Stamping Game for Counting and Pre-reading Skills

Have you seen the oh-so-cute pencil-top stampers in the dollar spot at Target lately?!?  We love stamps so I grabbed some of the monster kind.  We call them “sillies” here, because M is not at all comfortable with the idea of monsters.  ;)

I made a quick and simple game with these to go on our activity shelves.  All you need is a couple of stamps (or you could use buttons or some other manipulative as markers), a number die (we made ours from this template), and a simple grid with 20 spaces.

{I created a grid game a while back to go with a Bible story lesson, and the large grid for that game can be printed from here.  I also made a smaller grid – 2 to a page – and that can be printed from here, then cut.  You could simply draw some on some scratch paper also.}

To play, take turns rolling the die, then stamping that number of squares on your grid.  The first to fill their grid is the winner.  Fill your grid going from left to right, and top to bottom.  This helps develop the habit needed for eventual reading. 

M is having a lot of fun playing this – it’s such a simple way to make counting fun and he has no idea he’s learning pre-reading skills too.

This morning while I was lying in bed being lazy, I heard M begging Daddy to play this game with him.  So cute!  And, again, a quick lesson for me that the things which are simple and quick for me to put together are always more popular with him than the things I spend hours on.  Kids! :)

Here’s a shot of the used grids from yesterday afternoon.  I’m not kidding – M loves this game!
Have a beautiful day! :)

P.S. Happy Birthday, Honey!!  I love you! (my hubs :) )

Tot School – October 11, 2009

M is 37 months old

We began this week by moving an old TV stand / media center to M’s reading spot. Tuesday morning I grabbed some kitchen plastic ware and filled the shelves with activities.This worked so well with M, even better than I expected. He was able to pick and choose which activities to do (or not do) and many of them were things he could do independently (which gave me a little time to check the laundry, tidy things up, etc).

We worked on putting one activity away before getting another one down, and I was ok with him quitting an activity whenever he wanted. I’m trying to concentrate on having fun more than anything else right now in regards to tot school. And M woke up with a horrible cold that morning, so I wanted to go easy on him. Just cleaning up one thing before getting another one down was enough in the way of rules for us this week!

First, he strung some pony beads onto a length of yarn, using a plastic needle.

Next, matching up some paint sample strips with clips.We are working on learning the gradation of color shades. I thought the clips would get him a bit more interested in this. They did, but only a very little bit. He did the blue and then that was enough. This post from Shannon at Growing and Learning by Leaps and Bounds gave me this idea. Maybe next time we will work on just one color like she did.

He also did this super-fun activity that I whipped up for him over the weekend – an ABC tube with stickers to match: I simply took a cardboard tube and wrote the alphabet on it in random order, and put it out with some foam letter stickers. M would pick a sticker, then roll the tube around to find the matching letter. The idea for this came from Sophie’s mama in this post. I just added stickers! It was a big hit for M! I plan to do one with numbers sometime soon too.

M did some scissor practice pages:

In one of the plastic tubs I placed a piece of green construction paper, scissors, a glue stick, and some pages from a toy catalog. For this activity M had to cut out any toys that had green in them, then glue them to the construction paper and make a collage.He liked the idea of this, but didn’t work on it for very long. We put it back on the shelf and he can pull it out some other time to finish it.

One of his favorite activities was this:I wrote the numbers 1 through 4 on bottle lids, then made cards to match them up with. The cards also have the corresponding number of X’s to put any small manipulative on. In this case, it was m&ms, which is why M loved it. :)

He did a little pom pom transferring with tweezers:He made this into a game and I had to use his pliers. :) We would each grab a pom pom, say “cheers!” while clinking them together, then drop them into the ice cube tray. He’s a funny boy sometimes. :)

Hands down, the all time favorite of the week was this *I spy sensory tub* activity. It was inspired by the many posts in the blog world about making I spy bottles, but I knew M would never be happy just looking for small objects – he would want them in his hands where he could examine them and get to know them. So I photocopied a bunch of small objects, then hid them in a mixture of rice, macaroni, and lentils. He had so much fun with this, I was amazed.He did this 7 times that day. Sometimes he would hide them, sometimes I would. He was totally enthralled. Which made for a very happy mama. :)

I worked the hardest on this activity, and it was the only one M was not even mildly interested in:I’ve been seeing this book everywhere - and just love the idea of it… so I made my own! I cut some foam shapes to use, and made letter templates for them, which I then laminated. I thought M would love this, but he was absolutely. not. interested. Ah well, we’ll try again another day! I’m still showing you because I’m just so proud of it. :)

We did one more sensory activity – packaging peanuts and water. If you get them just a little bit wet they stick together and you can create things. If you get them a lot wet they dissolve. M had fun making them dissolve. :)

One day we made this pretty autumn tree:

And we learned more new songs and poems. First, from Preschooleducation.com:

(tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”)

All join hands and circle around
While we watch the leaves fall down.
See them twirling to the ground.
See them skipping here and there
See them flipping in the air.
Autumn leaves so peacefully
Falling, falling from the tree.
(I would have loved to have sung this one outside while twirling M around, but his cold and our rainy weather just didn’t cooperate.)

And a poem, from childfun.com:

Leaves
Little leaves fall gently down
Red and yellow, orange and brown. (flutter hands like leaves falling)
Whirling, whirling around and around. (turn around)
Quietly, without a sound. (put finger to lips)
Falling softly to the ground (begin to fall slowly)
Down and down and down and down. (lie on floor)

I hope everyone had a wonderful week! Check here for more tot school posts!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Tot School – Oct. 4, 2009

 M is 37 months old

We had a very laid back week.  I am working on getting some tot trays / workbox-type things set up that M can work on independently throughout the week, but they are a work in process and nothing is where I want it to be yet. 
M surprised me by finding things to do on his own this week anyway – most of which were never captured on camera.  He strung beads and pasta, played with his Lite Brite, laced up some lacing cards, and played with some of his favorite flannel board sets.  My husband had Monday off, and they played Bingo, tried playing checkers, and read a lot of books together.  They also got out their binoculars and did a little out-the-window bird watching.  Here they are mommy-watching :)
Tuesday was an absolutely glorious fall day and we ventured outside (with the binoculars of course).  M grabbed his “nature basket” and trotted off:
You can see our yard is still mostly green.  There is one tiny patch of leaves turning colors in an oak tree: I’ve been hoping to gather up some beautiful leaves for an autumn leaf identification project, but Mother Nature is not cooperating with me.  Actually I should be happy that the leaves aren’t turning yet, it means winter is still a little ways off.  M grabbed a branch blown down by the wind gusts we’ve been having and tried his best to knock some leaves down for me.
No luck, so he started building with some logs -
Another look around with the binoculars(by the way, I got these at Target for $1.00 – awesome deal!) :
We did do some fun school stuff inside too, continuing with the autumn theme…
We learned a new poem and a new song.  I found both at preschooleducation.com.  The song (to the tune of “The Farmer in the Dell”):

The leaves are falling down,
The leaves are falling down,
Red, yellow, orange and brown,
The leaves are falling down.

And the poem, which M absolutely LOVED and did over and over again…

5 little leaves so bright and gay
Were dancing about on a tree one day.
The wind came blowing through the town,
And one little leaf came tumbling down.
(Continue with the remaining 4 leaves)

We did this with 5 silk craft leaves (Dollar Tree!).  I held them up, made them dance around, then M was the wind and blew and I would let one fall.  This was a huge hit!  He then held the leaves and I blew them, then he asked for all the craft leaves, and his silly mama gave them to him and eventually this happened:
Look closely and you can see a couple of them still in mid-air. :)
We also tried  doing these harvest pattern strips from filefolderfun.com:
He is just not *getting* patterns at all.  So I gave up and made it into a quick file folder matching game to put on a tot tray for him.  There are several more pattern strips, these two are just the ones we tried doing.
We did a fun autumn matching game – played concentration style.  He did great with this.  I can tell he is really starting to get better at the memory games.  The cards were printed from DLTK.
We also did a flannel board story about the Little Red Hen (I associate it with harvest time).  This set was found here:

And we made a cute autumn wreath:

That’s it for us for this week!  I so enjoyed taking it easy and not trying to fit too much in.  We both had more fun just being together. :) 

Check out what other moms are doing with their tots here!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Our Flannel Board – part 2

(Part 1 of this series is here)

Before I get started, I want to correct a mistake in last week’s flannel board post. I wasn’t sure I had the correct measurements of the foam core board I used to make our flannel board, and I was too lazy at the time to go measure the silly thing. I have done so since then and it is approximately 20” by 30”. It seems to be the perfect size, and the foam core board works wonderfully so far (close to 3 years now)!

I just love making felt sets for M to use with our flannel board. You can find many templates online, draw your own, print out pictures to use, or even clip images from magazines and back them with felt! I’ve done this to create puzzles for M to put together on the flannel board. And, anything you do for the flannel board can be done for a magnet board too! It’s fun to switch things up a little bit sometimes and have some magnet sets that you use on a cookie sheet!

M played with the (very few) felt sets we had when he was small, then lost interest for a time being. I would say he regained interest (and boy, it was a LOT of interest) when he was about 2 1/2 years old. At this stage, many children are intrigued by the way you can *see* a story unfold by using the flannel board.
They also love poems and songs that have manipulatives (the felt pieces) that they can use to bring the songs to life. Poems and songs are a big hit here, in part because they are short and easy to memorize, so M can “do” the flannel board by himself.

And I love the counting poems we have! It’s great to see M learning to count and even learning to subtract or add as pieces are added to the board or taken off.

Pictured below are our poem and song felt sets. When appropriate, I’ve linked the title to the site where I found the templates. You can find more templates and ideas at these sites too, so be sure to click over!

5 Green and Speckled Frogs:

5 Little Seashells:
There’s no link for this one because it was a freebie as part of a membership at The Mailbox.com (which I no longer have). However, the shells and wave are super-easy to make and here’s a link to a poem that goes with them. It’s not the exact same poem we use, but it is cute!

5 Little Pumpkins:(um, yes, there are only four pumpkins here and no gate. This one still needs a few finishing touches, but the pumpkins are just so pretty, aren’t they?)

 

5 Little Ducks:


10 in the Bed (This one was made by printing the pieces, laminating them, attaching sandpaper to the back of the bed, and putting velcro pieces on the pillows and the backs of the bears):


Old MacDonald Had a Farm (also made by printing and laminating!):

There’s a Little White Duck:

Polka-dot numbers 0 – 20 :
We use this for number recognition and number sequence, playing a kind of Brown Bear, Brown Bear game – We’ll put #1 up and say “number one, number one, what do you see?” “I see a number two looking at me”, etc. M has to find the correct number and put it on the flannel board. Often, I will put them out on the floor pretty much in sequence to make it easier for him. Occasionally we mix them up a little bit. Sometimes I have him recite the poem and see if he can get the numbers in order. Right now we only use 0-10, as that seems to be enough for him to deal with at one time.

2 Little Apples: I made this one myself – simply cut a trunk and tree top out of brown and green felt. Make two apples with faces (if you wish) and you’re done. Here’s the poem that goes with this one in case you are unfamiliar with it:

Way up high in the apple tree,
I saw two little apples looking at me.
I shook that tree as hard as I could,
Down came the apples,
and mmmm, mmmm, were they good!

When M was a tiny baby I would recite this poem for him like this:

Way up high in the apple tree,
I saw a little baby looking at me!
I shook that tree as hard as I could (gently, gently “shake” baby, without really shaking him at all),
Down came the baby,
and mmmm, mmmm, was he good! (eat him up, but don’t really eat him up, ha ha).

He always giggled with that one! :)

Next week (hopefully) part 3 – telling stories with the flannel board and how I (try to) keep them organized.

Have a beautiful day! :)

Tot School – Sept. 13, 2009

Matthew is 36 months

It was another fun week in Tot School land. :)  I know it looks like we do a lot, but I want to stress that we normally spend about one hour “doing school” on Tuesday mornings, with only a couple more planned activities thrown in here and there if M asks for them on other days, which he normally does lately.  We try to spend time every day on an art project too, but other than that M’s time is spent mostly in self-directed play; normally I try to let the art project be very self-directed too.  Sometimes his free play time is with me or Daddy (and if it’s a definite learning-type activity I try to capture it with some pictures) and very often on his own, or with a friend.  Regardless of what it looks like we really don’t spend all our time on school! :)
Ok, now that that is out of the way… here’s what we did this week. :)
I showed M the new letter H file I put together for his ABC book.  I posted about this here and made it available for download. :)
First, He put helicopter and “H” foam stickers on the Hh templates:
He pretty much insisted on putting the stickers around the letters instead of on them. :)  Simple as this was, M absolutely loved doing it.
Then he practiced tracing the letters.  He wants to draw his letters so badly, so I included this activity in the file (you can see his tripod grasp is pretty non-existent, or was on this day anyway):
We played a tic tac toe game using Hard Hats and Hammers:

And we went through little pictures of things that begin with H.  I’ve found this is a one of the best activities to help him learn the sound a letter makes.  I always include this with our ABC book pages.  We say /h/ /h/ /h/ hammer, /h/ /h/ /h/ house, etc, stressing the initial sound as we look at each picture.  It’s fun and kind of turns into a chant of sorts.
We worked on the Heart pattern strips… he is just not getting the concept of repeating patterns.   Ah well, I need to remain patient and remember at 3 the important thing is lots of exposure to a concept and it will finally *click*. :)  Here’s the pattern strips after I re-did them the right way, ha:
Finally, he colored the shapes for the shape House.  He is so not into crayons.  If I had let him use markers I would’ve gotten a better response, I think.  He colored for a while, like this: then he wanted me to finish it.  I had him tell me which color to use for each part, then did it.  He enjoyed being the teacher. :)  Here is the shapes house all finished and put together:

After that we did a few more tot school activities – we used our counting mats to count with M&Ms. :)  We are still only going up to number 4 because he still is working on one to one correspondence and the idea that the last number you say is the number of items.

I created a little measuring activity for him.  I got the idea here, and altered it slightly.  M is really, really into tools lately and of course that includes what he calls his “measurers”, which is a tape measure and a square with a ruler on the side.  So I made this: (ignore the close up of my dirty carpet, please)

He loved this and I think it would’ve gone over even better if I had used something other than ribbon to measure.  But, that was all I could think of at the time.

Then we practiced scissor skills by cutting out large shapes drawn on construction paper:He did so well with this, we saved the shapes to show to Daddy later.  I wish I would’ve taken a picture of them all cut out.   
He loves this little paperclip color match game.  He just recently became very good at doing this and is enjoying his new found skill.  He wanted to do this again another day but lost interest pretty quickly.  So I grabbed the bag of paper clips and gave him a new challenge – paper clip chains: I’m noticing this kid does not smile much for pictures.  Please believe me, though, when I tell you he enjoyed an activity. :)

He practiced spooning the pretty, pretty glass pebbles from a glass dish into an ice cube tray:

We did our fantastic movement cards again and got a little exercise in.  I am thinking of making this a daily activity.

Another day he was itching to do some hammering, so I gave him a large piece of styrofoam that came in a package we received and a baggie full of golf tees.  This kept him busy on and off for most of the day.  The next day he took the golf tees (“nails”) out with his pliers – I was impressed he thought of this – I sure hadn’t. then as I was doing laundry he decided to saw it.  The boy is all about tools these days.  This is what awaited me after the laundry: It was a mess.  But I was not too bent out of shape about it – he had thoroughly enjoyed himself, and the amount of time it kept him occupied was definitely worth the 10 minutes or so of cleaning and vacuuming I had to do. 
I’ve been trying to have a small activity set up for him to do independently around 4:00 pm when Daddy is not yet home but dinner needs to be cooked.  This week we tried stenciling with our do-a-dot painters:I really need to pull together some more activities for this purpose – any ideas?  Nothing too complicated to set up and something he can do by himself.  You know how it is when that time of day rolls around…
Here’s my favorite picture of the week.  M’s cousin S came over and she is a crafty kind of girl.  They crafted all day.  She has been dying to make a sunshine guy like M made a long time ago.  They both made new ones and then posed with them for me: Aren’t they sweet? And the kids are nice too.  ;)  Hee hee.
For more great tot school ideas, go here!  Sorry for so much rambling this week! :)
Have a beautiful day! :)