Teaching Two » educational

July Calendar- Writing & Reading Activities

Anne — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 13:19:49 +0000

I got such great feedback from my June math calendar that I decided to make one for July that gets them working on their reading and writing skills. I went ahead and did it since I am scheduled to have the baby on the 24th. Ashlyn has really enjoyed the math activities we have been doing. I gave her a spiral notebook she calls her “Math Journal” and she does each daily activity in there. Once she completes one, she puts a sticker on her chart.

I plan on doing the same thing with the July calendar. I choose activities that she would enjoy and some might not be available for everyone. Feel free to modify it (here’s the word file) to whatever works for you and your child.

Get more ideas like this over at Homeschool Creations.

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Minute Math – Everyday for June

Anne — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 02:07:40 +0000

Teaching my kids is something I try to do everyday even if they aren’t aware they are learning. I like to make math something they learn to use in everyday situations.

Here is a calendar of ideas to do with your kids each day during the month of June. They only take a few minutes and will help keep math fun. Enjoy!

Check out more great ideas at Homeschool Creations.

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Fifty Nifty United States

Anne — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 16:05:18 +0000

Ashlyn has been very interested in learning the states so I got out my old map poster and put it in her room. I decided to make it into a game. I used some bug stickers and made a key on a piece of paper. I put a different kind of bug for each state I wanted her to find. Most of the states I chose have family that live there. Then I wrote the name of that state next to the sticker. She had to find the state and put a matching sticker on it. She loved it and even read all the states that she found to me.

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Matching Activity

Anne — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 21:33:10 +0000

I had Emily find things around the house that were different shapes. She chose some of her toys and also wanted to spell out her name using her foam letters. She placed them on a dark piece of construction paper and we set them outside in the hot Florida sun.

After about an hour we brought them in and had a homemade matching game. This could be used for learning shapes, numbers, sight words, letters, or practicing spelling their names.

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Kid Friendly Friday- Great Websites for Kids

Anne — Fri, 15 May 2009 13:25:25 +0000

Here is a list of some free educational websites for kids. My girls (5 & 2) love playing on the computer and have become pros at using the mouse. Have fun!

www.starfall.com (the best website for learning letters, sounds, phonics)
www.spellingcity.com (games using spelling words that your kids type in)
http://jimspages.com/States.htm (kids will learn US geography)
www.peepandthebigwideworld.com
www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/fimbles/index.shtml
www.bbc.co.uk/schools/laac/menu.shtml

Check out more Kid Friendly Friday posts here.

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Pom Pom Patterning

Anne — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 02:32:05 +0000

I was running low on some of my crafts so I decided to hit up Michael’s the other day. I bought this huge bag of pom poms because there are so many things you can do with them.

For my 5 year olds room time activity this morning I decided to have her do some patterning with the pom poms. I created a sheet of small & large sized circles on Microsoft Word.

I had her create patterns with the pom poms by placing different colored ones in the circles. Then, she had to color the circles the same color of the pom pom’s she had there.

When she came out of room time, I had her show me her sheet so I could see the patterns she’d come up with.

Bonus: My 2-year old saw the paper Ashlyn had created and asked about it. I decided it would be the perfect activity for her to find the pom poms that matched the colors in the circles and put the pom poms on top of them.

Get the already made copy at my Math page.

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Sight Word Go Fish

Anne — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 03:07:45 +0000

Here’s a fun way to reinforce sight word recognition by playing the game Go Fish. Make a deck of 21 pairs of sight words using index cards cut in half. Deal five cards to each player and make the rest the “fish pond”. Play the game just like Go Fish. As your child’s reading vocabulary grows, add more cards to the deck. You can also play this game using numbers or letters instead of sight words.

Here are some other sight word activities.

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Making Words Activity

Anne — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:39:45 +0000

I’ve been posting a lot of activities to do with 2 year olds lately so I wanted to post one that I did with my 5 year old yesterday. When I taught 1st grade, I did a lot of making words activities with my class. They had fun doing them and had no idea just how much they were learning in the process. Rhyming is an important part of beginning reading and helps children decode words. When they are able to pick up and move letters around to make different words they are able to use sounds and start to understand how letters and words work.

I typed up the word Spring for Ashyln and gave her a paper that was divided up into how many letters in a word. She worked very hard to find 2, 3, 4, 5, and even a 6 letter word that came from Spring. We talked about how adding the letter s, and finding rhyming words made it easier to think of more. She also figured out that she could use the same letters in spin and switch them around to make the word pins. She loved it and was proud of herself that she came up with 19 words altogether.

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Works For Me Wednesday- Discovery Tables

Anne — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:28:44 +0000

I have always used Discovery Tables in my class but this week I decided to do them at home too. If you don’t know what I am talking about, Discovery Tables are tables that you put different things in such as water, soil, bird seed, sand, etc. and other items for kids to explore with. Here’s an example; today in class we were talking about eggs, so I put sand in my table and put Easter eggs in the sand. Then I put different animals that hatch from eggs inside the eggs.

The other day while I was kind of cleaning out the garage I found a huge back of bird seed. I decided to put it in a big tupperware container and put a funnel, shovel, mini rake, and a couple of cups with it. I put it out in the backyard and when my 2 year old woke up from her nap I let her play with it. She poured, scooped, measured, and dumped bird seed for an hour straight. She loved it! When she was finally finished I just swept it all in the grass and now we have had birds in our backyard all week.

Today I put together another one, except this time I used water. I filled two big popcorn bowls full and then put cups, a funnel, and a mixing spoon in one. In the other bowl I put a little fishing game we have where you try to catch little fish with a pole. (great for hand eye coordination) Both my girls loved this activity as well. I was able to sweep and pick weeds while they played together. When they got bored with the cups I gave them different objects to put in the water to see if they would float or sink. Once again they played outside for an hour.

Check out more Works For Me Wednesday ideas.

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Teaching Grouping

Anne — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 02:32:33 +0000

When I taught first grade, a part of our math curriculum was teaching kids to think in groups when solving math problems. I spent a lot of time using dice to get them to know how many were on the die without counting them. This is important for kids to grasp at a young age and will make higher math that much easier. Once they can think in groups counting by 2′s, 5′s, 10′s etc. will make more sense. Adding numbers will be easier too and they won’t rely on their fingers for counting. There are a couple of fun easy ways to practice this with them.

The first is take a die and have them roll it. Have them tell you how many dots there are without counting. Once they get the hang of it add another die. Then they can roll both and add them up. Let’s say they roll a 4 and a 3, have them start with the 4 and count up 5,6,7. Once this starts to come naturally to them it will replace them using their fingers to add. You could turn it into a game by thinking of a number to reach, say 20. You both keep rolling the dice and adding until the first person reaches 20.

Another way to get your child to start thinking in groups is a favorite of my daughters. I draw on a piece of paper dots different ways. I might draw 3 on the top row and 2 on the bottom. I give her paper and show her the dots for about 3 -5 seconds. I take it away and she has to draw what my dots looked like and tell me how many there were. Have your child explain how they came up with their total. You will be amazed how there minds work. My daughter did this problem and she told me that there were 5 because she saw 4 dots that looked like a box (2 on top and 2 on the bottom) and then there was one more so that made 5. She is learning to group them instead of counting them individually.

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