Printable

Simple Number Search

A friend asked me the other day for more number activities to introduce to her little one who is unfamiliar with numbers, though she said her little one is familiar with letters. This is sort of common because we are so eager to teach our little ones their ABCs we initially neglect their 123s. However, it is just as important to teach number recognition as it is to teach letter recognition, and today I made a little printable so that you can reinforce/teach numbers to your little one. The final “answer sheet” will look something like this:

I use this number search printable as a means of providing an example of what number your little one is looking for as well as requiring them to find that same number and color it in, focusing on the formation of the letter as they color it in. Then the little one will color in every other number that is not a “5” a different color.

Click on the link below to download the PDF or click the purchase button 🙂

simple number search

[purchase_link id=”3366″ style=”button” color=”green” text=”Purchase”]

August 10, 2011 by Jessica | 1 Comment

Easter Design for Development

Lauren Haddox Design has been so generous to make all my Mommy Teachers an activity page to work on with your little one between now and Easter! Lauren designs all my invitations, logos, everything…check out her etsy shop to see some of her designs. Thanks so much Lauren 🙂

Below is the Easter-themed template Lauren created and every time she contributes a design I am going to refer to it as a “Design for Development” because she is a professional creating a design to benefit your child’s development. The template is a black and white template for a reason: Your child is going to “color” it, but this isn’t just any old color sheet; this is an ACTIVITY sheet. Underneath the template link I left some tips on how you can guide your little one through the template to make it more purposeful and meaningful. I hope you have a great experience with this Easter activity!

EASTER DESIGN FOR DEVELOPMENT

1. Name all the letters that you know in the words “Hoppy Easter!”

2. Can you color the letters in a rainbow pattern?

3. How many dots are on the egg?

4. What color starts with the same sound as grass? (green)

5. How many whiskers does the bunny have all together? (3 and 3 more is 6!)

6. What shapes do you see in the picture?

7. Which word is longer…hoppy or easter? (easter) Which has fewer letters? (hoppy)

Here is a glimpse of what it looks like:

April 21, 2011 by Jessica | 0 comments

More On Compound Words

Now remember, just because my title says “compound words,” doesn’t mean that your little one will know what a compound word is. We are just teaching our children the content at this point….not the vocabulary. We are teaching them age-appropriate oral language skills.

So, that being said, today we are going to give our children more practice playing with words because if you have read some of my other reading posts you know that “playing with words” and other listening activities will help your little one become more and more skilled in hearing and distinguishing that words are made up of sounds.

Today I want you to print the document I have made, cut out the pictures, and first READ all the names of the pictures to your child a few times. Then see if they can tell you the names of the pictures. This is an oral language warm-up.

Now, I want you to show your little one that if you put two pictures together it might make a new word, but that word can be a real word or a silly word. Give them examples and tell them why because you have to model the activity before you ask them to try.

Let your child determine if the new word is real or silly, but be there to support their thinking for the answer -right or wrong. Meaning, praise them if they are right, but if they are wrong always preface your correction with “No, but that was good thinking or a good try.”

You will write their answers on the real/silly recording sheet to model writing the new words 🙂

Picture Combo

January 26, 2011 by Jessica | 0 comments

Fill in the Rhyme

“Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the candle________”

This is the third phase of rhyming: Generating the rhyme that would complete the sentence. However, you and I not only intrinsically rhyme, but we are familiar with this rhyme and if we are not, we could just use our deductive reasoning to figure that the word missing is “stick.”

Little children are trying to learn patterns in familiar rhymes so that they can acquire these skills.

So, first I want you to read your child some nursery rhymes or other rhyming books you may own, and after they are familiar with them, read them again without the second rhyme, giving them a few seconds of “wait time” to guess what rhyme is missing.

Then, I want you to print the following template:

Color The Rhyming Picture

Color The Rhyming Picture Poem

You are going to ask them to generate the rhyme and then color in the picture for the poem, or you can just ask your child to color the picture that rhymes with _______(for example, “fun”-and the answer would be “sun”). My suggestion is to allow your child to name all the images in the picture first so that they will not be so confused when trying to identify the rhyming picture.

January 14, 2011 by Jessica | 0 comments

Timing for Rhyming

I shared in my post “Why Rhyme?” that rhyming is a tier on the reading ladder because it gives children an awareness of sounds in words – words that sound the same versus words that sound different.
After you start working with them on distinguishing whether words rhyme or not (a listening activity), you will want to help your child listen to a string of rhymes and come up with a new rhyming word that would continue with the same ending sound. For example, “What is a word that would rhyme with cat, mat, and hat?” This is a great way for your little one to put into practice their rhyming skills.

But before we do that, I am including an activity that is going to introduce this concept without the “coming up with a new rhyming word” part. Today, your little one is going to practice the first level skill by identifying which word in the group of rhyming words does not belong. So your little one will determine if the which words rhymes with the other words (and which one doesn’t). For example, “Cat, Mat, Sat, shoe?” Which word doesn’t sound the same at the end of the word? ________ (shoe)

I wanted to post another activity for rhyme identification so that you can help your little student master the skill before moving on to a more challenging rhyming activity.

Rhyming Match