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.
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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.
Sean Patrick is obsessed with my husband’s bedtime stories… and now I am obsessed with them, because he let me in on his secret.
My husband, Patrick, has been weaving subliminal messages into the imaginative night-time stories he tells Sean Patrick.
His stories about animals in forests or athletes on the field all have hidden messages in them that encourage patience, perseverance, integrity, problem solving, etc. It’s genius! Books always have morals and lessons so why shouldn’t our bedtime stories right?
Sean Patrick likes to be the main character in the stories we tell him; So, Patrick might tell him a baseball story where Sean Patrick is up to bat and misses but he doesn’t get upset or give up, he just tries again.
Or, an alligator might have Sean Patrick’s fishing pole so he has to wait until the alligator falls asleep to get it back like waiting until a friend is done with a toy before taking it back.
I have started to weave subliminal messages into my teaching tips too…
My recent story was about a boy named Sean Patrick who had the strongest alligator chomp (his pencil grasp) that he could chomp down on a wild crayon but the crayon could never break free from his super strength. And when he would write letters they would come alive…. the letter S would slither off of the page like a snake and he would have to catch it with his alligator chomp before it could get away.
Can you tell we are letting our imaginations run wild over here?
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.
“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 🙂
/c/ /c/ crawl around the /c/ /c/ curve to see the /c/ /c/ cow
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I have had many parents come to me worried that their preschool or kindergarten aged child may be dyslexic* after he or she continues to spell and write words/letters backwards, upside down, in mirror image, or mix up letters within a word.
Let me say now that this writing behavior is totally normal at this stage in your child’s pre-writing and pre-reading development and in most cases* is not indicative of a learning disability.
Let’s think about this…
We, the smarter-than-the-average-preschooler mommy teachers, see a triangle. 3 sides + 3 points = triangle no matter how you look at it.
(Technically that last one is a pyramid says my 5year old, but you get my point.)
What, then, is the letter A?
It is but a mere visual representation of a sound in a word… a symbol… or simply, a shape, not unlike our friend, the triangle. We recognize this shape no matter the direction, font, size or color. Our brains are hardwired to group these similar shapes together so we can recognize them even though they may look slightly different than the Times New Roman capital letter A.
Our kids are naturally doing the same exact thing which is why they can still find the letter A in a pile of letters, even though some of the As are upside down.
To help teach correct directionality (the direction in which we read and write in English), use your index finger to guide reading: top-bottom, left-right. This is a learned skill and will become ingrained through repetition and practice. In Leyson’s case, if he knew that he should have spelled the letters out from left to right, the word would have actually spelled JAMES instead of SEMAJ – but with a sideways S and an E for an M… babysteps.
When Leyson spelled James’ name backwards, I then modeled how to spell his own name as he said the letters out loud to me. Leaving those letters in place, I then pulled a second set of letters for his name and asked him to put them in order directly under the one I had done.
“Which letter comes first? Which comes second?” Etc.
To fix his sideways S, I lined up a few of the same letter and laid them out right side, upside down and sideways and we chose the correct letter. This taught him that it DOES matter which way a letter is written… BAM! Epiphany.
Back to his spelling of James’ name:
Me: “Now, if we spelled the name LEYSON with the L over here on the left, what is different about how you spelled JAMES?”
Leyson: “I used an upside down E as an M!”
Epiphany x2.
* Dyslexia is a Developmental Reading Disorder (DRD) which is one of the most common learning disabilities. A small percentage of those with this type of DRD actually see and write letters backwards or upside down. Most often dyslexia is diagnosed within the critical beginning reader years (kindergarten – 2nd grade) if a child of normal intelligence still has difficulties with visual and/or auditory reading comprehension, spelling and phonological awareness.
If after age appropriate and developmentally appropriate reading and writing strategies have been correctly taught to your school-aged child and you find he or she is still struggling with reading, begin to log your perception of your child’s reading abilities and share it with your child’s teacher or doctor so they can determine if your child may need further evaluation.
Summer break is about halfway over here in Louisiana! If you are just now joining our summer quest to never hear the phrase, “I’m bored,” please go back and read Part 1 and Part 2 of our summer learning curriculum and activity schedule. On the right hand column, you will see all of the summer schedule posts neatly organized for you to have quick access!
WEEK 5: OCEAN LIFE
So I apologize for the delay in the post about Ocean Life. I’d love to give you my reasons (my computer crashed so I’m having to sneak around to borrow one and we went on a vacation) but no one wants to hear those!
The kids had a great time learning about Ocean Life despite the fact that they never really showed too much interest in Finding Nemo – I’ve tried… what’s not to like about it? But as you all know, kids tend to have their own opinions about things no matter how much we try to mold their little minds ;-).
Anywho, our favorite activity from the week was our Ocean Life PUPPET THEATER! This activity was super cheap and was instant entertainment for DAYS! It is also a great way to encourage storytelling which increases skills in reading comprehension, writing and illustrating stories (this skill starts as early as kindergarten) and oral communication.
Materials:
Painters Tape, poster board, scissors, long skewers/craft sticks, 1 blue and 1 yellow plastic table cloth, black sharpie marker
To make the puppets, I used a foam board. YOU, however, should NOT use a foam board. That sucker was a pain to cut out all of the fishy shapes with all of the twists and turns. I ended up breaking most of the fish when cutting them out and had to play “doctor” to fix them all back together (great tie-in to our Community lesson). Just use 1 white poster board and it will save you time, energy, and unnecessary frustration.
I drew the fish onto my board using a black sharpie. The kids painted the fish and then went down for their naps (good timing on my part so they didn’t have to wait for the paint to dry). I cut the fish out and taped the long skewers to the back of the fish. (I ran out of skewers and used Popsicle sticks for the starfish, crab and crawfish* since they don’t swim too far from the bottom of the ocean anyway).
*I understand that crawfish are not normally found in the ocean, but as they have been raised in South Louisiana, my kids insisted we have a crawfish in our puppet show.
After nap time, the kids could not WAIT to put on the puppet show! My daughter’s room was the PERFECT theater because 1. she had the audience (stuffed animals galore) and what show would be complete without an audience? and 2. her closet made the perfect stage for the show!
We took the blue table cloth and hung it with tape from the clothes rod, and the 2nd table cloth (we used blue and taped yellow tissue paper to make “sand” but just using a yellow table cloth would be so much easier) was taped across the doorway of the closet at door knob level. This gave the kids enough space to crouch under and behind the yellow (sand) curtain and in front of the blue (ocean) curtain.
James had the idea to make a sign with the title and performers names and hung it on the closet doors for all of the audience (stuffed animals) to see. He also had the idea to use one of our lamps as the spotlight and designated his Mimi to be the lighting technician.
There are several different ways you can perform plays with your kids!
1. REENACTMENT: You can take a story that your kids know really well (a great one for this theme would be The Rainbow Fish or even Finding Nemo) and your kids can reenact the story. To simplify this, you can make sequencing cards for your kids to act out:
1. Nemo and his dad lived in an anemone.
2. Nemo swims out to sea and is captured by the scuba diver.
3. Nemo’s dad and Dori search for Nemo and meet a lot of friends on the way.
4. Nemo makes his great escape.
5. Nemo and his dad are reunited.
2. MAD LIB: You write a short story out and leave blanks for the kids to fill in.
Once upon a time there was a fish named name. He was color and color. His best friends was name the ocean animal. Together they liked to activity.
3. NARRATE: You can narrate the story and the kids can move and talk for the puppets.
4. STORY WRITING: This is great for older kids! Your kids write the story and include a beginning, middle and end!
5. TAKE TURNS WRITING THE STORY: Each person adds a new adventure to the story! Things can get a little crazy here!
Person 1: “Once upon a time there was a fish named Bob.”
Person 2: “Bob loved to swim to the middle of the ocean.”
Person 3: “He made lots of friends along the way.”
Person 1: “His best friend was a starfish named All Star.”
Person 2: “All Star loved to play basketball in the water.”
As for my kids? They preferred to #6, JUST PLAY! Sit back and see what your kids come up with! This is my favorite and each of my kids had such different ideas for the puppets that they each took turns playing puppeteer and audience member. They loved watching what the other came up with and would build off of each other’s stories! I love how these little minds work!
James’ story was great (says the biased mommy)! It was about a little fish who met a shark who wanted to eat him. All of his fishy friends decided to go talk to the shark to stop him from eating their friend. They offered him a peach instead. The shark enjoyed the peach so much that he never ate a fish again and the little fish and the shark became best friends. The play was called “The Fish, the Shark and the Peach” (fitting).
Leyson’s story took place in the river (Mr. 3-year-old wanted to create his own setting) and his fish spent the whole time swimming up and down the river. And then the rest of the time his play sounded very similar to big brother’s play.
CRAFT TIME FAIL:
Another activity we did was a near-complete failure. I say near-complete because the kids could care less that it didn’t work as it was intended.
My kids and I ATTEMPTED to make sensory-bag fish bowls. We cut out a hole in a paper plate and glued it to another paper plate – then decorated the plates, of course. We filled plastic zip-lock baggies with blue hand soap (gel probably would have worked better) and put small plastic fish inside. Then we placed the bags inside of the paper plate hole and made “fish bowls,” but yeah, they didn’t work. The kids DID enjoy squishing the fish around in the sensory bags! But then they started leaking because Mommy bought the cheap bags. ::womp womp::
Here is the craft that gave me the idea to make a sensory bag, but I should have just stuck to these directions instead:
“Read it again, Mom” has so many great book ideas, songs and crafts for this theme!
