this blog. I can't find the exact post:( He has done the entire puzzle 10 times since we got it 2 days ago:) I'd say it's a hit! And it was only a dollar!!!!

Our first day back to School!

I just rummaged through my boxes and came up with a few activities for C to do yesterday and to say he was excited would be a huge understatement!

Me: Hey buddy I was thinking we could have some school time today!
C: School time!!!! SCHOOL TIME! Oh Yay school time!
Me: Is that a yes? :)

I let C choose the activities he wanted to do and he chose cutting first and then gluing.

Then he chose his "workbook".

I Poured out some of these stones out on the table and asked C to sort them. I didn't give him any other instructions because I wanted to see if he remembered how to sort:) It's been a month after all! He did remember and he put them in little lines so when I asked him to count them it was easier:) We also talked about which color had the most and least:)

Then he used stickers to spell his name:)

All of these activities were so simple but he loved them!! He was so happy to be doing these activities and we are going to start a little school time each day again! I can't stop now after seeing how much he missed it!

An Addition to the Busy Book family: Bitty Busy Book

Tutorial

Two Sundays ago we were sitting in church and Caden had finished looking at his Big Busy Book! I put it on the seat next to me and Drake picked it up. I haven't really used it with him because I really made it with Caden in mind. I watched him fumble around with the big book and decided that he needed one that was more his size. I watched as he played and kept note of all of the things he liked and the things he passed by without a care. And so the Bitty Busy Book was born. I used it today in church and It kept Drake happy and engaged for the whole hour! He actually cried when I had to take it away so he could go to Nursery class.

P.S. I bought the lock and calculator from the dollar store but everything else was left overs and re-purposed old clothes. You would be surprised what you can make from left over scraps!

Cover:

I used Steam to Seam to put the letters on the cover and then hand sewed the buttons to add some texture. When Drake first saw it he stared at it and touched each of the buttons.

Lock and Key:

In the Big Book Drake loved the keys in the pocket so I made this activity. I built the pages with the intent for them to be interesting but still present a challenge. Drake loves to try to put the key in the lock but that is as far as he goes. As he becomes more skilled he will unlock it and try to lock it onto the middle ring.

Magnet Maze:

I used some mesh material from my dad's old scrubs pocket and slipped a ball bearing behind it. I sewed two lines so that it was like a very simple maze. I sewed a very strong little magnet into the pouch and attached it to a rope. I used fabric markers to draw the blue and red dots. Caden really enjoyed the maze aspect but Drake was more interested in trying the magnet out on different things. I anticipated that which is why I put it adjacent to the Lock and Key page, so that there would be some metal to try it out on.

Buckles:

Drake is very in to buckles! He can't undo them yet but he loves to buckle them! Half an hour was spent buckling them and then looking at me to unbuckle them again.

Shapes and Color Matching:

Drake played with this for about a minute but it wasn't to big of a hit. I mostly put it in because of the educational value.

Wallet:

This was Drake other favorite. The flap has to snaps holding it shut and the green fabric at the bottom holds a click pen with the ink removed.

When opened there are pockets for laminated play money and credit cards. A zipper pocket with play coins and a little flip calculator that I got at the dollar store

Letter Pockets:
These are four little pockets with a letter on the front of each one and the beads attached to rope are for sorting into the pockets.

Leave a comment if you have any specific questions about how to do something.

So Simple!

When my two nieces were coming over I already knew that they were sick so I decided to make each of the kids one of these cups. I bought a pack of Take and Toss straw cups and used letter stickers to spell each of the children's names. I also put the first letter of their name on the lid. I only did this in hopes that the sickness wouldn't spread (it didn't work! my boys got sick anyway), but I found a surprising side effect. They all started to talk about the letters and their names! They thought it was so cool that they each had their on unique letter. Even little Drake started saying "D, d, d, d, d". It was so cute! I loved hearing Caden point to each letter and get so excited, "C-A-D-E-N... Caden!!!". I am going to keep using these cups as their water cups so that they will continue to recognize their names but this has really got me thinking about some other activities! I want to nurture Caden and Drake's excitement! I'll let you know what I come up with:)

Traveling Activity Map!

I've seen activity place mats in stores before but I never liked any of them. I have been thinking of making my own and I wanted it to be: Small so it could travel to restaurants, educational, able to grow with the boys, sturdy, and interesting to both of the boys. So this is what I came up with:

(Be sure to read the bottom of this post to see variations for kids who aren't into cars or letters:)

I decided to play to Caden's two favorite things Cars and Letters. I used construction paper to create a little roadway scene and then cut out letters and numbers from construction paper as well. I loved using the primary colors! It turned out so pretty!

I cut the green papers to 81/2 by 5 inches so that they would fit in my laminator with out wasting any laminator sheets.
Once I lightly glued everything down I sent them through the laminator in the positions that they would need to be in to fold properly.

For the middle fold I used clear packing tape(Tip: Make sure to fold the packing tape over the edge, don't cut it. It makes it very strong and very unlikely to rip at the seam.)

Here is what it looks like when it is folded and unfolded.

I let Caden play with it for a little while but I am going to save it for restaurants and church from now on. I like to save things like this for those times because then they are more exciting.

I did the car side because that is Caden's favorite thing but if he liked:

• Horses-I could have done a little pony farm
• Farm Animals- a Farm:)
• Dinosaurs- A Jungle with a volcano!
• Princesses- A ball room??
• Bugs- An ant hill with a little under ground maze

I can't think of what else kids would like:) Caden has loved cars since he was 12 months old so I have that on the brain:)

I think every mat should have the letters on the back and here are the activities that I am going to do with Caden while we are at a restaurant:

• Find things on the table and talk about what letter they start with, then place them on that letter (ex. Salt, Pepper, Jelly, Water, Ketchup, Honey, Crayon)
• Simple Finding Games (Ex. Can You find the letter...A? Can you find the letter that says Ssssss? Can you find the first letter of the word Boat? Can you find the letters of your Name?)
• Have them drive the car to different letters (ex. Can you drive your car to the letter... P?)
• You can also use the sides of those cheap crayons they give you to make rubbings of the letters. In the picture I used a colored pencil but I think a crayon would work a lot better.
  

Letter Search

For this activity I had this foam alphabet puzzle that I got for 88 cents at Walmart:) and a dish of rice. I popped out all the letters and mixed them in with the rice. I set this up in the sensory tub so Caden already new the rules and everything would stay neat. Here is a picture of how I set this activity up.
We took it outside and started by asking Caden to pick a letter. Once he did I would ask him what the letter was and then tell him the sound. I would then start saying words that started with the letter. Then Caden would find where the letter goes and put it in the puzzle. It was easy to find the letters at first but towards the end he really had to dig and search. This kept his interest all the way through the alphabet and he still wanted to do more:)

Variations

For younger children who aren't working on letters you could put the pieces of any puzzle they have in the rice and have them search around for it.

For an older child you could tell them a letter to search for or just tell them the sound of the letter.

To keep an older child busy you could tell them to find all of the letters in order starting with A and put them in the puzzle.

Journaling For the Youngest!

Last Summer we went on a vacation with family and Grandma couldn't come with us :( She got each of the children one of theses composition journals and a box of crayons to draw with on the trip. Both of the boys were to young for it at the time but she was thoughtful and got them some anyway. About a month later I was letting Caden color and I thought "Why not let him draw in that Journal!" I put both of the boy's names on the front and now every once in awhile I take them out for them to color in. I always write their name on the page because one day they will be instructed to do that themselves and it will be fun to see the progression over the years. I also put the date on the page for obvious reasons. I only get out the journals every once in a while because I want it to be like a little sampling of their work at different stages instead of getting filled with scribbles in one week:)


Sometimes we scribble...

I'm also traced their hands and feet...

And with Caden I've asked him questions and then wrote down the answers he gives... he told me what he was drawing and I labeled it for him:)

Other Journal ideas...

• Draw a picture of your family
• How do you feel today
• What is your favorite thing to do outside
• Write your favorite letters
• Practice writing your name
• After you have gone somewhere fun (zoo, museum, grandma's, park) have them write about it
• Take a little survey each year asking the same questions and see how the answers change
  

How to Pick Out Library Books

I was at my sister's house the other day and Caden was pointing out letters on a book she was looking at and she asked me how I got him to learn all of his letters already. I told her my biggest tool is the Public Library! My Library is wonderful! They have a section of Alphabet books and a section of Counting books. Every time I go to the Library I select 2 Alphabet books, 2 Counting books, and then I select "Just for fun books" according to whatever Caden is interested in at the time. We've made reading a nightly ritual in our home so Caden and Drake expect it every night before bed. I cuddle them both up in my lap and we read the book and talk about the pictures. He has some all time favorites but I still give them back to the library each time we go (instead of renewing them) because then when we go back to pick it again it is even more exciting! Here is the series of his favorite counting books:

These are really fun books because you can sing them and there are numbers hidden on each page. They are great for younger children who can't sit still for books because they are more likely to listen if you are singing.

This is Caden's favorite Alphabet book as of right now:

He loves when the parents come home and see all of the naughty things that the monkeys have done.

So get to your Library! Happy Reading!