Activity ideas - The Mommy Teacher

Hide and Seek with the AbC’s

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:

The Letters Are Lost!

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.

December 9, 2011 by Jessica | 0 comments

Building Oral Vocabulary – Giving Thanks

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:

November 21, 2011 by Jessica | 0 comments

Using Words To Describe Directionality

A lot of parents assume their super verbal and proficient little ones have a wider speaking vocabulary than listening vocabulary. It is not that your little one doesn’t “know” the words they are looking for, but there are certain language concepts that are not yet part of their speaking vocabulary.

For instance, if I asked your little one to look “under” the table to find my pencil, he or she probably wouldn’t hesitate. Your little one probably knows the word “under” in context enough to search in the direction that I am referring to. Or, if I am “under” a table and I asked your little one where I was he or she might state, “Under the table” using the position word “under.” But, in the context that I had a doll “under” something and asked your little one to describe where the doll is in their words. He/she may or may not use words to describe directionality like (under, next to, through, between, back, on top, over, above, etc.)

So, to work on developing this skill through a natural progression from head knowledge to incorporating these words into their oral voacbulary and using them abstractly, I am going to give you a series of position word activities using pictures of Casey’s little ones because she is such an awesome mommy teacher – check out her kidspiration blog 🙂

1) Playing Copy Cat Games: Casey loves to play these games with her little “Leyson man.” This is very similar to “simon says” – ask your little one to copy you as you place your hands “Over” your head, “between” your knees, “beside” your cheeks, etc.

under the bed2 — Casey's little one, James, hiding under the bed!

2) Hide and Seek: Hide a toy and give directions using position words for your little one to find it, “The block is between the couch pillows.”

3) Act it out with your whole body: “Can you hide under the bed? Can you climb on top of the stool? Can you jump over the pillow?” This part of the activity helps little ones meet the needs of learning through movement!Casey’s little one, Leyson, practicing position words with his farm animals!

position words activity — Casey's little one, Leyson, practicing position words with his farm animals!

4) Act it out with toys: “Can your cow jump over the farmhouse? Can your pig squeeze through the doorway?” This helps the little ones needs to learn in a hands-on way!

5) Use words to give directions: Place something (like a doll’s purse) between two chairs, then dialogue with your little one “Pretend that I cant find the Barbie’s favorite purse, but you know where it is! Without showing me, can you use your words to tell me where it is?”

November 14, 2011 by Jessica | 0 comments

Homemade Newspaper

Growing up, when my cousins and I would get together we would always come up with new and inventive ideas for dramatic play. At times we ran a shoe store with all of my grandmother’s shoes that we would place a tag of our own, made-up price (which was a great math activity). Other times we would run a snack shop or bakery.

My personal favorite scenario was our News Stand. We made newspapers based on the information that we gathered from our own experiences or imaginations and modeled them after the structure of an actual newspaper article.

There are so many learning opportunities wrapped up in this scene. I recommend sparking the idea with your little one “Oooh, let’s make our own newspaper today that Daddy can read tomorrow morning before he goes to work!”

I realize that times have changed and newspapers are not the main source of information, but I still think that this should be something that you and your child can do together that will build researching skills, teach your little one how to collect information and re-create it inventively, develop creative writing skills, and much more. How exciting to see what your little one might come up with or what he/she is interested in writing about. How many different articles might you have (a comic strip, a weather report, a community article, etc.)? You and your little one could team up – you could be the journalist (writing down everything your little one dictates) while your little one is the illustrator. There are so many open-ended possibilities!

November 11, 2011 by Jessica | 0 comments

Tear-ific AbC’s & 123’s

If you liked the Tear-ific Artwork activity idea from last week and if you are currently working on letter (or number) recognition, then you will love this activity idea.

Using the letter or number templates I made for an activity book in the past: Alphabet Color Font PDF or Numbers Color Font PDF, you can help your little one manipulate letter and number formation for better memory recall.

Guide your little one to fill in the outline of the letters and/or numbers with little scraps of paper that he/she has torn piece by piece. This helps your little one to really take his/her time learning the letter or number formation (how it is formed), as well as develop his/her fine motor skills, dexterity, and spatial skills.

Make a colorful alphabet or counting book or use this activity as a special art activity for the letter of the week.

November 2, 2011 by Jessica | 1 Comment