When the kids come inside from playing in the snow, I always let them have some hot cocoa to help them warm up. I decided to sneak a tiny bit of learning in on a day when it was too yucky to go outside! We practiced “marshmallow math” at the kitchen table. Marshmallow counting was perfect for a preschooler. Marshmallow addition (and subtraction) keeps my older child busy.
Continue readingWe created our own mail center in our schoolroom and play room because my kids love getting the mail. They love to send letters to friends, teachers, and grandparents. They love to send and receive mail. I made some monster post cards to help us practice writing, addressing, and sending mail. Of course, these aren’t post cards for the US Postal Service: they are for our own homemade mail box!
What do you do with an interested preschooler while you are trying to give her older siblings their homeschool lessons?
This is the question I’ve been wondering all summer as I’ve pondered how to jump back in to homeschooling come the end of August! My daughter simply loves to be a part of everything. I’ve got to find a workable solution. Since I love busy boxes and busy bags (for on the go), I am so excited to put some together for learning our ABCs right here at home.
My ABC Matching Game Clothes Line is based on the Clothes Line Busy Bag I found at Money Saving Mom. While my preschooler readily recognizes the uppercase letters, the lowercase letters are not as familiar. I decided to adapt the Clothes Line Busy Bag into an early literacy letter recognition activity.
Continue readingOne of the fun things I have done for my kids this summer to keep track of our summer fun was create a simple summer activity passport for her! It’s a way to keep track of the fun we’ve had this summer as well as encourage the kids to decide which activities we want to make sure to fit in this summer.
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When I think about summer, I think of the sudden increase is dirt and mud everywhere! Baths are a frequent necessity. Strawberry and Kitty love to dig, apparently only encouraged by their brother, who is on a new emphatic hunt for “rocks” hiding beneath our lawn and play set.
The only way to get by is to embrace it, I know! I knew the perfect picture book to go along with dirt: I’m a Dirty Dinosaur! by Janeen Brian and Ann James.
One thing I love about I’m a Dirty Dinosaur is that as the dinosaur gets progressively dirtier, he spends time relishing in the mess: first his messy feet, then his messy hands, and then his messy tummy, and so forth. Strawberry loves to act out the simple rhythmic pages for each messy part of the Dino.
The most clever part of the simple art in this book is that the dirty brown that covers this adorable dinosaur in each picture is actually mud! To extend the fun, we decided to make our own mud paintings.
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There is stage each of my kids has enjoyed, between two and three, when they truly loved Pete the Cat’s I Love My White Shoes! Since it is so fun to sing the song and toddlers are just starting to recognize colors, it’s a perfect stage for beginning color recognition and color matching.
I was amazed by my daughter’s speaking one day when I overheard her singing to herself in the back seat of the car at a very young age.
“Shoes!” I caught. Then “White!” It was clear as a bell, but she was wearing Buster Browns. What was she talking about?
After a few moments, I recognized the song: it was Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes!
Do you know that song? It is this one:
She loves shoes, she loves Pete the Cat, and she loves singing that song! It’s a perfect picture book and story for a toddler-aged learner. It provides a story about shoes that change from white to red, to blue, to brown, to white again. It shows a character being positive, even when things happen (like walking in something!).
Now it’s my third child who is bursting in to song when she sees her shoes!
I thought I’d make up another fun game for my toddler: this time featuring all colors of cool shoes! Here is the Shoes Color Matching FREEBIE for you too.
The Shoes Color Matching game has ten pairs of shoes in ten colors. Put the shoe pairs pages on the two sides of a file folder and then cut out the individual shoes and laminate them. If you want, attach hook-and-loop tape (Velcro) to the bottom side of the shoes so you can attach them to the pairs page. My daughter loves the sound when she pulls them off!
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Free Color matching file folder game
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If you want to do more color matching, or if you want to sort colors in Spanish, check out the more extensive color matching centers set! In this, each color gets a half page. Kids can match the items to pages, or (if you prefer) print the color pages without the images on them and have the kids sort the items into the correct pages. It’s perfect for a center!
If you wanted the entire Color Matching File Folder Game and Center set, get it from the Line upon Line Learning Shop. You can also purchase it at TeachersPayTeachers.
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For a time, my preschooler struggled with counting to 10. Those upper numbers just could not seem to go in order! She also did not yet recognize the numerals and could not quite comprehend 1-to-1 correspondence. But, she loves hands-on fun, so I decided to make her activity mats for counting with gold coins to practice number concepts.
On our activity mats, the gold coins are in a pot at the end of the rainbow. Two little leprechaun friends are on the other side of the rainbow. My daughter loves rainbows, and she loves the shiny coins we found!
We practiced taking a number card (I made them from 1 to 10) and putting that number of coins in the pot of gold.
My daughter found this quite difficult with the higher numbers, but she could easily do it for the lower ones! I also made mat with the coins already in the pot and the numbers already printed in the square. This helped my girl with one-on-one correspondence.
I also made ten frames. Some of them have just 1, 2, 3, etc. squares with coins. Others have all ten frames filled with a coin and the numeral written on top of it. With those, my daughter lined the coins up on the frame and counted up to 10 as she did so.
We even tried a simple dice game together, where we roll a number and add that number of coins to the ten frame. When she got to 10, she won. This is basic addition practice as well, although for her it was just a gold coin game!
After I took these pictures, I laminated the blank mat. Now I’m going to put real money on the pot and have my older child count it up and write the numbers with dry erase markers! This makes it a nice little addition to her math practice as well!
We had fun with these activities. What would you do with a pot of gold like this? I have a feeling Strawberry may be putting the gold coins in to her purse for a shopping game next!
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Free Count to Ten Pot of Gold Sampler
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You can also get additional Counting Gold pages for a small fee. Click the images below to find out more and to see more amazing rainbow-themed products.
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Want more ideas on using play money of different kinds in your classroom or homeschool? See the posts below!
This time of year it’s all about Valentine’s Day! My favorite workbox activity for my preschoolers this time of year are my Valentine’s Day Counting Cards to use with manipulative: puff balls, candy pieces, and so forth!
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In pondering ways to make learning kinetic for my active one, I decided to use the idea of a Christmas tree number hop, with a Christmas tree outlined on the floor. Our simple Christmas tree only needed ornaments with the numbers on them. I made our number recognition practice into a Christmas dance party! When the music stops, it is not “musical chairs” but rather a preschool gross motor activity, a Christmas number hop! Our Christmas Tree Number Hop is a great gross motor activity to get moving, even while still practicing number recognition in a fun activity.
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My preschooler loves to play with our frog and bear counters to practice color and size sorting! Sorting and separating rainbow counters
The ones I have are also beads, so my daughter loves stringing them into a necklace. We took turns making a pond full of colorful lily pads that needed the right colored frogs on them. She asked to practice color and size sorting again and again!
Color sorting is the most obvious way to sort for a preschooler. We’ve already matched colorful shoes along with Pete the Cat! As I presented the different colored “lily pads” for my daughter to sort the frogs onto, she quickly got in to the challenge. I think I’ll include this in the Rainbow Busy Box next time I set it up for my little one.
Once I pointed out the differences in sizes, Strawberry also loved sorting them out by size. Because of her creative mind, small and medium became “babies” and “big brothers and sisters,” and the large frogs were the mamas and papas. My daughter loved to put the mamas and babies together. I had to make larger sized lily pads so the whole family could live together in our room-sized pond.
My older child wanted to play too, but he wanted to incorporate a game into our color and size sorting. My daughter insisted it be her Christmas present game: Spot It! Alphabet
As I said, I love these frogs. I believe Learning Resources stopped making the frogs, as I can only refer you to them secondhand on Amazon
However, so if you are looking for some small rainbow fun, you can also play with the Learning Resources Three Bear Family Rainbow Counters
unters
For my older child, I also made some simple pattern cards to use with the rainbow frogs. Patterning is an important skill for developing mathematical thinking skills and critical thinking in general.
Again, bears or any other rainbow counters would work well with these same cards! You can get the pattern cards in my TPT store or my shop.
[product id=”45055″]
Here are other ideas for using rainbow counters with kids of all ages:
See more rainbow activities on my blog and in my shop! Then, scroll down for a round-up of other rainbow counter activities.
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