Letters: Angled Lines

The other day, I had McKenna (3) practicing her pre-writing skills as Raegan described in this post:

Pre-Writing Skills

Once she was doing a good job at connecting the dots, we started to practice writing letters. We did the straight lines (like T) and curved lines (like C) with no problem, but the angled lines proved tricky (like A). Since she had done well with the connecting the dots, I had her first write the letter by connecting the dots like we had done in our pre-writing skills practice. It really helped her see how you create the letters with the angle. You can see the progress in the photo I took above (with my phone). So if your child has a hard time with the angled line letters, give this a try! 

It could also be applied to straight line letters. Or you could do a series of dots to follow for the curved lines. 

Number Race

This is an activity you can adapt to work with any theme you have going on that week. This week, it was bugs (Kaitlyn did this at preschool). You have six different items that go along with your theme and assign them a number. You then give the child a dice and have her roll it. Each time she rolls a number, she marks that number on her page. The first number to be filled up wins the race! 

For older children, you can add some challenge by having the child predict which number will win. After the activity is over, have him write about which number he thought would win and which did win. 

The Ever Changing Collage

I have been missing in the blogosphere for quite awhile now.  In light of Val's precious addition and obvious busy-ness I thought I would try to finally post some of our recent activities. We are in the middle of a major move, so please bear with me. I'll do my best!

This ever changing collage is an activity I have done with J a few times over the past few months (3.5-4 years). I tape a piece of white contact paper upside down onto the table (the sticky side should be facing up). I then lay out an array of supplies for him to use to create his artistic masterpiece. I love that this activity truly ignites their creativity. J has evolved from created random collages to images that I can actually interpret clearly.

The fun aspect of this activity is that it is ever-changing. If they don't like the way a certain part of the collage looks, they can rearrange the pieces easily. This is perfect for my little perfectionist. If they begin to lose interest, just add a few new materials to the mix. Creativity rejuvenated!

Here is a picture of his more recent masterpieces.



This is our house and garage with a tree in the front yard, the sun shining, a bird flying, and colorful flower-buttons filling the garden (can't recall a time when my garden looked so good!).

The materials included foam shapes, colorful popsicle sticks, and colorful buttons. These seem to be his favorite materials to use since they leave nothing behind when removed from the contact paper. He gets annoyed when the other materials leave a tiny bit of fuzz or string behind. Did I mention he was a perfectionist?

We have also used pop poms, cotton balls, q tips, fabric pieces, ribbon, larger sequence, toothpicks, straws, pipe cleaners, jewels, rope, and shoe strings. I have found providing just 2 or 3 different materials at a time is enough for him. He gets overwhelmed if I put too many options in front of him. For the above example, I first gave him only the colored popsicle sticks. After he had time to play and create, I brought out the buttons and foam pieces. Bringing out the materials at different times really helps him explore each one's potential (and certainly makes the activity last longer!).

This activity would work for almost any age. Of course watch for choke hazards for those that like to mouth everything in site.

Beginning Sounds Caterpillar

This is a time of year I seem to equate with insect activities. I don't know why, but it is the way my head works. Maybe I am looking forward to saying good-bye to them as the colder weather is in sight? :)

This activity helps focus on first sounds. It is very simple. Draw or create on the computer several circles. Draw or create a caterpillar head. Then print, draw, or find in magazines things that start with the letter C. Have your child color them/cut them out/etc. Have your child glue them into the caterpillar circles.

As your child does this, ask what each thing is and emphasize the "c" sound.

Simple as that!

Christmas Wreath Ornament

Kaitlyn brought this home from preschool last week and it was one of those things where I thought, "Why have I never thought of that?"

Supplies

• green foam
• red ribbon for bow
• string for hanging
• glue
• desired decorations
• scissors

Prep

1. Gather supplies
2. Cut out wreath (you can use straight scissors, but decorative scrapbooking scissors will add some character)

Activity

Have your child decorate as desired! A simple and cute ornament!

Gingerbread Number Activity

As I shared in my post on Monday, we just finished up a week on Gingerbread men. This was our number activity. I found this at this website also: http://www.pre-kpages.com/gingerbread/. 

I made this page by googling "Gingerbread man coloring page" and chose this simple gingerbread man. I then opened it in Photoshop and put numbers in it. You could do it in Word or other programs, also. Here is my copy you are free to use.

The activity is simple. You give your child a dice and something to mark with. You have your child roll and mark off each number as he gets it. My kids really enjoyed it!

For more of a challenge for older children, you could do larger numbers (7-12) and give them two die and have them add the numbers together.

Gingerbread Alphabet

We just finished up a fun week of Gingerbread activities. This was our alphabet activity. I got this idea from here: http://www.pre-kpages.com/gingerbread/. She had a free download of the pages, but it only had letters A-F, so I quickly made some of my own. You can download them here.

To prep this activity, I created the pages, printed them, then laminated pages and letters so they will hold up from year to year.

For my older children (4 and 6), I simply gave the child all of the gingerbread men pages and all of the letters (upper and lowercase) at the same time and told them to match them up. They put the upper and lowercase letters on the same man. This is something that helps them work on letter recognition and keeps them occupied for a good chunk of time. They don't need any assistance from you.

For my 2.5 year old, we did things differently. We did one sheet at a time. I gave her the upper and lowercase letters for the letters on that sheet. She could do the uppercase all by herself, so if you want a younger child to do this activity independently, you might want to just do uppercase letters. She needed help with the lowercase letters.

The way I helped her understand grouping the letters together even if they looked different is I told her the man on the page is the "daddy letter," the uppercase letter was the "mommy letter," and the lowercase letter was a "baby letter." This worked for her because she is obsessed with babies. It helped her grasp that the letters can go together even if they don't look the exact same.

I had her hold a letter up and tell me what letter it was, then match it. She could get all uppercase, and knew some lowercase, but didn't know them all. It was a great exercise in getting her to think about lowercase letters.

For younger toddlers, I would recommend doing just uppercase. For a pre-toddler or baby, you might hold the letter up and say what it is and then put it on the page or have your child put it on the page if possible.

Paper Plate Ghost

Paper plates are amazing. I think you can turn a paper plate into just about anything. 

Here we have a paper plate ghost. 

Supplies:

• Paper plate
• White paper (if arms are desired)
• White crepe paper
• Black paper
• Scissors
• Glue or stapler

Method:

This is a simple paper plate activity because the end-product is white. 

1. If hands are desired, draw and cut out the arms/hands. Either you do this or have your child do it if scissor skills are up to it.
2. Cut out black eyes and mouth. You can draw and cut out, or you can draw and have your child cut out, or have your child draw and cut out. You will know what is appropriate for your child.
3. Cut several pieces of crepe paper.
4. Glue or staple all pieces on. I like glue because the child can do it, but a staple has the potential to hold better.

Fall Shape Tree

Brayden made this fun project in first grade.

Supplies

• construction paper
• scissors
• glue

Activity

Have your child draw and cut out a tree trunk if appropriate. If not, do that ahead of time. Then have your child cut out various shaped leaves from different colors and glue to the tree. Again, if your child is not ready for scissors, you cut out the shapes ahead of time. Talk about the different colors and shapes as you go. When you are done you will have a fun fall picture!

Paper Plate Apple {plus fine motor bonus}

So this is my other fun activity from Kaitlyn's preschool class I wanted to share. It is a paper plate apple with a fine motor activity. You could do one or the other or both together.

The paper plate apple is a very simple craft. You paint the paper plate the color you want it. Then you cut out and glue a green leave to the top. You could also add a brown stem. Children LOVE to paint. You could also color it or do cheating paint and paint with do-a-dots. If I want to do "paints" but don't have the patience for paints, we use do-a-dots.

The other is a worm fine motor writing activity. There are simply pictures of worms, a dotted line for the path the worm took, then the apple the worm ate. You could find pictures of worms on the internet. Then find pictures of apples on the internet. Copy them and put them into a Word document. Then make dotted lines.

OR 

You could print the little pictures, cut them out, and paste them onto a page and draw the dotted lines yourself.

OR 

You could just draw the whole thing. I am not artist, but lately I  have come to prefer that method. Then it turns out how my head wants it to :) But I do check the Internet first in case someone has previously stolen the image from my head and kindly put it on the Internet first ;).

You then have the child color the pictures and trace the dotted like. This builds fine motor control for preparing for handwriting. You can see these lines Kaitlyn did get harder to do, and you can see how her top lines are perfect, and bottom lines are not. Good practice!

Simple Apple Sort

Kaitlyn (4) is now in preschool three days a week. Last week she learned about apples at preschool and came home with lots of fun ideas. I just love her teacher. This one is very simple. The children each got a little baggie of apples. These are die-cuts. You could do printouts or stickers as well. They then sorted them by color into the four different sections on the page. 

For younger children, you could color each section the colors of your sorting ideas. So one red, one green, one blue, and one yellow. It would make the sorting easier for younger children (like toddlers). Quick and easy!

Ice Melting Bags

This was one of our science activities when J was almost 2 years old. I made several different colored ice cubes using food coloring.  I had J separate the different colors into sandwich bags and we taped them to the dishwasher so they would be at his eye level.  We described the ice together (cold, hard, slippery, heart-shaped in our case).  I opened the freezer door and had him feel inside.  He noticed that it was cold in the freezer.  I told him that ice needed to be kept cold or it would melt. Since we had already worked with ice a little, I asked him if he remembered what happens when it gets warm and he did!!  He replied “water!”  By this point our ice bags had already begun to melt, so I had him look for water in the bags.   He was excited to find some in a couple of the bags!  Throughout the afternoon, we kept an eye on our ice bags.  I pointed out that the ice was getting smaller and the water in the bag was increasing.  We talked about the different properties of ice and water.  By dinnertime, he was excited to show daddy his bags (of now colored water) and to tell him that the ice had become water because they got warm. 

I got the general idea for this activity from  http://www.preschoolrainbow.org/toddler-theme.htm.

You could easily turn this into a color mixing activity or get more specific by placing more ice in one bag and noticing how it melts slower this way, discuss why,…

Becca also blogs at Fun and Engaging Activities for Toddlers 

Foam Fish

This is another cute craft Kaitlyn did at playgroup this past year. It is a foam fish. 

Age Range

I think you can make this work anywhere from 1 on up.

Materials

• Piece of foam
• Scissors
• Marker/pen/pencil
• Stickers, jewels, etc. to decorate fish with 
• Glue

Activity

1. You first need a foam fish. Depending on the age and ability of the child, either you draw or have the child draw a fish on the foam.
2. Also depending on the ability of the child, either you cut out or have the child cut out along the lines.
3. Now is when any aged child can participate. Time to decorate the fish! For babies, you can pull the stickers off and give them to her to put on the fish. Toddlers can apply glue and put the decorations on the fish. 

Companion Book

This activity would be fun in conjunction with the Rainbow Fish. 

Homemade Audio Books

When I was little my grandmother recorded stories on tape for us all the time.  We still have some of them!  She also sent some to my cousins who were overseas at the time.  I think this is an awesome gift for little ones that live far away.  They get to hear your voice on a consistent basis, acting out your love from thousands of miles away by reading stories to them!

 

A few years ago I took the same concept and made a set of books on CD for my nephews (age 2 and 3 at the time).  I chose some favorite books from childhood and recorded myself and my husband reading them using my computer. 

I used a free recording software called Audacity.  It worked well.  Their software was easy to use and easy to edit.  I later went in and added a little chime sound for when the page should be turned.  The software made it easy to dub the chime to my saved recording.  Just Google “free sound effects” to find a wide array of choices.  Finally I burned all the stories onto a cd, made a cute little cover for it and packaged cd and books together for my nephews. 

We also recorded some fun family stories and songs and I added a few stories from my grandma and grandpa using the tapes they gave us as kids.

I should add that I am not a technological expert by any means.  I have trouble with Facebook!   I guarantee that if I could do this, anyone could.

It really wasn’t a difficult project to complete and I think it’s a great gift.  I recently burned all those same stories onto a cd for J so it’s become a gift that keeps on giving!  It’s been great to use on road trips and plane trips.  It also works great while cooking dinner or entertaining toddler while busy with the baby.

Since all toddlers and preschoolers tend to love hearing themselves, a great addition to your audio assembly would be having them join you in reading key words, recite a poem or even read a simple book themselves.

Becca also blogs at Fun and Engaging Activities for Toddlers 

Building Rainbows

J loves rainbows.  So of course, I’m going to capitalize on this interest to teach all that I can.  Using rainbows to teach colors is of course great.  We have rainbows drawn outside on our driveway every week during the summer.  Today it finally clicked that I could use rainbows to teach size, similar to the colorful stacking rings J has had since infancy.

 

I cut each band of the rainbow out of construction paper and had J glue them in the correct order (largest to smallest).

Afterwards, it occurred to me that this could be a good airplane activity.  Since we fly so often, potential plane activities are always on my mind. I would precut foam/felt instead of construction paper and let J create on the seatback tray.  Foam/felt creations work well on planes and they take up little space and weight in your carryon!

This would also be a good craft after discussing the story of Noah, emphasizing that the God still places rainbows in the sky to remind us that He always keeps his promises.

To increase the level of difficulty, just add more bands to the rainbow.

Becca also blogs at Fun and Engaging Activities for Toddlers 

Balloon Hacky Sack

I first must praise my camera. That is an awesome picture. I love my camera. I am no photographer and look what my camera has produced. I also love sunny days that help my camera.

Okay, so today we had our library craft day. This fun Hacky Sack ball was one of the crafts we made. 

Age Range: 

This is great for children of all ages. As long as you trust your child with balloons and small seed-like things, you can do this with your child. At the activity, children one and up were doing this.

Materials:

• Balloons
• Scissors
• Funnel
• Hard wheat or bird seed. You could also use small plastic pellets.

Activity:

1. Choose three balloons
2. Cut the "neck" of the balloon off of two of the balloons right where it juts out from the round part of the balloon. One of these will be your outer edge of the hacky sack, so may sure your favorite color will be one of these.
3. Stretch and blow up the third balloon. Then release the air. This is just to stretch it out.
4. Put the third balloon over the small end of the funnel.
5. Fill the balloon with the seed/wheat/pellets. We used hard wheat, but if you don't own that already, I would do one of the other options.
6. Work it all in so it is out of the neck.
7. Cut the end of the neck off, but not the entire neck. Just the bulky end part. 
8. Fold the remaining neck so it is flat against the balloon.
9. Put one of the two cut balloons over the balloon now full of seeds. Put the neck portion of the filled balloon into the second balloon first so that the openings are not next to each other.
10. Repeat with the final balloon. You can always use more balloons if you want to.

You now have a fun ball to play with! I don't know about you, but my kids love balls. 

Prayer Book

Started around 17 or 18 months, J and I read a Bible story and then pray together before starting our day.  A friend of mine had the best idea that I’ve adopted into our routine (thanks mamanickles!).  I made a prayer journal to help J through our prayers each day. It’s basically a notebook of pictures and names. It starts with the thankfulness page and then is divided into five categories (separated by colored dividers), family, friends, government officials, ministers, and military servicemen/women. I covered each page with page protectors so that J could handle the book himself without fear of tearing the pages. 

Every morning we pray for one person from each side of the family and then one person in each of the other categories. So we are praying for 6 people a day which turns out just right for his attention span. He really likes it. After using it only a few weeks, J would immediately fold his hands to pray when I picked tup he notebook.  If I don’t pick up the notebook quick enough, he would point to it. This became his way of reminding me.

It’s so easy to add new friends or replace pages with newly elected officials.  When I recently added new friends to the notebook, he had a few days where he only wanted to pray for them. He also likes to just flip through the book afterward. He learned President Obama this way. Another benefit is that it’s helping him become more comfortable with the pastors at church.  He used to shy away from the children’s pastor every time we saw him (which is often since I work with them during the week), after introducing the prayer book and praying for Pastor John a couple times, J is suddenly friendly in person too! If your little one is cautious or deals with separation anxiety, this would be a great way to help them grow more comfortable with caregivers (Sunday school teachers, babysitters, distant family, etc.).

Becca also blogs at Fun and Engaging Activities for Toddlers 

Texture Flashcards

I made these texture cards to entertain J on plane trips starting around 10 months old.  I reserved them for those special trips so that they would keep their novelty.  J loved them.  The cards are made of cardstock.  They have survived fairly well, though there have been a few that have found their home in the trash. Still they have served their purpose well.  You could also use thick cardboard to make them stronger. 

In choosing textures, I basically went through the house in search of interesting textures that would be fairly easy to attach to the cardstock (I was is a rush!).  I really didn’t get very creative with my textures, but J was still entertained. You’ll notice quiet a few cards with puffy stickers and foam stickers which were especially easy to make, buttons, sponge, styrofoam, post it tabs, duct tape flaps (I created windows and placed a sticker behind the window), fabric, clear plastic, net, velcro …  The only one I can remember that isn’t pictured is the velcro card.  J still really likes this card since it is interactive (he can remove and replace the velcro pieces).  It’s somewhere around the house, I just can’t find it for the picture!

The back side of the texture cards honestly don’t look so pretty.  I covered a lot of the back sides with packing tape or duct tape.  In hind site, I could’ve created duct tape flaps on the back of all the cards so that they would be double sided.

To create prettier cards you could cut larger pieces of the cardstock and attach the texture on half of the card.  You would then old the card in half, cut a window to see and feel the texture and finally glue the card shut.

For good teachable moments, discuss the similarities and differences about each texture, have your little one come up with adjectives to describe the texture (smooth, shiny, bumpy, squishy, crinkly, …), or sort the textures.

Family Board Book

I made these board books for J when he was 12 or 13 months old. It was SO easy to accomplish and well worth it.  J has always loved them.  I think these would be great from infancy on.  Just keep your little one’s slobber away since the ink will bleed… or better yet, seal the pages beforehand.

I bought a board book kit from Amazon; I’m pretty sure this is the link. The kit included the books, blank labels for each page and a computer template to download.  Of course you don’t have to use the labels.  You can draw on the books or even have your toddler create their own book.

The family book I made is very simple.  I included parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.  We don’t live anywhere near ANY family, but I really wanted J to learn who all his relatives were.  This way when we are able to see them, he was already familiar with their pictures at least.  Each page in the book has just one labeled picture so it’s very clear who is who.  I used to read this book a lot to him before we took a trip to visit family to refresh his memory.  After each trip we’ve taken to visit family, J tends to return to the book a lot on his own too. I do think if I were to do it again, I would try and include photos that were a little more fun… like Grandpa playing with a ball or Aunt Jenn riding a bike (whereas I just have a photo of each one smiling).

“My Dad Loves Me” was actually a Father’s day gift (from J to daddy).  This is his favorite of the two board books, probably because Daddy is J’s favorite person in the world!  I included lots of pictures of J and dad from birth, on. I added a rhyming story to go along with the photos.  J loves that he sees them playing the guitar or playing with a ball in the pictures.  When we’ve taken a few trips without dad, I brought J’s daddy book along with us to read which he really likes.
Here’s the text of J’s daddy’s book:

Right from the start, Dad was my biggest fan. 

We share kisses and cuddles and lots of big grins.

My Daddy is teaching me to play the guitar.

I’m teaching him to take care of the car.

We work out together.

We act silly together.

We walk and we ride and we explore together.

We splash around in the pool.

We eat ice cream ’till we drool.

Whether we’re playing ball or just hanging out,

My Daddy loves me. You can’t get better than that!

Another side benefit of the board books is that when J has experienced a little separation anxiety and hesitant to play alone, I have kept the books within his reach so he has pictures of those he loves close by.  I got this idea from an online group I’m in.  I’m honestly not sure how much this helped since any bout of separation anxiety was very short lived for J.  It certainly didn’t hurt though!

Sticker Sorting

We do a lot of sticker sorting in this house. It is a great way for J to practice categories and also helps him with fine motor skills (getting the stickers off really works those pincher muscles).  It requires little prep on my part and the only supplies necessary are paper and stickers! These activities also work really well on airplanes (easy to pack and keeps them occupied for a long time!).  We travel a lot and I always have some type of sticker sorting included in our carry-on bag.

Prep: I printed out pictures of a road, the water and the sky. You could definitely just draw these as part of the activity on the plane.  I then cut out stickers of things that were found in each location.  I placed the stickers in a zip-up pencil bag.  J pulled out one sticker at a time and decided which setting it should be placed in.  This worked really well and kept him occupied for awhile (he had a lot of stickers to place).

 

We’ve also done a similar activity in a hotel room.  I drew a train track, road and lake on some paper and he found stickers to place on each.  He was then quite content to drive his cars around the tiny road for quite awhile!

Finally we’ve done something similar at a restaurant.  I have a random assortment of items in my purse at any given moment.  In this case stickers and index cards.  We drew a setting on each one and he sorted the stickers.

These type of activities would also work well for long doctor appointments and car rides too or at home of course.

Here are a couple other examples I’ve posted on in the past:
Sorting Colors with Stickers
Counting with Stickers

We’ve also done shapes, seasons, letters and animal homes.  The possibilities are limited only by your sticker collection.