Writing Practice

School Bus Printable Fun

“I’m going to school on a bus today mom” says my 3 year old as he walks toward the door with his backpack on. He doesn’t ride a bus to school so I reply, “Yes! Let’s pretend to do that Sean Patrick. Are you going to drive the bus or is the driver going to pick you up? ” and the conversation continued as we made our way to the stairs where we pretended to be riding on a bus singing “Wheels on the Bus” and looking out the pretend window pointing things out to each other.

I asked him what friends were riding with us in our imagination and he named his cousin and a few other friends.

This gave me the idea to make this:

He is obsessed with school buses. He tells people when he is six he can ride the school bus. I am hoping he gets to ride one on a field trip this year.

We have a school bus toy that we drive all over our neighborhood road rug that looks something like this:

Fun Time - Country Fun Kids Rugs - 39 x 58 in.

We read “Gus The Bus” pretty often and there are other great school bus books like and and obviously The Magic School Bus episodes and books are great.

So, he had a blast coloring his school bus picture…

And he did a great job drawing the eyes on the faces… one was shaped like a square so he told me that Mckayla had a square eye haha.

Anyway, click on the link below to download the FREE printable if you think your child would enjoy this too. You can help your child practice sounding out their friend’s names or just writing the first letter in their name. Have fun!

[purchase_link id=”3920″ style=”text link” color=”” text=”Download the School Bus Printable now… FREE”]

August 28, 2013 by Jessica | 0 comments

What Is Your Favorite Coloring / Activity Book? Share in a comment!

The other day a friend instagrammed a picture of her and her son coloring as she drank her cup of coffee. It made me think of my mother-in-law because she is so great about sitting down and participating with my kids as they color or as they play with play dough and many other simple tasks that she makes the most of.

You can purpose tons of learning sitting down with a coloring book…. one page at a time.

You are teaching color recognition, but you are also helping to build your little one’s vocabulary by discussing the pictures. And activity books have lots of little problem solving opportunities to teach with mazes and categorizing (which one does not belong?

Here is one great activity book that teaches the ABC’s and some other problem solving strategies as well…

ABC Animals (Dora the Explorer) (Color Plus Card Stock)

There are MILLIONS of books like this but I want to share this one to share a FEW quick IDEAS that can apply to most activity books…

1) Trace over black with white ….

Tracing with white crayon — Make use of your WHITE crayon!

2) Color inside of bubble letters (not just on pages like this one that are made for them)… I ask “What letter do you want mommy to color?” Then I talk through the formation of the letter “climb down the ladder, frog jump up to the monkey bars, hop across, climb up and down on the other side to make an H” or whatever silly way you want to say it. Then I say…. “Your turn… what letter do you want to color?”

3) For little writers you could draw speech bubbles on your color pages and make your characters talk to each other.

4) Count how many times you see the same object on a page (like the balloons in the next picture)…

Share your favorite coloring or activity books in a comment below and share any tips that you may have for us.

Here or on Facebook

August 8, 2013 by Jessica | 0 comments

Calendar Templates!

It is August 1st & a few days ago I realized that I needed a new Calendar template for my “To Do” board but also a calendar template that my little man could explore with. So, I spent a good chunk of time developing calendar templates that I liked and that also had TRACEABLE month titles and also included the identical set in the printable with regular month titles.

[Click HERE to become a member – get unlimited access to ALL The Mommy Teacher Printables including this one!

OR CLICK HERE to purchase any one of these Calendar Templates individually from my TeachersPayTeachers Store.]

What can children learn from calendar exploration?

Patterns – The days of the week repeat their same order every week.

Vocabulary – Yesterday, today, tomorrow, weekend, days of the week, month, months of the year, holidays, etc.

Organization – Graphic organizers (like calendars) are so great for kids to be exposed to. They show order and give meaning to our everyday routines.

One-to-One Correspondence – We wrote one number in each square.

Weather Recording – Check out my weather tracking post with the September template attached for free!

Ordinal Numbers – When you say the days of the week in a sentence you would say “Today is August FIRST, tomorrow is August SECOND,” etc.

What did my calendar experience look like with my 3 year old?

I put our calendars on clipboards and we sat down at the playroom table and talked about them while we doodled on our calendars. I sang the days of the week song, the months of the year song, and then we counted how many days were in August. We “x’d” out the days that had already passed. We marked upcoming events with stickers. I prepared him in advance for days that mommy or daddy had something to do so that I can remind him by pointing to the calendar and he can visually see that the event will come and go.

Sean Patrick felt so “official” with his calendar on his clipboard. While I wrote the numbers and upcoming events on my calendar attached to the clipboard, he “wrote” what he wanted to do on his.

He made a lot of markings and said things like “I will go to Maya’s house on Friday, and MeMe will be 70 on Tuesday.” Haha I loved his made-up events. And his MeMe is only in her mid-50’s but one of her sisters told Sean Patrick that she was almost 70 haha.

He even asked me for another “August calendar” yesterday so that was my indicator that he actually had as much fun as I did with this activity.

August 1, 2013 by Jessica | Comments Off

Stickers… Love Them Or Leave Them?

My First Sticky Mosaics® Vehicles

I have a (semi) love-hate relationship with stickers. My kids peel them off and stick them all over the place and I am unsure what their purpose is at times other than leaving residue on things they stick to. Having said that, I have YOUNG children who don’t exactly keep track of small items or use things practically.

Sean Patrick got some cool toys at his birthday party this year, but I hid several of them because I wanted to use them sparingly. When I pulled out this sticky mosaics activity last week, it turned out to be a real gem.

There were 5 different vehicles made up of different colored shapes, and he picked the helicopter.

We decided early on to make it for his uncle who works for the US Aviation so it was really special to encourage him to finish so we could give it to his Uncle Nathan.

The best part is that we have been working on this a little every day ALL week and have only finished ONE vehicle template. I have been waiting until Mckayla falls asleep because she likes to destroy Sean Patrick’s art projects so it has been super fun one-on-one time working with him on this project.

This is what happens when the 19 month old is around the stickers.

And here are just some of the things he has been practicing with this activity:

Fine motor skills – Strengthening his control and coordination in his hands in order to peel the stickers off their backing and to stick them carefully onto the outline of the shape.
Shape and Color identification – Identifying the shapes and colors needed in each part of the project.
Spatial Awareness – Turning the sticker until it covers up the whole shape.
Matching – Matching the accurate color and sticker to the individual outlines.
Visual Discrimination – After selecting a sticker, trying to find that particular colored shape “hidden” in the page.
Counting Practice -Counting how many more blue triangles you need to fill a space we were working on at the time.
One-to-One Correspondence – Having manipulate one sticker to one outline at a time took lots of discipline as well.

Daddy helped with the very last part of the project to complete the tail of the helicopter. When he finished he was so proud and he asked “Now I get to work on another one?” Well, that was an easy one to answer.

I seriously think I am going to order two more of these (one masculine and one feminine), stick them in the closet where I store my gift bags, and have a go-to present for the next birthday party we go to!

Here are the other ones they have on amazon:

I really love to hear from you…

Do dread having another sticker activity in your house?

Do you think your little one is at an age where he/she would enjoy this?

Do you know of any other sticker activities that are worth checking out?

Tracing The ABC’s Book

Because Sean Patrick is so into tracing right now (and because he is a perfectionist), I decided to make him a book that he could use dry-erase markers and Mr. Clean magic erasers to practice his tracing over and over again without getting frustrated about markings on his paper (courtesy of his little sister).

I printed the pages of my tracing book onto card stock and laminated them with my inexpensive laminator that I bought at WalMart.

We work on it a little each day and I encourage him to do whatever letters he would like to practice making, but I always try to make the formation fun for him. For example, when we were writing “A” I told him to slide down this slide (the left slanted line) then to slide down that slide (the right slanted line), and then to climb across the monkey bars. He said exactly what I said as he traced A the next few times. And for lowercase “a” we rode around the merry-go-round and then climbed down the ladder.

tracing a with marker — “Slide down, slide down, climb across the monkey bars”

If you don’t have a laminator and you don’t want to get it laminated you can also just print it and let your little one trace the pages individually with crayons 🙂

tracing c with crayon 2 — /c/ /c/ crawl around the /c/ /c/ curve to see the /c/ /c/ cow

CLICK HERE to purchase this Tracing Book individually from my TeachersPayTeachers Store.

OR Click HERE to become a member – get unlimited access to ALL The Mommy Teacher Printables!

July 16, 2013 by Jessica | 3 Comments