Number Flip Charts and Fact Families

Cut out enough My Little Pony clip arts to correspond to each flap, glue, and discuss. Numbers are so much more fun with Pinkie Pie and friends.

Sight Words

Sight words on bracelets, on the chalkboard, and next to the door/shoe spot. The more we see it, the more we practice it!

Choose Your Battles

While I have been trying to encourage the children to play some board games by the rules, or at least on terms they all agree on, sometimes that doesn't happen. And that is ok! Like when they want to "play" Battleship - but really just make fun patterns.

I love their creativity.

Book Review: The Boy Who Cried Ninja by Alex Latimer

I was having a hard time getting my favorite boy interested in working on letters. So I tapped into his favorite current obsession: Ninjas! We glued cut-out ninja shapes over large letter Nns. He loved it and asked to read the ninja books over and over (there aren't too many to choose from in our large library network but they are all great). 

Weather Journal

For circle time I have been trying something new. The 3s have been bickering about the calendar so I decided to give each her own weather journal. The idea is that they can write the date in the correct day spot, write the numbers for the temperature, then color what the sky looks like.

It might be a little too advanced. Or they are catching on that it is a little too school like. Or maybe it isn't as exciting as bickering over laminated squares for the playroom calendar. The weather journal is on and off in its popularity.

Clocks, Cats, Cars and the Letter C

These were fun and easy clocks to cut out and assemble. The hands rotate with a brad. With chatty 3's it is easy to start a dialogue about clocks, how they work, what we need them for. Or what three-year-olds need them for (is it snack tiiiime yet?!).

These guided activities are great for helping the children follow directions, work on fine-motor skills (coloring), counting and being creative.

Some of our directions:

Circle the clocks, count them, trace the 6, color the crab red, color the cat your favorite color, and write your name!

Product Recommendation: Pattern Blocks

Santa sent some pattern blocks to the play room- how thoughtful! The children enjoy matching shapes to the boards or making up their own patterns.

Veteran's Day

I find that it is often difficult to teach young children about veterans and the military. But their brave service is too special to disregard. Typically it seems that those figures are most easily described something like fire fighters or police- people who are brave and help others.

After discussing the flag and looking at photos of service men and women, we played this counting game. Each player has a sheet of stars and takes a turn rolling a 6 sided die. The children counted the die and colored in the corresponding number of stars.

Ice Cream Alphabet

Each lower case letter is represented on a scoop of "ice-cream" while each upper case letter is written on a "cone." The children had a great time matching letters then spelling words.

Letter Bingo

DLTK has a custom bingo maker with many themes. This time I picked letters and shapes- color coding vowels and consonsants. I laminated them with the purple cow so we could use snacks for markers and have easy clean up. The game is a great way to help with letter recognition for the younger children and helps teach categorizing letters with the older.