I LOVE LOVE LOVE when a mommy teacher shares something with me that they are doing with their little one at home. If every follower shared one picture, writing sample, or video we would have the largest idea bank EVER for moms to browse…. or we could add them to the large idea bank that exists aka pinterest haha.
My co-worker was showing me this video of her child in passing and I asked her to send it to me for lots of reasons:
1) I love quick and easy mini-lessons that can be done at home.
2) I love teaching tools like this wand and others:
3) I love that she is only introducing a few letters at a time.
4) I love that this is so hands-on.
5) I love that it is active-child friendly 😉
Share your quick and easy ideas too please here, via email, or facebook!!!!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! I have been soooo busy soaking up time with my little ones as a working mom that I haven’t made time for posts. But I assure you, I have TONS in the “Posts Drafts” Section of my website that I my new year’s resolution is to share 😉
Here is a quick share for you…
My sister showed me this Montessori Crosswords App that her TWO YEAR OLD was playing and I immediately wanted it on my phone for my little one. It amazes me how many tools there are in the tech world these days and I love learning about them.
This App is a letter-sound matching tool that sounds out the first, middle, and ending sound of each word one letter-sound at a time. A child matches the letter to its sound by dragging and dropping the letter in the correct space. If a child isn’t sure what letter matches the sound, he/she can click on the question mark at the top to show the way the word should look. Then, the skill changes to a letter recognition skill.
I was amazed that my niece was using deductive reasoning to figure out the right letter that makes the matching sound. She was either trying different letters until she found the correct one or she was using the self-correct options to check the right letter.
See what I mean here:
This App is great for ages 2-7 in my opinion. It is a great pre-requisite for phonetic spelling.
My two year old has known all of his upper case for almost a year, but this is a great tool to help him with lower case letter recognition by changing the letter case option to lower.
I don’t like to buy apps but this is one that I caved in and forked out the $2.99 because I know what a reading benefit this kind of tool can be. Check it out and let me know what you think.
The Montessori Numbers App from the same group is pretty great too! It covers Numbers, Quantities, Numerals, Numerals from quantities, and tracing. Awesome skills to build on!
Leave a comment with other Apps you like….I love to check them out and see what’s out there 🙂
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:
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.
It finally feels like Fall here in Baton Rouge, Louisiana! Although it will probably only feel like this for one more day before the weather decides to melt us again, it is the perfect day to get outside and get your little one moving. If you are like me, you like to get moving too so you might join your little one for this letter-naming activity.
I have noticed two mistakes on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to teaching letters: 1) we teach too many letters at one time 2) we stop reinforcing letters when our little ones “know” them all.
Today, I want you to do this activity with your little one EVEN if your little one already “knows” all their letters….this is a GREAT activity for active learners to practice their concentration on a few letters at a time, AND their fluency (how quickly they can identify the letters that they know).
Draw a hopscotch court with chalk or tape one down on the concrete if you want it to last longer and fill it in with letters of the alphabet instead of numbers. HOW you write the letters and WHICH letters you choose should cater to your little one’s knowledge of letter recognition.
*If your little one doesn’t know their ABC’s then write the letters in alphabetical order so that your little one can use the abc song to figure out which letters he/she lands on.
*If your little one knows 4 letters then write those 4 letters and 2 more letters that you can focus on teaching for that particular “court.”
*If your little one knows all the letters, pick upper and lower case letters AT RANDOM and place them out of order on the court and then erase (wet the letters with water) after playing a few rounds, and write new letters for them to practice naming them quickly.
For other ideas of how you might accommodate this activity for your little learner…contact me 🙂
Children can be really good at “rote” memory – they can sing their ABC’s all day, but that doesn’t always mean that they know their alphabet inside and out.
It is also very common for a little one to mistake a letter for a number or a number for a letter.
So, I made these ABC and 123 sentence strips using di-cut letters (hand-written looks just as good) so that I can help my little ones use their ABC skills to figure out which letter OR number is missing from the alphabet/counting order.
This is an activity that you want your little one using their problem solving skills to figure out. So, don’t fuss if they sing their ABC’s to get to the letter in order to figure it out (that is a resource for them). This is good practice for your little one to start recognizing letters and numbers with increasing observation.
I have made another FREEBIE for you, a printable for your little ones to practice as well. It is a fill in the blank of upper and lower case letters and one fill in the blank of counting. These are activity sheets with only ONE letter/number missing at a time. But I will make two letter, and three letter missing fill in the blanks soon. So, for now, start with the freebies below and see how well your little one can fill in those blanks! 🙂
