M&M Word Game

This has been one our favorite games to play with the kids, because it can be played in so many skill levels and you get M&M's!

Demitri's Level: ABC's! 

Demitri really struggles with knowing the names of the letters, because he loves naming them himself. For example the letter E he calls a stick with three pokies. His imagination is so funny, because he is always right about what the letters look like, but I would never have seen that when looking at the letter. He is teaching me how to see things out of his eyes. Maybe he is the key to writing a best seller ABC book that relates well to little boys!

I love this black out game, because he is not good at recognizing the proper name for a letter. So we set the board up alphabetically. He finds the match on the board and then we sing the ABC's that he has memorized to figure out what the letter should be. Then when he is able to name the letter, he is able to eat the M&M. When a letter on the board is missing its M&M, it is his job to make sure and say the letters name while we are singing. We play till he is tired of trying to remember the letters, and then we stop. No Pressure to finish the whole board!

Additional benefits of this game is I can talk colors with him. I initially thought he might be colored blind when he was younger, but he is the best color blender ever. I am excited to see what this boy paints in the future!

Daphney's Level: Sight Words!

Daphney loves playing this game! She sits on the other side of the table so that she can do her board while Demitri does his and I can help them both at the same time. However, I have to keep her from constantly wanting to help Demitri.

For Daphney she reads the word before finding the word on the board. While she is looking for it on the board I will talk ordinal numbers with her for example: look in the 3rd column or 5th row. So, she is learning that vocabulary at the same time.

*Helpful Hints: I love using the plastic paper sleeves, because as you can see in the movie slobber can get on them from the candies and be easily washed off,  But also after we play we just insert the slips of paper back into the sleeve so they are safe till next time! Lastly, if he gets bored and daph is still doing things he can use a dry erase marker to trace the letters on the board.

Seasons Display

Tip of the Day: Don't buy posters- make them!

This is a project that hangs on our wall and my kids love being able to return to it and turn the pages to review the seasons.

I love it because yes it shows the seasons, BUT we talked about so much vocabulary and got to use so many art mediums while completing it.

Spring: My kids love making flowers! I had them draw as many yellow dots on the paper as they wanted. In order to decide how many petals each flower would have the kids had to roll a dice, count the dots, and then draw that many on each flower. So lots of secret counting while they thought they were just drawing flowers. 

Summer: The summer was just fun with green crayons and finger paint... 

Fall: We talked about symmetry and fall colors. Obviously we need to practice that some more because it doesn't really look all that symmetrical. 

Winter: We used glue and cotton balls to make snow. 

*The last day we taped it all together and made the labels! 

Focus on their Interests!

 Tip of the Day: Don't focus on letters and numbers.

Simply focus on what the kids are interested in (Volcanoes, Dinosaurs, Flowers...) and then sneak in letters and numbers into the play.

My kids were loving the planets so we abstractedly painted some cardstock. Then we drew circles on the paper and practiced using scissors in order to make planets while we talked about the sizes and temperatures and such. Finally I helped Daphney sound out and make labels for the planets and order them.

Counting Fun with Puff Balls

These two activities need similar supplies so I included them in the same posts.

Little plug for IKEA... I love their kids dishes for utility uses but also for learning. These are two activities in which I use the dishes but you could probably use any colored dishes.

First Activity)- Color Toss

Objective: Students will learn at different learning levels easily covering vocabulary such as colors, counting, and comparing with more or less. LOVE FOR MULTIPLE LEVEL LEARNERS!

For this activity you will need a set of IKEA bowls or cups and puff balls of matching colors from walmart. Oh and we use a cookie sheet or cake pan to contain play (optional).

 Step 1.) Separate Puff Balls into piles for each player.

 Step 2.) Set up boundaries. We like to use the piano bench and pretend there are lasers on the legs that will  cut off little kids arms if they cross them, but a simple line on the floor would work too.

Step 3. ) Have fun throwing puff balls into the matching colored bowl or cup and do not allow them to change where the balls land till the end.

Step 4.) Take each bowl individually and pick out the matching colored puff balls. We like to line them up so we can count them and easily compare amounts of correct colors. We also like to designate a place for the colors that landed in the wrong bowl or outside of a bowl and make a big deal saying, "TRASH!!" as we place a puff ball in the pile.

Step 5.) We continue to line up the colors and compare amounts til every color is finished. Sometimes we take it a step further and count how many we got right compared to the trash to see if we "WON". This helps practice the larger number sequence.

Step 6.) Depending on kids attention and excitement we will leave the correct puff balls in their line and redo throwing the Trash pile. Again you can compare second round puff balls with the first round puff balls. Just keep finding reasons to use the words... (More, Most, Least, Greatest, Smallest, Fewest,and Equal)

Second Activity)- Easter Egg Addition

Objective: Students will focus on simple addition. BUT I LOVE THIS ACTIVITY IN ORDER TO TEACH ADDING ZERO!

I created this activity when I noticed my kids couldn't quite figure out what adding zero meant. In this activity you treat zero as a quantity and go through all the steps. Which seems silly but really helps them realize what adding zero does to a quantity. 

You will need Easter eggs, , puff balls, egg carton (for easy storage) some IKEA bowls and a plate. 

 Step 1.) First I fill puff balls into the Easter eggs in different quantities. and then hide them in one room. 

 Step 2.) I have one bowl for each child at the table and one plate in front of me. The kids each go find one egg and bring it back to the table. 

 Step 3.) They "crack" the egg into their bowl and count the number of puff balls. When they get the number right the child gives me that number of high fives. For example two puff balls= two high fives. If they had zero puff balls we pretend we are going to give a high five and then miss at the end declaring, "ZERO!" That really helps the kids not be sad when they get the number zero. 

Step 4.) Each child dumps their cracked egg (puff balls in the bowl) onto the plate and I scramble it all up. And we together count the sum. 

Step 5.) The kids then have to give each other the sum quantity of high fives before they go search for another egg. 

*My kids love this game, and after the first round I let them refill the eggs with as many puff balls as they want. And they always want a ton! So second round is always more difficult but they love that they made it so hard and get a good kick out of finding a mother load of puff balls. 

Toddler Schooling

Hey guys I am starting a new page and label called toddler schooling.
I want to easily share and store ideas that I use to teach objectives to my kiddos.

Read my basic tips in the new page listed in the top left.

Please comment after a post on a lesson if it helped you or you have some inspiration to add to help me out.

Thanks!

Favorite Letter "H"

While learning their letters for some reason both of my kids have fixated on the letter H. I remember Daphney putting H's on every fence post and I thought someday I am going to miss that. 

Well not anymore captain H is back! 

There are H's everywhere!!

 

Tovi

We have been trying to memorize articles of faith in our family. We are creating this pet caterpillar that the kids named and love to make grow as we memorize/discuss depending on capability. 

We also are using these cool posters on this blog. 

However I think they would work better for older kids. 

General Conference 2016

This conference we made it all about the kids. I figured I can listen to conference whenever and I wanted to make sure the kids had an opportunity to realize what a great blessing it is to have prophets and apostles.

Here are snack bags for the speakers. I think what helped the most is having the kids help in preparation so they were excited for the big "party". Daphney cut out the pictures from a past ensign magazine and that gave us a chance to talk about the speakers. Holland is Shane's favorite apostle (if we have to choose favorites) and No bake cookies Shane loves, so I did let the kids know that those cookies were in Elder Holland's bag. Now the kids always connect the idea of cookies to Holland's name. This is sure to be a continued conference tradition!

The other idea I tried is using these topic pictures (idea is taken from a more elaborate idea on this website but simplifying it worked better for toddlers). While listening Daphney was able to find the picture of the person speaking and several topic pictures to hang up on the wall. She didn't always understand the whole talk, but at least she now knows what a prophet might talk about. 

We have left the pictures of the apostles hanging up and Daphney now knows them all with a preference towards Rasband (kind of like head band) and Christofferson (just like Kristoff on Frozen). Demitri is trying to learn them too. His favorites are Cook and Thomas S. Monson.

Life is so different with kids!