Blog Favorites: Preschool Activities

• Simple Cardboard Lacing Tubes and Montessori Smelling Bottles from The Wonder Years

 

• Homemade Lacing Cards from Just For Fun – made from greeting cards

 

• Shape Sorter Stamping from The Adventures of Bear

 

• Eco Friendly Crayon Melts from No Time for Flashcards

Homemade Maracas

They may be a little lacking in the handle department, but the kids don’t mind and these sound exactly like maracas. We filled ours with small pieces of cardboard, which make enough noise that the kids are happy and are quiet enough that I don’t mind listening to them all day long. Glue on the lids (hot glue works well) if you don’t want your children opening the containers. Our lids are not glued on, and my kids have had fun emptying and re-filling their bottles.

A few extensions of this activity that we may or may not do:

• Decorate the containers
• Try swapping out different materials to see what they sound like. A few we might try:
  • beans
  • rice
  • pasta
  • cotton balls
• Shaking along to the beat in a song
• Counting shakes
• Experiment with putting more or less of a material in the bottle to see how it changes the pitch and timbre of the maraca.

Learning to Write

I don’t send Emma to preschool, but I’m hesitant to say I homeschool her, because I don’t have defined learning objectives or a curriculum I use. Emma loves to play school, though, and she often requests specific things she wants to do for school. She’s been interested in writing lately, so yesterday I found these fun handwriting readiness worksheets via this blog post. Emma LOVED doing these worksheets, and she was not stressed about her inability to draw perfectly straight lines the way she has been when doing alphabet-based worksheets. She also wrote her name for the first time yesterday and was so pleased with herself that she wrote it again about twenty times – with varying numbers of horizontal lines for the “E” each time!

Free play with pattern blocks

I have blogged about my children’s enjoyment of pattern block templates before, but they get at least as much enjoyment out of pattern block free play. I love the thicker wooden pattern blocks for this activity since they allow for the building of towers and other 3D structures.

Pattern block templates are fun to do and allow children to learn about things like one-to-one correspondence and shape recognition, but there are at least as many lessons to be learned (and as much fun to be had) through free play. Free play provides excellent opportunities for learning about fractions (Emma has figured out that three blue diamonds equal one yellow hexagon), pattern exploration, shape recognition, textures, colors, and how different pieces fit together. Building towers (as Johnny is doing in this picture with the square pieces) teaches about balance and builds coordination.

If you are looking for more pattern block templates, there are some cute ones here in addition to those referenced in my previous pattern block post – thank you again Sandra for the link to this site!

Picnic Table Talk: Writing

I come from a family that enjoys writing. Our love of writing comes primarily from my father, who writes poetry and the occasional story in his (very sparse given his ten children and demanding job) free time. My mother also deserves credit, however – she is the letter writer in the family. She doesn’t write frequently (she does, after all, have the demanding job of mother of ten children – two still at home), but the letters she writes are always long and detailed.

I type more than I write by hand. I enjoy writing with a fountain pen, thanks to intensive handwriting education in French public schools. I type very quickly, but sometimes it’s good to have the extra reflecting time given by my penmanship.

I have done very little to teach my children penmanship. Johnny is too young (he does draw circles, which is pretty good for a 20-month-old). Emma has printing sheets, but she’s a perfectionist who only draws the letters she is certain she can get perfectly. I’m fine with that for now. She writes a very nice T, E, L, I, and U, as well as the occasional M and A when she is feeling adventurous.

I hope my children grow to love writing also, and I think there is a lot that can be done in early childhood to foster a love of writing. A few things I remember and try to practice as a parent from my own childhood:

• Read aloud, a lot.
• Write yourself, and let children hear what you have written.
• Write down stories your children tell you before they are old enough to write them themselves.
• Keep a journal and encourage your children to do so also. I’ve kept a journal for most of my life (every single day since September 27, 2003), and all three of my children have journals. Emma and Johnny scribble and draw in theirs as I did in my first journal as a child, and I’m sure Lily will be doing the same soon. I write occasional journal entries in my children’s journals to get them started with a record of their lives as well.
• Sing songs – often overlooked, this is a great way for children to learn about rhyming and the rhythm of language.
• Write simple stories and have your children use them to practice their penmanship once they are reading. My children are too young for this currently, but I remember my mother doing it with me, and it made penmanship practice much more interesting.

Free Chocolate and M&M Graphing

Mars is offering coupons for free chocolate every Friday this summer. We used ours to buy some M&Ms, which we then used to make M&M graphs. I simply divided a paper into six sections and had Emma create a graph of M&Ms in the various colors. We talked about which colors we had the most and fewest M&Ms in, and counted the M&Ms in each column. Emma loved this activity (especially the part at the end where she got to eat some M&Ms), and is asking to do it again as  I type.

Johnny looks so innocently attentive in the top photo that I had to add this second picture, which is a much more accurate representation of his involvement in this activity. I was amazed that Emma had the self-control to not eat any M&Ms until the end, especially when her brother was gobbling them up as quickly as possible.

Picnic Table Talk: Organization

I try to provide my children with as many opportunities to explore their world and express themselves as possible, while maintaining a reasonably clean house. Organization is something I think about frequently, and a topic I have blogged about before.

I haven’t done much to organize learning in our house; I think very young children learn a lot by exploring their world, particularly if parents pay attention to and discuss their children’s interests. I am considering a loose adaptation of Sue Patrick's Workbox System to provide Emma and Johnny with things to do at their play table with minimal supervision when I am busy with the baby. If anyone has used workboxes in this way with young children, I would love to hear about it! Some things I would put in the workboxes:

• Play dough, sometimes on it’s own, sometimes with one of our homemade play mats.
• Pattern blocks, sometimes with templates like the ones I referred to in this post.
• File folder games like this one.
• Their travel felt boards with the activities mentioned in this post.
• Their crayon rolls and paper/coloring pages
• These paint brushes and paper

Have any other suggestions as to what I should put in these bins? I’d love any other ideas!

Here are a few things that work well for us in terms of physical organization:

• Divide craft materials into categories. I have some supplies (colored paper, fabric scraps, and pipe cleaners) that I let the kids use with minimal supervision. The next category is supplies that both kids can use with light supervision (crayons, markers, glue), followed by materials that require close supervision (small beads, scissors).
• Categorize toys. We keep our building toys in a different part of the house from stuffed animals and dolls, which are also separate from books. Puzzles are kept separately from other toys also.
• Make clean-up fun and easy. Each toy has a place where it always goes, and I use containers that are easy for my kids to put toys into. Sometimes they will clean up a toy on their own, but more often I clean up alongside them. If they’re reluctant to help pick up, we’ll sing a song and/or turn clean-up into a game (who can find the most red duplos, who can pick their toy up the most quickly, etc)
• Catch destructive mode before it’s full-blown. Emma and Johnny both occasionally go into destructive mode. For Johnny, this typically means he needs a nap; for Emma it’s a signal that she needs to do a structured activity.

What organizing tricks simplify your life?

Paint chips and color schemes

  

Emma loved this simple color-matching activity that I made using paint chips. I took two identical strips, cut one and left the other one intact. Emma’s job was to match the shades. The differences in shades are subtle enough that she found this activity interesting and challenging. Johnny didn’t understand the activity, but he still thoroughly enjoyed playing with his own set of paint chips.

This activity provides a good opportunity to discuss the concept of light and dark colors, favorite shades of a particular color, if you would need more or less dye/food coloring to get a lighter/darker shade, etc.

Pattern blocks and laminating by hand

After months of looking for pattern block picture cards, I downloaded set 1 off of Kelly’s Kindergarten (found via this blog post – thank you, Sandra!)

We happen to have both the plastic and the wooden pattern blocks courtesy of my math manipulatives loving mother. I first got out the wooden set, thinking that – since they are a bit thicker – Emma would have an easier time with them. She got very frustrated at the blocks not lining up perfectly, and so I gave up thinking we’d try again in a few weeks. The next day, though, she went to the closet, pulled out the plastic ones and the pattern sheets, and made this perfect dinosaur:

I don’t know if the thin plastic ones were actually easier for her to use than the wooden ones, or if she was just in a better mood the second day – but she continues to prefer the plastic ones over the wooden ones for this particular activity. If you don’t have pattern blocks or want to make a travel set, Sandra’s post links to printable pattern blocks that you can make out of cardstock.

I laminated all of the pattern sheets by hand using a roll of laminating paper, and if you look at the train compared to the dinosaur, I got MUCH better at it as I went along. Turns out the main trick is to expose no more than one inch of laminate at a time – may seem obvious to some of you, but it wasn’t to me. Of course, if you’re lucky enough to own a nifty laminating machine that’s even better!

Picnic Table Talk: Alphabet

Emma developed an obsession for letters of the alphabet at an early age. She loved letters and knew the entire alphabet (and the sounds most of the letters make) well before her second birthday, in part thanks to the fact that she watched Signing Time Volume 5: ABC Signs DVD and the Leap Frog - Letter Factory DVD. I used to put her to sleep at nap time by singing the alphabet sounds song from the Letter Factory DVD. I don’t think she would have gotten much out of these DVDs if we hadn’t watched them with her and talked about what she was seeing.

We have some foam letters that Emma really enjoys playing with, and I think they have helped her learn her ABCs. Other alphabet-related activities Emma enjoys include:

• talking about what letters different words start with (she can frequently figure it out based on the sound of the word)
• Reading out the letters on signs and on packages, mail, etc.
• Signing letters of the alphabet (she’s still learning how to differentiate some alphabet signs, such as M, N, and T which are very similar)

Emma recognizes a handful of words regardless of font: names of family members, “stop” (from seeing stop signs), and “Costco”. She writes a handful of letters (E, I, O, L, and T). I gave her a letter writing worksheet a while ago thinking she would enjoy learning to write a few new letters (such as M and A, so she could spell out her name), but she got upset when she couldn’t write the letters perfectly (she’s a bit of a perfectionist) so we’ll try that again when she’s a bit older. The letters she does write she started writing on her own, so it’s possible she’ll just add in more letters over time. For now, she seems content to write everything with the five letters she is happy with her penmanship on, or to use “cursive”.

Johnny (who thinks he can do everything his sister can) pretends to read out words and write and sign letters, but I haven’t seen any real letter recognition so far – and I’m pretty sure Emma was older than him when she started recognizing letters. I’m a huge fan of teaching preschoolers primarily by induction and based on their interests at a given time. Emma loved letters but had almost no interest in numbers until recently, so we are only now starting activities around numbers.

Our favorite alphabet book is Z Goes Home by Jon Agee (reviewed here); my kids also love Dr. Seuss's ABC (reviewed here) – especially the alphabet pages on the inside front and back cover!

Line Art

I found this activity here and on at least one other blog, but I couldn’t remember where and didn’t know what to search for – so if you think I may have seen your post, please let me know so I can link up!

Update: Here's one of the other places where I saw this activity, thanks April for helping me find it!

Basically you draw random squiggly lines on a sheet of paper and color in however you want. Emma and Johnny really enjoyed this activity; they actually spent a couple days finishing their artwork! I helped Johnny color his in, which was very relaxing. Our house is a bit torn up right now (switching to a new heating system as the previous one broke – something we knew might happen when we moved in and thankfully something that happened AFTER rather than in the middle of a long cold winter) so I’m very grateful for quiet table activities like this one!

Is it just me, or is Johnny’s hair getting lighter every day?

Here are their masterpieces – as I was scanning them in Emma noted that hers actually is not finished, so I guess she’ll be working on it some more!

Emma’s:

Johnny’s:

I drew the lines on Emma’s using a permanent marker instead of a plain black marker, which is why the lines on hers look so much bolder.

We just colored these in randomly, but I could see this being a nice add-on activity to a lesson on complementary/contrasting colors or color wheels. You can also try to color in the squiggles to look like different objects or animals (sort of like finding objects/animals in clouds). I’m also thinking of having the kids make a few on cardstock to turn into cards.

Felt Map of the World

Having been raised on three continents, it’s important to me that my children know as much about their world as possible. I thought this felt board activity could be a fun introduction to continents. Inspired by a high school history teacher who forced all of his students to learn to draw simplified maps of the world and Europe, I created a template based off of this map from http://www.mapsofworld.com/. I cut the simplified continents out of felt and made a new blue-background travel felt board. I also laminated (very poorly, I’m afraid) a print-out of the same map. I will keep the laminated map and the felt pieces in a folder, within a larger folder that holds all of Emma’s felt board activities. I’m not sure how well Emma understands the concepts of continents (or even the world) at this point, but she enjoys playing with the felt pieces, looking at the map, and talking about where various friends and family members live. Here’s the template I created, if you would like to try this activity yourself:

Emma asked to trace the map of the world. She did a great job, in spite of using thick printer paper. Anyone know where to buy tracing paper?

She even added some animals to the world (after I took the above picture) – here’s her version of a baby fox:

and a sheep:

Blog Favorites: Educational Activities for Toddlers

 

• Valerie at the Frugal Family Fun Blog shows how to make field guides for tots.

 

• Unplug Your Kids tells how to make baking soda boats. I especially like the sippy cup version.

 

• Beth at be the thread shares a simple alphabet post-it activity.

 

• The Adventures of Bear shares a list for a food-based alphabet book.

 

• No Time for Flashcards has a Letter of the Week Guide – click on the picture of the letter and you’ll be taken to all of the activities they’ve done for that letter so far. What a fantastic resource!

Blog Favorites: Educational Activities Part II

The Adventures of Bear shares how to make a simple number counting book any toddler would love using paper, a stapler, and some sticker.

I think my kids are a little bit young for it, but I love this Parts of the Blood lesson from My Montessori Journey.

Filth Wizardry shares some ideas of grid copying drawings you can make with your kids. Looks like a good “quiet time” activity to me.

The Peterson Party has a cute uppercase and lowercase letter matching game you can easily make using water bottle caps. Finally a good use for non-recyclable water bottle caps!

Have an educational activity you’d like to share? Please link up in the comments section!

Toddler gardening

This activity is courtesy of my local library’s wonderful free toddler craft series. We did this activity last year and this year. Emma really enjoyed it both years, and this year the grass even survived Emma and Johnny dumping out the cups of newly-planted grass seeds and then throwing everything back in topsy-turvy.

MATERIALS:

• Cup (clear ones are nice since you can see some of the roots)
• Soil
• Grass seeds
• Water

STEPS:

1. Fill cup with soil, leaving at least 1 inch of clearance at the top.
2. Add a thin layer of grass seeds.
3. Cover the grass seeds with a small amount of soil.
4. Water.
5. Place in a sunny area.
6. Wait for seeds to grow.

Here is the poor destroyed grass plant (I thought it was out of Emma’s reach and I was wrong)

Surviving five days later

And thriving two weeks later

  Emma really enjoyed giving the grass a “haircut” this morning.

Food Coloring and Fluid Mechanics

MATERIALS:

• food coloring
• clear glasses
• water

Food coloring and water is a great way to introduce children to some basic concepts of fluid mechanics. We got out six glasses, which we filled with water.

First, the kids tasted the water in each glass to see if it tasted the same. I’m not sure what they concluded, since they definitely drank more water from some glasses than others.

I wanted to do the water and musical notes trick, but our thick IKEA glasses didn’t sound very musical. Crystal glasses work beautifully, if you have them.

Next, we put some food coloring in each glass. We did a little color mixing (red and yellow to make orange, and blue and red to make purple). We talked about fluid density (the food coloring is denser and therefore sinks to the bottom) and fluid dispersion (looking at how the food coloring spread through the water). No idea how much of it Emma got, but they were both very tolerant of their geeky mom, although I’m not so sure about Johnny’s expression in this picture. And if you’re wondering, the thing in Emma’s hair is a sticker.

Then we stirred the food coloring in completely and arranged the glasses in rainbow color order. This would have been a good place to illustrate wavelength differences in color by filling glasses with corresponding amounts of water (the most water in the red glass since red light has the longest wavelength and the least in the purple glass since it has the shortest) but we didn’t do this. Maybe next time. I don’t think it would have worked this time, anyhow, because Johnny was comparison tasting the different colors of water.

We ended the activity by pouring all of the glasses of water into a white bucket to see what color we got when they were all mixed together (brown).

Most importantly, everyone had fun!

A Creative Application for Grocery Store Ads

MATERIALS:

• Grocery store ads
• Shopping cart and/or store shelf templates
• Scissors
• Glue stick

The idea for this post came from our library’s weekly toddler craft time. Take a bunch of grocery store ads, and have your child choose items that they want to “buy”. They can then glue the items onto the cart or stock them on shelves (see templates at the bottom of this post). Depending on the age of your child, you may need to help cut out the items.

Emma LOVES window shopping, so we’ve done this activity several times since we discovered it at the library last week. We’ve also done some activities sorting fruits from vegetables, desserts from dinner items, etc. It's a good opportunity to talk about what makes a food item a fruit or a vegetable, which foods might go well together, what you can make out of certain foods, etc.

I have a flyer from a local hardware store that we’ll use to plan an imaginary garden – and then maybe we’ll go out and buy some materials to plant a proper garden if the snow in our yard ever melts…

Store shelves template - for an older child you could label shelves or let them label shelves

Grocery cart template

Blog Favorites: Educational Games.

A few great education-focused games from other blogs:

• Use paper and crayons to create this lowercase and uppercase floor alphabet game from Filth Wizardry.

 

• I think this idea from Make and Takes is a very pretty way to learn about mixing colors. All you need to make a rainbow of colors is milk (water works too, but isn’t as pretty) and food coloring.

 

• Mommyme at The Wonder Years shares a Montessori-inspired button practice plus matching game you can put together quickly with a needle and thread, a few buttons, and some felt.

 

• Katey from Having Fun at Home tells how to make your own magnet letter game.

For the Birds

The Great Backyard Bird Count starts this Friday! It’s free and easy to participate, and a great way for you and your child to learn more about your local birds. You can participate from anywhere, even from a high-rise city apartment. You only watch birds as often as you want to – you don’t have to commit to watching every day or for a set time period.

See the official site for more info, and don’t forget to check out their “just for kids” section while you are there!

Inauguration Day

Looking for inauguration activities for your kids? I like this Craft Stick White House from Kaboose. Sparkplugging has Obama coloring pages for little ones, as well as a word search and a maze for older children. The maze looks pretty hard…

I’ll be back to posting everyday toddler crafts tomorrow.

Happy Inauguration Day :)