Shaving Cream Spelling Practice

We are always looking for ways to make learning more engaging around here, so when Erik needed some help with his spelling words we decided to bust out one of our favorite supplies; shaving cream! Shaving cream free play has been one of Erik's favorite things since he was a toddler, and we've had lots of fun with it over the years. 

This day I set up all three kids with a tray, some shaving cream, and a few drops of food coloring. The older two loved it, but Maren wasn't quite as impressed. She played for a moment or two, then wanted to get cleaned up. Oh well, she'll learn to love it eventually. :)

 After giving the kids a few minutes to play around, I started having Erik spell his spelling words with his finger in the shaving cream. This works great because it gets both fine and gross motor muscles involved, as well as multiple senses. And, the more of yourself you get involved in an activity the better you remember it, so theoretically this is a great way to memorize those boring old spelling words!

Spelling Practice with Game Tiles

 I've been looking for fun ways to help Erik learn his spelling words, and while this one isn't super exciting, it's something out of the ordinary and that's good enough for me.
I pulled out our Banagrams game, but you could use Scrabble, or Boggle, or any other game that has letter tiles. I chose to use these ones because they don't have any numbers on them (like the Scrabble ones do) that might be distracting.

I sorted out a pile of all the letters that Erik would need and put the rest away. Then I gave him the pile and let him get started. I was really curious to see how he'd arrange them all on the table, and he's just like his mom. He wanted them all in a nice neat column. :)

 This activity was really great because it made him really have to think about which letter came next while he searched through the pile for it.
After he'd gotten them all spelled out on the table we went through all the words spelling them each out loud. He had fun and we made progress towards mastering his list, so it was great.

*Diedre Mower is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. This post contains affiliate links.

Pudding Writing Spelling Practice

In March of this year our family loaded up and moved from our beloved Glenwood, New Mexico to Arizona's Phoenix valley. One of the many HUGE changes that meant for our family was that Erik started attending a new school. He went from a tiny school with one teacher (pre-k through 3rd grade) and a grand total of 8 students, to a school with more than 1000 students and a class of more than 25 kids. His new school has a mandatory homework policy (don't even get me started!), so we found ourselves trying to find ways to help Erik get his work done without pushing him to the point of burn-out. Practicing spelling words was becoming a fight, so I've been compiling a list of fun ways to get that job done. I'll be sharing several of them here for anyone else looking for better ways to memorize things.

For today's Spelling Practice idea, we've got pudding writing. It's so easy to set up! Mix up a box or two of instant pudding in any flavor, spread it on a sheet pan (or serving tray, or whatever you have that works) and tell your child a word to spell. They get to use their finger to write the word, then lick it clean when they're done. Everyone wins!

 Well, everyone wins except for you, because you have to look at my crummy phone pictures. I lost my camera for about a month so this is as good as it gets. :)

 The fun thing about this is that it works for all ages. For Maren and Sharli this was just pudding painting, like we've done before.

 There are several reasons why this is an excellent way to practice spelling. Here are a few:
- the more senses you get involved the more likely you are to remember things. This is great sensory stimulus, bringing in smell, taste, touch, and sight.
- the more emotions you involve in an experience the more likely you are to remember it. See the joy on this face:

 - gross motor (large muscle) movement (moving your whole arm while you write in the pudding) means you're getting more of your body involved which means better memory building.

 So, whether you're looking for a way to learn some new words, or a way to keep little fingers busy, there's something here for everyone.

Summer Reading Fun: The 3 Little Pigs

This story is one of my kids' favorites right now. They love to pretend to huff and puff like the wolf, or tell me "not by my chiny hair!", which is as close as Sharli can manage to the pigs' reply right now. In addition to the more traditional versions of this book, there are some really fun spin-offs out there too. Some of my favorite spin-offs have ninjas, or big bad pigs, or a poor wolf who was framed. My all time favorite version of this story is by David Weisner. With an out-of-the-box approach to the story and beautiful illustrations it's one I want to own someday!

We didn't do anything special with the play dough this week, although these cute play dough mats would have been fun!

For our sensory play I made sticky story boards for each child with an outline of a house drawn on the back of the contact paper. Each child had their own sticky board taped to a piece of construction paper. I had cut out tons of little pieces of construction paper to make straw sticks and bricks, and the kids could choose what to make their house out of. Like this, except I chose contact paper over turning a dozen kids loose with glue.
I am SO SO SO sorry for the terrible pictures. I forgot my camera, so I used the one on my poor old (not smart) phone.

For our craft I copied some cute masks and let each child pick which character's face to decorate. We had crayons, markers, stickers, stencils, etc. It was funny how many kids wanted to be the big bad wolf.

These would have been better printed on cardstock, but I only had regular printer paper. To keep the holes for the string from tearing right through I folded a strip of scotch tape around the edge of the paper before punching the holes. 

 Our gross motor game was going outside and running around with the masks on. Depending on the age and interest level of your kiddos you could do a more organized game, something like this perhaps?

*Diedre Mower is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. This post contains affiliate links.

Letter D Duck Craft

As I was planning our letter D theme, I saw this duck craft and knew it was the one for us! Erik has never been a big fan of coloring so instead we decided to paint our duck. We started out revisiting our Dot Painting technique from a day or two before, but Erik just wanted to dive in and the cotton swabs quickly fell by the wayside. 

After our letter D had dried, we cut it out and glued it onto a fresh sheet of paper. Great chance for some fine motor skills!

I gave Erik the duck's body parts (which I had cut out of construction paper), and he glued those on as well.

Last, but not least, the feathers! We found these at WalMart for cheap, and there are lots left to play with.

Finished!

We came up with a short description for his duck so we could incorporate some lower case D's into this, and then hung him on the well next to our other ABC animals.

Dot Painting, Exploring Pointillism

For our letter D art activity, we explored Pointillism, or Dot Painting as we called it. 

Let's gather our supplies:
Paint (we were out of store-bought paint, so we made some of our edible finger paint and it worked great)
Cotton Swabs
Paper (I traced clipart of things that started with D, as well as the letter D, but I also gave Erik some blank pages to explore with too.)

After demonstrating the idea of "dot" painting, I turned Erik loose with the paint and let him dot away. Or not, whatever suited him. He dotted for a while, but (as always) it was just a matter of time until this morphed into finger painting, and body painting, and just general mess making. 

 It was fun to talk about the sound the letter D makes while exploring a new art technique. This took some fine motor skill and hand/eye coordination, which makes it a great physical learning experience as well as a creative one.

Deal A Story

This is another activity given to us by my amazing mother-in-law. It is very simple to put together, and the odds are good that you already have what you need right in your home. 

Let's gather our materials:

Playing cards with numbers on them (regular face cards, UNO cards, Rook cards, Skip-Bo Cards, whatever you have)

That's it! Piece of cake, right? No prep, although this is a game that requires your participation. 

 So how do we play?

Deal two or three cards facedown to each player. Choose a child to turn over a card and name the number on it. Use the number as you begin telling a story. Then continue, each turning over a card and saying it's number to incorporate into the story. For example: (child turns over a ten) "Ten little rabbits went to town." (child turns over a two) "They went to two houses looking for food." (next card is a five) "At the second house they met five kind children." (next card is a seven) "The children gave them seven carrots." Continue the story using the number cards. Older children can take turns being the storyteller, adding to the story on their turn.

*Diedre Mower is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. This post contains affiliate links.

Book list for Learning the Letter C

Here are some of the books we've been enjoying while learning about the letter C. Some of these came from the library, and some we pulled from our Book Nook. 

Erik's favorite by far has been "A Bad Case of Stripes", which came out of our own collection. I wasn't sure he'd enjoy this one, as it seemed a bit too advanced for him, but I was wrong. He loves it. It is the story of a young girl who tries so hard to be what everyone else wants/expects of her that she looses the ability to be herself. Only by doing something true to herself does she regain her true form. 

My favorite is probably "Clara Caterpillar", both for it's cute story and pictures, as well as for the incredible number of C's that are stuffed into the pages of this book. To quote the Amazon description: "A carefree cabbage caterpillar named Clara, who becomes a common cream-colored butterfly, can′t possibly compete with a catty, conceited caterpillar named Catisha, who becomes a captivating crimson-colored butterfly. Or can she?" Is that enough C's for you?

The Honorable Mentions go to: 

"Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?"; a fun collection from different illustrators showing why they each think the chicken crossed the road.

"The Carrot Seed"; Erik's favorite of the library books we checked out. It's a very simple story about a boy and his carrot. 

*Diedre Mower is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. This post contains affiliate links.

Cutting Practice

Erik loves to cut things up with his scissors. He will just sit and chop things into tiny pieces, just for the fun of it. I figured I'd use this to my advantage this week, and kill two birds with one stone. First, it helps him practice an important skill, second, it keeps him busy while I prep our activity for the day.

I've done things like this before where I gave Erik a sheet of paper to cut on while I'm busy, but this is the first time he really tried (and had some success) to cut on the lines. 

He decided peeling carrots looked like more fun, that's okay though because he was still building some great skills doing that too!

It's a simple activity, and the prep for it takes a minute, tops. But it keeps the kiddo busy and builds those finger muscles and hand-eye coordination, so it's a huge win in my book!

Coffee Grounds Writing Practice

One of our neighbors came to our house a few weeks ago with a big box of food to see if we wanted any of it. The catch was all of it was past its expiration date. I dug through the box and found a few things that I thought would still be safe to consume or that could be re-purposed and let her do with the rest as she saw fit. Among other things we got some cans of sweetened condensed milk to make edible glossy paint to share with our play group friends and a few small bags of decaf coffee. 

I will admit that we are not coffee drinkers around here. I'm not aware of having ever had coffee to drink in my life, and I don't really care for the smell. So why would I keep the coffee? Well, there are all kinds of ideas going around online for ways to play with coffee grounds, such as "mud" play dough, home made fossils, worms and dirt sensory bins,  paint, and so much more. I thought we'd give some of them a shot, so I hung on to that old expired coffee. 

My plan was to start with some simple writing practice then move up to a sensory bin for both kids, then maybe some playdough. This was going to fill up several days worth of activity time, all with only using one material and a free (to us) one at that! 

For the writing practice, I just dumped a couple of packages of ground coffee onto a baking sheet and we had fun drawing designs and practicing writing the letter C. 

We played with this for probably about 10 minutes, but by that point I realized that unused ground coffee has a pretty dang strong aroma. And remember how I said I don't really care for that particular aroma? I was being nice. I REALLY don't like it. And apparently neither does Erik, he kept complaining about how stinky it was.
Finally, we gave up the attempt to get used to the smell. I emptied the remaining packets of coffee onto the tray and took it all outside to the garden. In a few months our veggie plants will thank us for the treat.
Now, I do have to say the really gritty feel of the coffee was a fun texture, and if we could have gotten past the smell we would have had a lot of fun with this one. If you happen to be one of the majority of our society who does enjoy coffee then I'd encourage you to give this one a try, either with unused ground coffee or the leftovers from the making of your morning cup (dry the grounds in the oven at the lowest possible temp).

A Book About Me

I found this fun idea for a social studies activity for preschoolers here, and thought that making our own book fit nicely with our letter B theme. I didn't take the time the day we made this to pull up my computer to look up the exact page ideas used in the link, but I think I like ours better anyways. 

So let's gather our materials:

-sturdy paper (we used construction paper)

-stickers, yarn, misc. embellishments

-crayons

-glue

-small dollar store photo album (or you could just use a stapler and staple your pages together)

I started by cutting out blank pages from a variety of colors of paper, though plain white would have worked as well. I used a marker to write the words on each page (and make simple drawings on a few, you'll see what I mean), then showed him how to complete the details on each page to make them personal to him. 

I feel like we're lacking in fine-motor skills, so this activity was also meant as a way to encourage some practice in that area. I tried to make it so that for each page we used a different skill/technique to make the page itself. I wrote words with dotted-line letters for Erik to trace...

...I had him cut out shapes from different colors of paper...

 ...I let him glue items to the different pages...

...some pages he got to color with crayons or colored pencils, most he decorated with stickers.  Here are some of our pages:

Other page ideas:

A page for each member of the family

The child's birthday

The child's pet

Favorite book, food, movie, toy, etc

Where you live

Hair color

Once you've made all the pages you want, stick them in a small photo album or staple them together. Enjoy reading your creation together!

 In the end we wound up with a book all about one of his favorite subjects, that he made with his own hands. It's fun to watch him pull it out and flip through the pages. He loves trying to remember what all the words are on the pages. I love that he got a glimpse into where books come from, as well as the assurance that he's important. So important there's a whole book about nothing but him. 

Letter B Butterfly Craft

 For our letter B craft we decided to use this idea as our inspiration. I wanted our letter B to look more like the letter would when found in a book or elsewhere in print, so we didn't use her printable. Instead I used my trick of finding a font I like in my word processor and copying the outline of the letter onto a paper. Also, I couldn't find my roll of contact paper, so we had to improvise. Let's gather our supplies:
-Sheet of plain paper
-Large letter B cut our of colored construction paper
-Black (or gray, or whatever you like) butterfly body cut out of construction paper
-Squares of tissue paper
-White glue
-Pencil

Start by gluing the B and the body to your paper.

 We used a marker to make up a simple sentence about our creation. I did this before we were finished because I didn't want to smash the tissue paper while writing.
Apply a light layer of glue (Erik helped me with the glue, so it wasn't quite as controlled as I wanted, but it worked) on your letter. Wrap a square of tissue paper around the end of the pencil and stick it on the glue.

 The idea was to do the entire B with the little tufts of tissue paper, but that was a lot of work for Erik's little fingers.

He eventually gave up and just stuck the squares of paper directly onto the paper, and that was just fine. This is HIS work of art after all. 

 When the B was completely covered in tissue paper squares we set our creation aside to dry and went outside to play. It now hangs proudly on the wall next to our Alligator A.

Filling up the Letter B

To help introduce the sound the letter B makes, we used this idea from The Measured Mom (she has TONS of alphabet activities, you should check it out!). The first time we did this I handed Erik a bunch of teddy Bear counters and a paper with a large letter B on it. I didn't tell him what to do with it, I just handed it over. He immediately started filling the letter up with bears. We talked about the different colors, we lined them up in a row, we made up little stories about them. At some point I asked him what sound a B makes and made the connection to the bear counters, but I didn't dwell on it. I wanted this to be fun. 

 The next day I put our letter B on a cookie sheet along with another piece of paper with four circles, each colored a different color and labelled with the correct color name. Again, I didn't give any instructions, just turned him loose. He never did sort the buttons by color (he's just not really into sorting things), but he did ask what the words said and we talked about that. He started to outline the B with the buttons, but got distracted just enjoying looking at all the different kinds of buttons. He's asked for this activity several times since this, but due to the choking hazard for Sharli we just haven't had another good opportunity to pull the buttons back out. We will though, don't worry.

Books for the Letter B

We managed to find a good selection of books that work with the letter B. About half of them came from our public library and the other half came out of our Book Nook. It was fun to discover how many of our own books worked for this theme. If you need help coming up with books for the letter B, you can find some good lists here and here. 

I won't give you details about all the books, but I will highlight a few of our favorites. 

 How Will We Get to the Beach? is one of Erik's favorite books to borrow from the library. It details the struggles of a young mother who just wants to enjoy a day at the beach with her baby, but can't get there after her car breaks down. There is a fun element of hide and seek as you try to figure out which item is missing from each page.

 Bear and Bunny Grow Tomatoes was a fun read. It's the story of two neighbors each trying to grow a tomato garden with varying levels of success. Don't worry, everyone ends up with a good tomato harvest in the end, though maybe not as they thought it would all play out.

 Bunny my Honey is the sweet story of a mommy rabbit and her love for her baby bunny. The baby gets lost in the woods, but it all works out in the end thanks to his loving mommy.

I'm a Big Brother (and it's companion book, I'm a Big Sister) is a cute little book all about the good things that come along with having a new baby. We bought this book for Erik a few weeks before Sharli was born, and I think he really liked it. He didn't really get that the big brother in the book represented him until a few days after Sharli came home, but I still think it was worth the purchase. 

So there you have it, all our favorite books for learning the letter B. 

*Diedre Mower is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. This post contains affiliate links.