Year: 2012

Sticker Activity Ideas

When I was little, my friends and I all had a sticker collection.  Lisa Frank was a hot commodity!  We would pretty much show and tell this collection, and sometimes trade.  But there are so many ways to make use of stickers – more than just maintaining a shelf life.

If you read “Join The Club” then you may remember that I was inspired to write up some sticker activity ideas for you to use what you already have to create fun and meaningful teaching opportunities.  Below are the ideas that came to mind, but feel free to share pictures on my facebook page of any sticker creations your little ones have designed 🙂

Use stickers:

1)      To check off chores accomplished using a chore chart. (This can teach responsibility & show data represented on a chart.)

2)      To mark important days on a calendar. (This can teach calendar skills & how to read information from a table.)

3)      To award positive behavior or to award children for each full serving of fruits & veggies your child eats at dinner. After a certain number maybe they can “rent a new movie” “bring a friend bowling” or some other fun incentive. (This  teaches number sense & goal setting.)

4)      To make patterns on paper strips that can be used to tape around your little one’s wrist or ankle to make a bracelet or anklet. [This can teach patterning and classifying (depending on how your little one chooses to make a pattern….by shape such as star-circle-star-circle, by color such as is pictured, by object such as horse-cat-horse-cat, etc.)]

5)      To make a sticker book of stories using the stickers in place of some of the words.  So for example if you have number stickers & animal stickers you might help your little one come up with something like this:  “(1) little (horse sticker) was galloping down the road, to meet (2) little (cat stickers) that were chasing a toad.” (This can teach math, reading, and creative writing skills.)

6)      To organize a sticker collection (place the stickers in sheet protectors and place in a binder by groups with divider tabs such as letters, shapes, animals, colors, scratch and sniff, etc.) (This can teach organization, classifying, sorting, and matching skills.)

7)      To represent characters in math stories (This can teach conservation of a number, number sense, counting, and adding.)

Hope this helps you to use what you have to create teaching opps…please share your stories!

YouTube Favorite Find

My friend shared the following video on Facebook and I had so much fun watching this couple rap about the life of a mom that I couldn’t help but share with all you mommies (and daddies) out there…

This family is too cute, too creative, and too talented!

Join The Club

I have some friends that apparently wanted to bring “snail mail” back into existence. Two separate friends sent me a “this is not a chain letter” invitation to send ONE item to a little one and hopefully (if everyone cooperates) receive 36 items for my little one in return.  The idea was to mail a pack of stickers to the child in the number one spot, move the sender’s child’s name into the number one spot, my own child’s name in the number two spot, & mail the letter to 6 mommies.  The other letter was to do the same thing but with children’s books.  It sounds confusing, but its easy to understand when you read the “sticker club letter” that I received.

So, I have to admit when I received TWO of these on the same day, I thought “it’s because I’m The Mommy Teacher isn’t it?” as if they both knew that I couldn’t turn it down…. and they were right b/c I was inspired…
1) to mail out educational stickers and a book of my choice and
2) to come up with a few “stickers’ activity ideas” for those involved (which I will be posting soon!).

I think a snail mail “activity club” would be even cooler, but hey, I might pioneer that concept another day.  Today, I am focusing on the two “clubs” at hand.

Great Gift Idea….A Story-telling Bag…DIY!

One teaching tool that I love to have within an arm’s reach is my storytelling bag collection.  I hesitated to use the word “collection” but I looked up synonyms and nothing was cooler than that so I guess I have to admit that I collect storytelling bags.  A storytelling bag is basically a themed bag that includes a book, props for that book, and some teaching tips and ideas (mini-lesson plans) that extend the learning opportunities for that theme.  I love to use props to act out a story because drama really brings the characters to life and children are better able to recall the story from memory.

So many skills can be hit on using story telling bags…. check out some of Louisiana’s ELA grade level expectations for “reading literature and informational text” and “speaking and listening” for ideas.

Here is an example of a story-telling bag (also called a literacy bag),

and here is my effort to create the same story-telling bag for a friend who homeschools on her little one’s birthday 🙂

The llama is from Bolivia, in South America…. so glad my impulse buys came in handy 🙂

I also added teaching tips in the bag. You can do the same by typing the name of the book that you are gifting into a google search followed by “lesson plans” or something similar….OR you can come up with your own!  I may be the mommy teacher but I truly believe in saving time, (money), and reserving energy for my kids so do what is best for YOU.  In fact, if you are a garage-saler, be on the look-out for quality books and props that might correspond to the books and you will save money, and time shopping for the next birthday gift!

Character-Building Book Recommendation “Vlog”

Watch the video below to hear a little bit about why I LOVE this book:
and all the books by these fabulous authors!

Here is an up-close shot of the pages I was discussing in the video:

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