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Monday, April 30, 2012

Color Mixing Equations


Here we have a fun activity to help your child learn what colors go together to make another color. In case you don't know, here are some basic color creations:

Red and Blue make Purple
Red and Green make Brown
Blue and Yellow make Green
Green and Yellow make a lighter green
Yellow and Red make Orange
Blue and Green makes a Blue-green
Adding white makes a color lighter--so adding White to Red makes Pink. Adding White to Black makes Gray.

The activity pictured was done with do-a-dots. The two colors were put in the circle, and then the color they added up to was put after the equal sign.

You could have a testing paper where the child could mix colors to see what two colors created what new color. I would start by demonstrating a color combination and then let the child combine and answer.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Teacher Appreciation Week Ideas

At our Elementary, I am the PTO rep over Teacher Appreciation Week. It is typically in May. I thought I would share ideas I have found around the internet. I will later share exactly what we did for our whole week with theme and all. For this post, here are several fun ideas for the teachers in your life.

Chocolate Pencils

Colorful Crayon Letter




Candy Gram Teacher Gift

Teacher Appreciation Week (a whole post with ideas)


A Lot of Teacher Gifts (see this link for a whole lot of ideas)

Teacher Survival Kit

Printables

Teacher Subway Art

Teacher Appreciation Ideas

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Bird Nest


Supplies:
  • brown paper lunch sack
  • papers and twigs (and more if desired( to go in nest
  • glue
  • peep or other bird
Activity:
  1. Roll the brown paper sack down to form a nest shape
  2. Add your papers, twigs, etc. and glue in place in your nest
  3. If you want to be able to eat the peep, let glue dry before adding. If not, glue peep in place.
Enriching Activity:
To get more from this activity, talk about why birds build nests, what they use to build nests, and even read a book on birds building nests. 

You can go for a walk and see if you can find some nests in trees in your neighborhood.


Monday, April 16, 2012

Sticky Vowels


Vowels are the letters that hold words together. This is a fun craft to help solidify that idea in your child's mind.

First, find a glue clipart picture you like online (or draw your own).

Second, copy the picture and paste it into your word processing program. 

Third, resize it to the size you like and then copy it and paste it four more times.

Fourth, print this sheet out.

Fifth, you will want letters. You can write them, get stickers or die-cuts, etc. You could even put them on your glue bottles in your word processing program before you print.

For the activity, have your child color the glue bottles, cut them out, and stick the words on the glue bottles. Talk about the role vowels play in our words. Not only will you be increasing your child's understanding of letters in preparation for reading, but also practicing cutting, coloring, and pasting if gluing letters on the bottles. 

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Simple Reading


Kaitlyn came home with these very cute ideas on helping children learn to read simple words in similar word families. In the picture above, you can see the teacher took a paint chip sample, cut out a hole, then printed out a strip of letters that can go along with the two letters to make various words (c-ap, g-ap, l-ap, m-ap, r-ap, s-ap, t-ap, z-ap). The child then moves the paint chip sample and reads the word that goes with the first letter. 


In this example, you see a fun way of incorporating a theme into your word practice. They were learning about the letter P and also farm animals. 


Thursday, April 5, 2012

Easter Egg Lunch


Boy, did my kids love this! Easy and fun (isn't that such a great combination?!?!)
You'll need: plastic easter eggs (I used large and small), an egg carton (optional), and lunch/snack items.
Fill and enjoy!!! There was giggling, suprised laughter, and a whole lot of happy faces at our house.