Sorting--Toddler Style

I haven't had a lot of luck getting my two year old to cooperate during school time.  Shocker!  :)  It's okay, though!  I really just wanted him to be exposed to a little bit of what I was doing for Jack, and to show some interest every now and then on sticking around and completing a task.  I am not about causing fits to be thrown over "school time" in the summer.  But today, I was really, really hoping that he would be up for doing things my way, because I really wanted him to like this simple little activity.  And he really did!

Today was about color sorting.  He is doing great with colors and is beginning to point them out all over the place, so I figured it is time to start sorting things by color.  Sorting is an important skill, and we happen to have a high-interest item in abundance around here that is great for sorting--cars!

I lined up a bunch of random scraps of construction paper on the floor that I saved from cutting off of projects at work.  I got a tub of a bunch of different cars that could be easily sorted by color, and we got to work.  He was resistant for a couple of seconds, because he was more interested in shoving all of the cars into the back of his tractor, but after sitting on my lap and getting a couple of high fives, he was off.  Totally loved it.

Here are some pictures of the fun:

 

Jack was not super excited about the activities I planned for him (sans cars) when he saw what Harry was doing.  So I told him to set his jobs aside and be the teacher for Harry.  He did great helping him with his orange/yellow confusion. :)

 

 

And just a little quick clip. :)

 

 

I told Jack that next week, he will use the cars and trucks for school time.  I'm planning on having him sort different ways--color, number of wheels, steering wheel or no steering wheel, how many windows, etc... to teach him that there are several ways to sort the same group of objects.  Can you think of some other groups of objects we could use to sort into categories with our kiddos at home?

Water Gun Fun!

Our weather sure got hot in a hurry!  I have been wanting to try this activity out for some time now, and today felt like the perfect day.  The boys were very excited that school time happened outside today.  The prep time was minimal and totally worth it.  They both loved it! If you want to try it out at home, all you need is:

Water guns (We use the cylinder-shaped ones that you pull to load and push to shoot)
Paper
Permanent markers
Good quality packing tape
An outdoor space you don't mind getting wet

So, here's what I did.  I targeted something I want each boy to work on--Jack, teen number recognition.  Harry, colors.  I punched out (using a handy-dandy 3" circle paper punch, but you could use any size or shape of paper that you want) a bunch of circles in different colors.  I wrote teen numbers on several of them for Jack.  I took one of each color for Harry and I wrote each letter of his name on some of them, just for fun.  Here is what they looked like when I was done cutting and writing, plus a shot of Harry's part of the fence.

After I had that ready, I rounded up the troops and let them load their weapons and told them what to shoot!  With Harry, I asked him to find a color and shoot it.  If there was a letter on it, I would identify it for him.  Usually, he would ignore me.  Sometimes, he would say it back. ;) For Jack, I just told him a number and he had to find it.  He did not want to stop.  Loved it!  Here they are!

This would work out really great for so many different things.  You could do color, number, letter or shape identification.  If your kids are older but you think they would still enjoy this, you could write numbers on the circles and call out addition or subtraction sentences and have them hit the sum or difference.  You could write sight words on them.  You could write words on them, call out a rhyming word and have them hit the match.

I was thinking that this would be a fun inside rainy day game if I can run a set through the laminator and post them around the house.  We could trade in the water guns for our nerf guns and it'd be like a whole new challenge.  I would love to hear if you give it a try.  Happy shooting!

Fine Motor Fun

It has been a long week!  Adjusting to our summer schedule is taking us all some time, and throwing two days of rain into the mix made for some long days.  We had a couple of detours from our "refrigerator schedule", which is great--we are going for flexible structure around here in the summer. :)  

My aim is to use the same materials with both boys during school time as much as I can, and to modify up and down so they are both engaged.  This plan did not go very well for the material in this post, but I'll let you know what my aim was, anyway. :)

First, I used some homemade play-doh (my favorite recipe ever, and the reason I will never buy play-doh at the store again) that you can see at this link: Homemade play-doh

I stuck a couple of dry spaghetti noodles in it and gave them some fruit loops to stack on the noodles.  I expected Harry to break the noodles and throw himself on the floor screaming in about 5 seconds.  He didn't!  He liked this task, but didn't get a lot of fruit loops actually on the noodles because they ended up in his mouth.  Still--I'll take it.  He was working on a structured task for some length of time.  Win. :) 

Now, what I wanted to accomplish was to have Jack make a pattern out of the colors of fruit loops.  He said that was too hard, and that he did not want to do that. :)  In hindsight, I would have drawn him a little picture of a pattern and then I think he would have been happy to do it.

For another fine motor activity, I took an old paper towel roll and stuck capital letters on little dot stickers all over it.  I wrote lowercase letters on more dot stickers and gave them to him.  He had to find the capital letters on the paper towel roll and cover them up with the matching lowercase letters.  He only did about half and wanted to stop, so we will do the other half another day.  

I like this activity because it can be easily modified for a bunch of different things.  Just matching capital to capital or lowercase to lowercase is a great plan for learning to identify letters.  Matching numbers would work, too.  I plan to make a toilet paper roll with some of the primary colored sticker dots so Harry can try this activity, as well, just matching and saying the correct colors.  I figured that Harry would be long-gone at this point while Jack continued working (he was) so I didn't have it ready. 

I'm getting ready to plan what tomorrow's activities will be.  I'm thinking patterning or set matching numbers with beads and pipe cleaners--more fine motor fun! 

Schedule Cards

I like structure and a schedule. :)  If you don't already know this about me, you probably don't know me at all.  If that's the case, I'm super happy you already found my blog!  :)  In kindergarten, the day goes so fast because we are constantly moving from one thing to the next.  I love our schedule, even though it is exhausting.  Being at home all day during the summer is a totally different kind of exhausting, and if I don't have a schedule, it is really easy for me to let cartoons go on forever, miss out on opportunities to have some quality outside fun (can I just get one bathroom cleaned!?) or not plan some structured learning time that both of my kids really love. 
I needed the schedule for myself but also wanted the boys to be able to follow along and know what to expect and look forward to each day.  I saw that a mom on Pinterest (it's like my google) had written her schedule out on poster board and cut it apart to make a movable magnetic schedule on her refrigerator.  My wheels started turning, and I immediately began searching for clipart that the boys could easily identify for everything we might do in a day.  I laminated and put magnets on the cards and couldn't wait to use them for our first day of break. Both kids referred to the schedule often and loved it, as well.
The picture I took of today's schedule was for our Saturday.  I did not include my school time card because it's a weekend, and I also have a card for "take a trip" which I will use on day trip days when I don't have much else to add to the schedule. 
Do you have a different schedule system in place?  Do you think your kids would benefit from having a visual schedule?

Saturday's Schedule



Summer Learning At Home

So...I started a blog.  I cannot believe it.  I have never been much of a blog follower, on account of the fact that all of the teacher bloggers I know are AMAZINGLY creative teachers, and I just steal all of their ideas off of Pinterest.  And all of the mom bloggers I've seen are AMAZINGLY patient and creative, and I just steal all of their ideas off of Pinterest. And I pray for their patience. 
As I began counting down the days to summer vacation, I started thinking about my goals at home for the summer with the kids.  Both boys (and me, probably even more) really appreciate having a structured routine in place for days at home.  I wanted some flexibility and downtime, since I don't have much of that during the school year, but I also wanted a good schedule and some productive learning time.  My goal for this summer is just a 30 minute block of "school time" each day that we are home.  (This will be for my 4 year-old, Jack.  for the 2 year-old, it'll be whatever time he is up for.)  I set up a little "homeschool" area in our dining room.  It is nothing fancy--just a little IKEA lack table and a couple of stools.  I set up a dry-erase board with some command Velcro and used two organizing shelves that we had but no longer needed to house materials.  It's a cute little space, and I am sure when we begin testing its functionality next week, we will end up using the much larger dining room table behind it.  I wanted an organized space for them to work, though, and so far they have loved the unstructured time there testing some things out. 
After talking to a couple of other moms, I decided to start this little blog about my adventures in teaching my own kiddos over this summer.  It won't be anything fancy.  It is, after all, my time off from "work", but I love looking for creative and authentic ways to get kids excited about learning, and I'm looking forward to sharing what I try and how it worked (or, more likely, didn't work!)  I hope you enjoy following along with us!

Our little school area