Felt Board Food

The felt board/pocket chart I received for Christmas came with a set of pictures and words all pertaining to a farm theme.  I pulled out the food words and pictures and made a quick reading activity for E.

I simply put the words in the pocket chart and added the pictures to the board on the top.  Then, I had E try and match the pictures to the words below.

He did a great job using first letter clues to figure out where everything went.

Pancake Flip

In keeping with our food theme this week, I made a pancake game for E.  He loves pancakes and always wants to watch me make them.  Seeing his interest in wanting to flip the cakes (which obviously I never let him do), I made one of his trays into a griddle and let him have his hand at flipping.

I attached a piece of black felt to the tray to help make it look more like a griddle.  It ended up being necessary for E.  Without it, the pancakes slid all over the tray and were difficult to get under with the spatula. 

As for the pancakes themselves, I simply cut out circles, shaded them brown and laminated them.  To make the game a bit more challenging, I added sight words with dry erase marker.  I did this so I could change the words later without having to make more pancakes.

I had E flip the pancakes and say the sight word before turning over the next one.  He really got into and kept telling himself to hurry before they burned.  After he flipped the ones on the griddle, we added more  I had in waiting and kept on in this way for some time.

Early Readers

Last year, my wonderful in-laws called me to let me know that the school district they both worked for was giving away their old reading series books.  They asked me if I would be interested in them and of course I said yes.

E is starting to show an interest in reading and already knows a few sight words and so I dug through the books that I had stored away and found these to go along with our topic of food this month (there were so many).  Don't get me wrong, the literature isn't gripping or artful in any way, but these books definitely have their purpose with kids who are just learning to read.

Here is an example of what a lot of these books look like.  Very simple and rhythmic text make these books perfect for building E's confidence in reading.

Santa Sight Words

E has started recognizing a few sight words.  As such, I was looking for a fun sight word game that would fit into our Christmas theme.  I couldn't find one that I liked, so I decided to make one on my own.

I stumbled across some Santa Sight Words and thought it would be fun to make a house with a chimney that he could drop the cards down as he practiced them.

I took a box and wrapped it in wrapping paper.  I, then, took the scraps (flaps of the box) and made a door, windows,  roof and chimney.  The smoke is a white piece of felt taped to the inside of the chimney.

I cut out the Santa Sight Words and we said them out loud as we dropped them down the chimney.  E would then say "Be careful, St. Nick!".  It was too cute.

Check out more of our Christmas ideas by clicking here.

E is currently 29 months old.

Mailing Letters

This week, we took the cards we made last week and mailed them to family members.  E had made five cards so we picked 5 people to whom we wanted to send the cards.  

We (I) wrote a note thanks to each person and then E worked on signing his name.  He then stuffed the cards into envelopes. 

I wrote the names and addresses of the people he picked on address labels.  I also wrote return address labels with his name on them.  We worked on placement of the labels and talked about their purpose.  E loved seeing his name on the labels and had fun trying to find his loved ones names as well (practicing those pre reading skills).

Finally, E put a stamp in the corner, sealed the envelope (he loved licking it), and walked them to the mailbox.  We got several calls of appreciation throughout the week and E loved it.

Make it in Minutes - Word Family Blocks

This idea was big hit and was very easy to make. I saw a similar idea on Filth Wizardary where she used labels and legos to make letter blocks.

I had Mega Bloks and thought I could use them to make word families.

Here E is making _an words. I paired this with some time on the computer where he explored word families on Starfall.