Alright, I am back online and ready to share some more GREAT activity ideas with you all 🙂 Oh, mckayla just gave me an early Christmas present; I’ll be back in 5. Oh, the joys of writing posts with a newborn again!
Have you ever met a little one that doesn’t like hide and seek? I haven’t. My little one likes for me to cheat and point out where someone is hiding, but another spin on hide and seek that I love to play with little ones is ABC hide and seek.
First, I like to set the tone by reading a book that sets up the activity. This is a great one:
Next, I hide the letters of the alphabet all around ONE room. Then I have little ones go on a letter hunt to find 26 letters. We count them out and put them in order to make sure that we have them all. This is a simple but great activity you can do in your house using any set of letters that you have, but I have to share some cute amazon finds:
To Accommodate: If your kids know their upper and lower case letters like the back of their hand – hide sight words
If your kids don’t know any letters yet, hide only the letters in their name and have him/her walk around with a paper with their name spelled out in large letters so that when they find it they can look on the paper and mark it off the sheet when they find a letter in their name.
This is the longest I have gone without writing a post, and I have a great excuse 🙂
We had a baby girl!!! Mckayla is a tiny and precious little angel who we have been so ready to meet and are now SO glad she is here.
I have been preparing my little one for meeting his baby sister using videos like this one for the last 6 months…
I was surprised he wasn’t bummed when his sister was a human and not a horse because he LOVES horses…
but he loves babies too so it has been a quick adjustment 🙂 My little man welcomed his little sis into this world with so much love and affection.
He loves his baby sister. Always singing “Happy Birthday” to her and kissing her. If a non-family member holds Mckayla he will say “Her down! No hold her! My baby” – which is sweet haha, but we are working on teaching him that it is okay.
Our only dilemna is his everyday attempts to take her noonie.
Sean Patrick would tell me “I miss you” when I was in the hospital so I am glad to be home now and enjoying our growing family.
One of my favorite Thanksgiving memories is when my cousins and I would gather together to make crafts that my Aunt had prepared in advance. So, I couldn’t miss out on the opportunity to make a Thanksgiving-themed activity.
As I talked about in my post “Number Sense,” children need to learn that a number is a symbol that represents a quantity. Counting slowly, touching one object at a time, is one way to start. Drawing ojects one object at a time is the next step to practice representing a number. After your child is exposed to counting through hands-on activities over a period of time, they will start to be able to recognize a group of 3 objects as 3 objects without even needing to count. So, today’s activity is:
2) Cut out the turkeys; let your child assist you, teaching him/her how to hold the scissors and take small “bites” carefully.
3) Encourage your child to identify the number on the turkey and draw that many tailfeathers on the tukey’s bottom, making it as colorful or simple as they like using crayons, markers, or even paint (with fingers or brush) if you want to make it more of a craft.
Some of my FAVORITE Thanksgiving memories include writing poems to share for the family before our Thanksgiving meal. Some were serious (poems that share how thankful we were) and some were silly – we still have a video of my crazy Uncle Chris reading his “poem” which was actually a really a ridiculous riddle.
Whether you make it a point to help your little ones come up with Thankful poems, a “Thankful Poster” or a “Thankful Words Book,” all of these open-ended activities are simple ways to celebrate the holiday while also building oral vocabulary and being intentional about helping to develop pre-reading and pre-writing skills.
I highly encourage checking out age-appropriate picture books at your local library about Thanksgiving to read as a primer for these activities. Here are a few that I recommend:
Mommy Teaching for the Non-Teacher Mommy by Krista
“There are some mommies lucky enough to have the experience of teaching, some blessed with the gift of teaching, then there’s some who just throw a bunch of ideas at their kids and hope that just one will stick. None are wrong, although some may be easier and work better than others, but when it comes to being a mommy teacher the only rule is to keep kids engaged! When my first son was diagnosed with autism at 18 months we started sending him to therapy from 8-3 five days a week. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I definitely wasn’t expecting this so-called “intensive” therapy to look like playtime. The autistic brain works differently so I had to use some more involved techniques with my son, but the one thing that I took from his therapy that I can apply to all of my children is this, just play. Let them get dirty, let them make messes, let them touch, and feel, and listen, and do! Don’t stifle your children by telling them, “no” and don’t let your fears or discomfort keep your children on the sidelines! But, unlike my teacher, mommy friends I don’t have a portfolio to pull from, I don’t have training or experience. So how can I make sure my children are staying engaged, not getting bored, learning and trying different things each day? There is one thing that changed my non-teacher mommy life: the internet! Here are a few ways to use what others have learned and done to your advantage… Pinterest! Welcome to your own personal portfolio. Get prepared to hear your children say on a pretty regular basis, “You’re the coolest mom ever!” The possibilities are endless. From arts and crafts to bedroom ideas you will always be able to find something that you will love. Making monsters out of tissue boxes, how to make your own sidewalk paint, even artwork your children can help you make for their playroom, you will never run out of things to do! It’s super easy if you don’t have an account to create one. Just go to pinterest and request an invite (or ask a friend who you know has an account to send you an invite through e-mail). Create your boards and start pinning photos from their site, your friends’ boards, or anything else you come across while searching the web. Just be careful it is more addictive than Facebook and a lot more fun! Facebook groups and blogs. Obviously, you’ve already noticed how helpful it is to have the advice of those who have “done” to help you learn how to “do”! It’s amazing the information you can find (good and bad…so make sure you know the source of whatever info you’re looking at!) from other mommies and professionals. One group I found on FB is the Play At Home Mom which gives great ideas for sensory play from therapists and moms. If you have a specific area you need to work on with your child try searching for a group that caters to that specifically i.e. I follow the Sensory Processing Disorder Foundation and the Baton Rouge Speech and Hearing Foundation so I can keep up easily with news of therapy ideas, new research, events, etc. Blogs are fabulous as well (obviously I think so since I’m a blogger!) But you need to make sure you are not getting overwhelmed with the feelings of insecurity you can get while looking at something that seems to show a “perfect” mom doing the “perfect” things. Remember, all of these “perfect” ideas came with trial, error, and a lot of grace. Luckily, you get to see the finished product, but don’t forget that these moms didn’t get it right the first (or fiftieth) time either. Don’t get overwhelmed with everything you “can” and “should” do, just pick a few and go with it. No pressure!
Don’t feel like you can’t be a mommy teacher just because you’re not a teacher mommy! You know your child better than anyone, and with a little effort and a few resources you can make sure that at least a few of the seemingly random things you throw at your child actually stick. Feel free to share your successes, failures, and mommy teacher ideas! After all, the best way for us to learn is to learn from each other.”
