Printable

Park Scavenger Hunt

I’ll never forget the day when I was packing lots of monkey puppet printables and crayons on our way to Kennilworth park and my husband said “Jess, no kids are going to be coloring while they are at the park.” And as I recall I said something along the lines of “We’ll see.”

Mmm Hmm… I think you know where this is headed…

Every last printable was colored and taken home, of course. I set it up on a picnic table under a covered awning and the kids re-visited the craft bit by bit.

Now, don’t get me wrong… I FULLY believe that parks are a place to take advantage of the gross motor skills (balance, coordination, running, jumping, climbing skills, etc.) that naturally take place in that setting. And there are SO many great parks in Baton Rouge to wear out your kiddos ;). But, if you are like me, you might pack snacks and other carry-ons that can make your playdates vary and LAST!

Today, I am sharing a printable that could be a great way for kids to observe, record, and note the differences of their local parks.

This printable has different uses for different stage kiddos:

For Toddlers:

Introduce the vocabulary…. “Look! Swings. Where are the swings? Yay! We found the swings. Do you want to swing?”

For Pre-schoolers:

Observe the details…. “Does this playground have swings? What color are the swings? Lets color the swings green so we can remember that this park has green swings!”

For Pre-Kinders:

Record the details…. Put an “x” on the line under the equipment that is not at the playground, try to write the beginning sound or all the sounds you hear on the line under the equipment that is at the playground.

For Kinders:

Write about the details…. “Can you write what you like about the {slide, swing, etc.} at this playground?” “I like to push my friends on the swings so I am going to write that under swings.”

For Kinder Grads:

Compare and Contrast the different playgrounds by making their own scavenger hunt specific to their own local parks/playgrounds.

My final bit of advice for using these: bring clipboards… kids feel so official when they are “recording information” on a clipboard. 🙂

I hope you like this little freebie that you can tote along to the park OR have it out on a table at home after going to a park for some unwind time.

Become a member of my page for just a one time paypal of $5 to access this printable:

November 5, 2013 by Jessica | 0 comments

Boo ! Trace and Color

The other day I made a simple template for a zoo trace and color to tote along in our wagon for down times, I am going to re-make it using my own clipart soon, but for now it looks like this:

Well, the VERY next day we were going to Boo at the Zoo so I wanted to mix it up and I had already made seasonal clipart so I toted this one along in the wagon…

I decided to make it a combined printable even though Halloween is right around the corner.

I thought you might want to tote this one around tomorrow on a walk and make it a scavenger hunt for decorations in the neighborhood so I figured I would go ahead and give ya this printable today! If you don’t use it this year, bookmark TheMommyTeacher and you can always keep it for next year !

Click here…. BOO Trace and Color

Enjoy!

October 29, 2013 by Jessica | 0 comments

Halloween Game {Heads Or Tails}

When we were “Boo’d” the other day, we got some stickers in our little surprise basket that I wanted to do something with, but couldn’t quite put my finger on what that should be.

Then, for some unknown reason…. the following activity popped into my brain….I turned the stickers into a “heads or tails” game with just 5 SIMPLE materials: 2 sheets of stickers, one piece of paper, a marker/sharpie, and a coin bigger than the smallest sticker on your sheet.

I placed a jack-o-lantern sticker on one side of the coin, a ghost sticker on another side of the coin,

and then made a SIMPLE sorting sheet by drawing a line down the middle of the page and one at the top. I place a sticker on either side of the sorting sheet.

I explained to Sean Patrick that we would flip the coin to see if it landed on heads (the jack-o-lantern) or tails (the ghost) and whatever it landed on would get to put that sticker on the chart under the matching sticker.

playing with my sticker template — The next day we played again using the sticker activity printable I made on the computer and I liked it better because it was easier to do 🙂

I showed him one example and then he took over and got the hang of it.

SS Halloween Game I decided to make a printable for this in case you wanted to download it and save it in your files for any teachers, homeschoolers, or for all you organized moms.

As you can see, this halloween printable has other images in case you have different stickers and it has candy corn images in case you want to sort your autumn mix candy instead. We sorted the candy corn and had a blast…. the dog was a little jealous!

He had to color each space the matching color before he could eat each candy corn, and he got a little carried away at the end… maybe it was the sugar high.

Mommy wrote the numbers after he counted each side.

You can also use the other images in this printable to make playing cards for memory or Halloween Go Fish.

If you have younger kids that you would like to do this activity with, you can simply have them sort these items without any of the bells and whistles. For the sticker activity, Just say “Let’s sort the groups of stickers. Can you put ALL of the jack-o-lanterns on this side of the chart under the jack-o-lantern and ALL of the ghosts on this side of the page under the ghost?”

Finally, if you want the download it is just around $1 in my TeachersPayTeachers Store,

OR become a member and get this printable along with ALL of my other printables for just a few dollars more!!

October 24, 2013 by Jessica | 0 comments

Bat-Math Printable

I was inspired by another mommy teacher and finally got my act together and started hanging our Fall activities on the blinds of the playroom and it got me SO motivated to purpose even more seasonal teaching moments.

I am not over-zealous… I purpose one activity a day… and today’s activity was “Bat- Math.” I wanted to give y’all the step-by-step breakdown in case you wanted to print this FREE Bat-Math Printable and have some duh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh da nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh BAT – MATH. Sorry, had to set the tone for this.

The way that my mini bat-math lesson started is funny… $Bat Printable$ I found a VERY simple page with the outline of 10 bats in an Elmo activity book (by the Count) and I thought…

Today, Sean Patrick is going to learn that The LAST NUMBER he says when counting is the AMOUNT of bats that there are on this page. (I know that that is an abnormal thought). That is a common core math standard – that children can simply recognize that the last number they say represents the amount in the group they are counting. (Example: If there are 5 bats on the page then when I count 1-2-3-4-5, I know that there are FIVE bats because it was the last number that I said when I counted the last bat).

I started with too many – I will be honest. The page had 10 bats. He can count to 10 but I wish I would’ve started with 5…. which is why I made this free printable with 5 and with 10 because you know your kiddo and can choose.

First I said “Alright Sean Patrick… today lets cover up each one of these bats with skittles. Each bat gets ONE skittle so that we can count how many bats there are. When we figure out the right number of bats then we can eat that many skittles!” (once again… he normally only gets to eat THREE skittles so I wish I would’ve started with my own printable haha).

He covered up each bat (one skittle on each bat) and then started to count. He counted slow – one number for each skittle which is GREAT, but he miscounted because he didn’t count strategically (he started at the bottom and jumped up and around) so I said “Okay baby, try counting from the top then over, and go to the next line so we can count the right number. “

He tried again and he said “ten” but kept counting.

So I said “That was great counting…. lets try it one more time and when I say STOP, try to remember the number that you said!”

He counted it again and then I said “What was the last number you just counted to?”…. he said “five” haha okay this is great….this is the moment I realized 10 was too high to count a group number, and it was the moment that I realized we could work on this one skill all week.

Then we counted it again and I said “Did you hear yourself count to ten…. watch mommy and listen…. I shouted “10!” when I counted to that number and then said “How many?” and he finally said “Ten!”

I said “YEAH! lets celebrate great counting… eat your treats and then we will give all TEN bats a sticker, then we can color them. Let’s put the stickers on in the same “smart way” to count…. from the top to the bottom.

He was content with coloring just one bat so we glued the “finished” product onto a black sheet of construction paper and hung it up on our “fall art” wall…. (which I will share the play-by-plays of those activities next week).

October 18, 2013 by Jessica | 2 Comments

Halloween “We’ve Been Boo’d” Free Download

I was going to wait til’ Monday to share this with you, but I couldn’t wait any longer and I wanted to give everyone enough time before Halloween to make this happen in your neighborhood if you wanted to.

Neighborhood "Boo" — We wen’t “boo”ing in our neighborhood all morning and it was a blast!

Two days ago we were surprised by a basket of Halloween goodies on our doorstep… I still don’t know who did it but it was so fun!

Whoever “boo’d” us colored jack-o-lantern faces on oranges, gave us two little craftivities, jack-o-lantern stickers, pencils, gummies, glow-in-the-dark vampire teeth, and bib for our baby girl. They did a great job! The little seasonal sticker activity was so cute…

I couldn’t wait to keep this going because I knew how much fun we would have putting the little treat baskets together and delivering them.

But, I couldn’t find the template so I made my own, and wanted you to have it!

Click here to download.

So, Sean Patrick helped me pick out some little pumpkins and then we went to family dollar and got a jack-o-lantern bucket, a little scarecrow, some spooky ring pops, and colorful sharpies (to decorate the pumpkins).

Then I encouraged Sean Patrick to carry the goodie basket to their door, knock, and tip toe away and watch from the car so it could be a surprise.

We had so much fun…he was running!

And if friends caught us outside it was fun too!

I hope you make the time to do this… It doesn’t have to be fancy…. You could drop off a little ziploc of something with the printable and it would still be fun for the whole family! You still have time before Halloween!

Disclaimer: the friend already had the chalked word “Boo!” but I would totally ask a neighbor if they wouldn’t mind and do that because it looked so cute!

October 13, 2013 by Jessica | 2 Comments

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