Letters and numbers are more fun with trucks

I thought I'd share two days worth of school time here where I decided that we'd use our beloved trucks to make it feel just like we were playing.  High-interest stuff always brings on the best learning for us. :)

On day 1, I had these letter cards that I found as a freebie on teachers pay teachers.  I cannot think of the link off-hand, but if you really want them, I'll sure try to dig it up off of my work computer for you.  Letter flash cards or actual objects would work just as well. 
I laid out the letter cards at one end of our living room floor.  I only put out 6--we are working on beginning sounds (Jack) so 26 cards would be a little overwhelming!  I put the 6 letters that matched the beginning sounds of these pictures on the floor across the living room.  We looked at the letters together and named them, and then I let them each take one at a time and put it into their dump truck, roll it across the living room and find the correct picture to place the letter on.  They loved it.  They kept asking for more and more until we had done all of the letter cards!  Here are some pictures to explain a little better how this went.

Here are their trucks--3 to choose from to try to cut down on the fighting... and the letters.  They chose one letter at a time, stuck it in the back of their trucks and drove them across the living room.

 

On day 2, I decided to carry forward the truck theme with another freebie I found via Pinterest.  You can access the truck pattern here: http://www.themeasuredmom.com/printable-counting-mat-fill-the-dump-truck/

 

PS--this activity ended after about 10 blissful minutes with fighting over the trucks and the toddler screaming about Jack taking all of his letters.

 

I thought we would have more fun with this job if I put their numbers (1-5 for Harry and 6-20 for Jack) in their own individual trucks so they could draw out of their instead of a pile.  I chose to have them fill their dump trucks with Legos, and put them in a big truck for them to dig out.  I tried to work with Harry on identifying those numbers 1-5, but he was just so excited to put Legos on the mat that it was difficult to get him to understand the one-to-one counting.  Jack could do this independently, so this was mostly about working with Harry--with limited success. :) But we had fun!

 

 

The set-up: a mat and truck full of numbers for each with Legos to share.

 

 

 PS--this activity ended after 10 minutes of bliss with fighting over trucks and the toddler screaming about Jack taking all of his Legos. Ugh. 

Let me know if you try it and have fun with trucks, too!

Fun With Numbers

We've had an eventful few weeks with family visiting and being away from home.  We've kind of gotten away from our regular "summer schedule" and have all really missed the predictability and fast pace of a well-planned day.  I made sure to be intentional about getting back on track this week, and I'm glad because this family is just much happier with a little structure to our day.

I usually do school time during the late morning, after our morning play time and snack.  Today, I moved it to after lunch, and I was pretty happy with this.  It was a nice segue into a library trip, reading time, and quiet time.  We worked on some number sense stuff today, but I included two days of number stuff in this post, just for fun. 

Set matching:

Two of my favorite set matching activities that we have done lately are here below. 

Jack's favorite is the bingo dauber activity, for sure.  I got these bingo daubers at Target.  They're not as big and bright as the ones I order and use at work, but they're much less expensive and fun for using at home!  I used a 1-6 dice and also a dice that has different colors on each side.  You wouldn't have to use the colored dice, since it's not something most people just have laying around.  Jack had to roll both dice and then use a bingo dauber to fill up a paper with the right number and color.  So, if he rolled 3 and yellow, he would make 3 yellow dots.  If he rolled 6 and blue, he would make 6 blue dots. (Without the colored dice, I would have just let him pick any color.)
Harry also did this activity.  Harry cannot set match, and has no impulse control.  So, for this one, he would roll a color and a number.  He would (sometimes accurately, sometimes not) tell me the number and color, and then proceed to pick his favorite color and just bingo daub to his hearts' content.  Even if he knew it was 5,  he doesn't yet understand that he needs to stop at 5.  If you wanted to work on set matching with a toddler, I would imagine you would have to do this hand-over-hand.  It was just too far above him, he just wanted to have fun using his favorite color.  Have at it, Harry. :)

Tossing the dice



Making the right number of blue dots

My other set matching activity used a 12 sided dice (you could use two regular dice--or just one, if you only wanted to work with numbers 1-6), a pipe cleaner, and beads.  Jack had to roll the dice and choose the correct number of beads to add to his pipe cleaner (fine motor work, as well).  He just kept rolling and stringing on the number of beads that he rolled until it was full.

 



Harry also did this activity, in his own way.  He wanted to put "A LOT" on like Jack, and I was super happy with him for sitting intently and giving it a whirl for a while.  He rolled the dice a few times and would say some of the numbers he rolled, but just strung on beads, which is a very tough fine motor task for a little guy. 

Number identification and sequence:

We used that 12 sided dice again for this and decided that if you rolled an 11 or 12, you lost your turn.  I made a little table of numbers 1-10 on the dry-erase board and set out the magnetic numbers scattered on the table.  We took turns rolling the dice and if we rolled a number that was needed in the table, we got to put it in there.  Harrison was "done" at this point, but I wish he would have done this one with us.  I think he would have been able to match the numbers with the visual cues. 

 

Now that we are back on schedule, it's the weekend!  Oh, well!  We tried! :)

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