A couple weeks ago I invited some friends to kick off the summer with a busy bag swap! What better way to get ready for summer travel than to stock up on new activities? If you've never heard that term before a busy bag is a self-contained activity or project for kids. For this swap the activity did not have to be reusable, it just had to have all the pieces and instructions needed for kids to complete. There were 6 moms who could make it so … [Read more...]
Letter P Pancake Themed Activities
After school got out for the summer my oldest went to camp each morning for a week. The younger two were bummed they were missing out on all the fun so we invited some of their friends over for a pancake themed play date! Everyone wore their pajamas to get into the letter P and pancake spirit and we started off the fun by making pink pig noses! (Did you catch all the P words so far?) We talked about the sounds animals make and how letters make … [Read more...]
Story Prop Bag Comprehension Activity
Good readers need to be able to recall and retell story events in order to understand what they are reading. A fun way to practice these skills with young readers is to create a story prop bag. They are super easy to make! Before reading the story to kids you gather a bunch of items that are found in the story and put them in a bag. Then when it's time to read you pull out the items one by one for the children to look at, touch, and think about. … [Read more...]
Dine with a Character: Muffin Tins with Moose!
We have been taking part in My Little Bookcase's The Little Book Adventure and really enjoyed challenge #2, leaving letters in library books for the next reader. This month's challenge is to dine with a book character--so much fun! We could not wait to get started! We actually chose which character we were going to dine with one night while we were eating. We have been doing Muffin Tin Mondays and the kids decided that a muffin tin meal would be … [Read more...]
Naked Mole Rat Play Dough Activity
This month's Virtual Book Club for Kids author is Mo Willems. We love Mo Willems here and ended up reading, and rereading, 4 of his books last week--The Pigeon Wants a Puppy, The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog, Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed, and Pigs Make Me Sneeze! Such great reads, we definitely recommend all of them! Once of the most reread books was Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed. It's the story of a naked mole rat who likes to wear clothes. In fact he … [Read more...]
Tinkerlab Creative Challenge: Flower Projects
It's time for another Tinkerlab Creative Challenge! The kids love these challenges so much that sometimes I will find them "hosting" their own challenges for each other or their friends. And I adore watching each of their creative processes. Seeing how they create and modify and recreate until they are satisfied is fantastic. You can actually see how they are thinking. This month's creative material is flowers. I have to say that for me this … [Read more...]
Caterpillar Puppet and Song
We have been caterpillar and butterfly obsessed around here! We ordered caterpillars from Insect Lore and have loved watching the the caterpillar life cycle in action. We have lots of caterpillar books, but the favorite this year is A Caterpillar Grows Up by Melvin and Gilda Berger. They love the photos and one of their favorite facts is that caterpillars have 12 eyes. So when we were making our caterpillar puppet the first thing we added were the … [Read more...]
Practice Reading with a Whisper Reader
One of my kindergartener's favorite ways to practice reading is with our whisper readers. A whisper reader is like a little "phone" kids can whisper read into and hear their words amplified in their ears. It is a great way to build fluency and it lots of fun to use! Yep. That is PVC piping you're looking at! Whisper readers are super easy to make--all you have to do is connect two 1 1/2 inch corners together. Re-reading text helps kids build … [Read more...]
