Schooling parents to support their children, one lesson at a time.
The other day I posted a template of the numbers 1-5 so that your little one could carefully concentrate on, and color, one number at a time. Well, I wasn’t lying when I told ya I’d post numbers 6-9 soon, and I even threw in “0” just because I love ya!
So, here are the simple number search “puzzles”:
If you didn’t get a chance to read the first Number Search Post for a little more explanation and directions- click HERE
And just a reminder….the “answer sheet” will look something like this:
Casey and I think a lot alike as you might have already noticed, so I just have to share her examples of collecting her little one’s work:
Don’t you love how clearly labeled this is? She’ll actually be able to remember which year AND grade that the recording sheets were collected… and she will actually be able to see his growth over the course of the year.
Casey said that James helped her create this page in a word document (“meaning that is took forever” -in her words). But he chose to have the numbers and letters and chose the wordart colors and graphics too.
**The neat thing about the awesome mommy teacher that Casey is, is that this binder wont just be valuable to Casey, it will be valuable to James as well because he HELPED make it, AND it is a collection of his work to be proud of.**
Here you might notice that the dividers she chose are: Readiness skills, Writing, and ABC-123 which are perfectly appropriate divider titles for organizing Pre-K artifacts 🙂
If you want to read past articles I have posted about collecting your little one’s work for display and for keeps here:
Folder Finds – Trash or Treasure?
I live in Baton Rouge, Louisiana so I am already experiencing Tropical Storm Lee and will be all weekend.
Being that I am rained in, and thinking of all of the mommy teachers who might be, I decided to make a freebie for you this morning 🙂
If you like this template… you can buy the whole years worth HERE!
There are sooo many skills you can teach using a calendar, and this month specifically, try to focus on teaching calendar skills by making a “weather calendar.” Just place the calendar on your fridge (or on display in the playroom), and ask your little one to help you be a weatherman (or woman) this month!
You can teach:
Your little one’s calendar might look like this:
or you might record the weather every morning and afternoon and in that case it will look different, but just do whatever is most age-appropriate for your little one… maybe your little one will only draw the pictures, maybe your little one will only write the “s” for sunny, and maybe your little one will only write the sight word. But as always , make this experience fun for them.
Lately I have been staring at my little one’s picture dictionary and deciding that I am not going to let it collect dust when there ARE plenty of uses for them….no matter your child’s age!
In case you don’t believe me, I was sitting in the back seat with my 15 month old the other day and the only book I had in the back to get him out of his cranky mood was a picture dictionary that I bought at a garage sale. SO, I decided, let’s practice his oral vocabulary and build on it a little. * I know I know….only a mommy teacher would think this way. I picked it up, opened to a page with a few familiar images (ball, balloon, banana, etc.) and I started pointing and naming the images he knew with clear enunciation of each word – giving him enough time to repeat me.
He is really articulate for 15 months and has a great memory; so, I thought, hmm…I wonder how long I can make this last if I make a game out of it.
Starting with the pictures he knew, I asked him “Where is the ball?” I watched his eyes search the page, and then, a light bulb went off! He pointed to the ball and said “baaaaaaaaawwwwww” in the long, dragged out way he always says ball. I was so proud, as every biased mother would be! We did this same routine for several other pictures that he knew, for about 10 minutes, and every time we repeated this process on a new page I would introduce one unfamiliar picture.
For those of you cheering “more more!” here are some more ideas:
1) Have your little one use it as a research tool when they want to find out how to spell something “let’s find the picture under the letter that it starts with and see how it is spelled in a book!”
2) Play “I spy” a picture that is made up of the sounds /b//e//d/ or /b/ /ed/
Or I spy a picture that has that word “at” in it’s name “bat!”
3) Get ideas for a letter study….help your little one make a “B” (or any letter) poster and get ideas of what you might draw on the B poster from the picture dictionary.
4) With your little one’s eyes closed, open the book and randomly place their finger on a picture, see if your little one can sound it out without looking at the word and then check the word beside the picture to see how many sounds “matched.”
During the school year so many things come home in the back pack/folder; so many pictures are made just for you. This means that you have to choose whether you want a huge box full of papers to stash OR you can condense and keep a neat collection of work that shows growth over the course of the year.
One great way to display work your little one creates is to place the work in a sheet protector before putting it on the fridge. I know this seems overzealous but here is my reasoning:
1) You can preserve their work.
2) When you are ready to put a new picture on the fridge, you can take the old one down and stick it right into a binder.
3) You show your little one that you really prize their hard work and display it proudly.
Here is how I decide what to display…. In the classroom, I encouraged little ones that the things that go on the “wall”:
1) Have meaning – they remind them of something.
2) Shows their best work – they put a careful, attentive amount of time into it.
3) May be unique – it is different in some way from other things saved in the binder.
4) Have added detail – has something extra special about it (a new word, a new attempt to draw something, etc.)
*Obviously, you don’t want to disqualify their work if it doesn’t meet the “criteria,” you just want to start talking to them about the work that is extra “fancy” and is unlike anything else they have ever done.
Last bit of advice:
Date it….you WILL forget and it makes it easier to organize when you have a timeline.
Discuss it….whatever your little one learned, bring it up again…reinforce that skill.
OR…. take a picture…. it lasts longer!
Here is an example of the sheet protector display that a classroom teacher and friend of mine, Taryn, uses for her precious little ones. I thought you may want to “borrow” this look (contruction paper-backed sheet protector) for your fridge or make a mini display board to hang across from your pantry:
Now it’s your turn…..for a “mommy share” question:
** How do you choose which artwork you display & how do you display it?**
If there is enough of a response and enough good ideas I am going to condense them and put them into a post for all mommy teachers to benefit from. And I’d love for you to share pictures on the mommy teacher facebook page.
