B is for Beanbag - Preschool Uppercase and Lowercase Sorting Game

This year several other moms and I have decided to do a preschool coop.  We had "B" at our house last week, so I decided to make some B Beanbags to help kids sort out their upper and lower case B's and because bean bags are so fun.  We used them during both of our B days as a sorting activity and then each child got to choose 2 to take home.  (And thanks to Fairfield for providing me with the Poly Pellets® and Oly*Fun used in this fun game and for compensating me for writing this post.  All ideas and opinions are 100% my own.

If you've followed my blog for a while, you'll know that we're kind of addicted to I-Spy, and I still have thousands of I-Sky fabric squares just waiting to be sewn into something cool.

So I sorted through them and found as many different objects that started with B as I could.  If you don't have I-Spy squares available, you could go to the fabric store and just choose one or two fabrics with B objects on it, and make lots of identical beanbags.

Ways to Play:

• Have kids toss the beanbag at the matching target.
• Name the B object on the beanbag
• Yell "bah...bah...bah..." as they throw the beanbag
• Sort colors
• Count the beanbags.

Supplies
Here's what you'll need to make your own:

• Various 4" cotton fabric squares or 2 Fat-Quarters with B pictures on them.
• Fat quarter or scraps of black or other high contrast fabric
• Poly Pellets® Weighted Stuffing Beads – 6 Ounce Bag or larger
• Paper-backed Fusible Interfacing
• B and b Template
• Oly-Fun™ Craft Sheets in Sky Blue (or any color).  You could also use construction paper.
• Thread
• Sewing Machine
• Scissors
• Pins

Instructions:  (Picture shows the steps.)

Fun with Flashcards

The other day, I was up on Firecracker's loft bed, trying to get her bed made up nicely with her new quilt, so I could take some pictures of it...which I'll share with you next week.  (Anyone else notice what a pain it is to make up a loft/bunk bed?!?)  The whole time I was up there wrestling with the sheets and quilt, Sweet Pea was down in her bed babbling away and practicing her letters.

My mom gave us several sets of flashcards for a Christmas gift, and Sweet Pea especially LOVES them.   She especially loves to find R's...

YEAH!!  I found an R!!!!

The Very Hungry Caterpillar - Read Along with Me

We've been fans of the Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle for a long time.  (I love the board book version since it gets handled a lot.)  It was even the theme of Sweet Pea's first birthday party (links to those details at the bottom of this post if you're interested.)

(Art Display Board Tutorial here.  No cutting machine required.)

Seriously...what's not to love about a book featuring so many delicious fruits and yummy treats with little holes for little fingers to poke into...not to mention that mommy likes that it teaches numbers, days of the week, and caterpillar/butterfly life cycles...all in a story that's short enough for young attention spans.

Conversation Heart Activities

ABC & 123 is one of my favorite blogs for coming up with Preschool Activities.  They didn't disappoint this Valentine's Day.  They had quite a few activities using conversation hearts as manipulatives, so despite how much I don't like to eat them, I picked up a bunch last time I went shopping.  You can follow their link or go here to What The Teacher Wants for the math activities.

We tried these out on Saturday when Firecracker was home from school.  We started out with graphing activity.  I gave each child their own little bowl with hearts in it.  Then I had them color in the hearts on their paper, since Little Brother and Sweet Pea couldn't read the colors.

I expected Firecracker to do quite well...and she did.

I was pleasantly surprised with how well Little Brother did with it.  I guess I need to do more graphing activities with him because he aced it.

Sweet Pea made more of a scatter plot with hers, but got plenty of fine motor skills practice.

Then we tried out the patterns.  Firecracker has been doing patterns a lot at school, so after she did some easy patterns...

I had her do some harder ones...

Little Brother did pretty well with making AB patterns, with just a couple mistakes...and the last row was whatever he felt like.  He enjoyed it, so I think we're going to be doing a lot more patterns with him now.

After Little Brother and Sweet Pea went down for the naps, Firecracker and I tried playing Battle Ship.  It was a little too challening for her, though.  I think it will be just right to play with her when Hubby is home to be on her team.

As a last activity, we tried the ABC order activity.  We chose 8 hearts and put them in ABC order.  This was right at Firecracker's level...a little tricky by still do-able.

There were some other fun activities in the packet we still need to try, but this exhaused Firecracker's attention span for the day.  I also had some fun taking pics of the hearts while the kids were working.

I hope you have a Valentine's Day that makes you smile.

(And on an unrelated note...Helping Little Hands is on Facebook now!  Go to our page here or click "like" on my sidebar if you'd like to keep up to date via Facebook.)

DIY Learning Games in Less Than 10 Minutes

Heard at our house yesterday, "I want to play the Letter Game...the one with the yummy things!"

Candy Land is a great game to practice colors...and at our house it's also a pretty awesome game for practicing letters, sounds, and reading too.  This took about 10 minutes to do, you can undo it easily (or redo for a different skill), it was a big hit with Little Brother...and it makes Candy Land a bit more interesting for me too. 

We didn't used to have many kids' board games.  Then Firecracker got old enough to actually play them, and I realized how useful they can be for learning basic skills.  Now we've picked up several on sale or from thrift stores.  Of course some of the MOST important skills they teach is taking turns and getting along...but they can teach other things as well.

Here's what you need...Candy Land, some scotch tape, and a thin tip permanent marker (or other marker that will write on the tape.)

First, I covered the Candy Land path with tape.  I used short segments to get around the curves.

When I was done, it looked like this:

Then I put one letter on each space with the permanent marking pen, making sure to just write on the tape.  I wrote the lowercase letters because that's what children often need the most help with.  Instead of "q," I used "qu."

(When we taught Firecracker letters, we started with uppercase because we figured they were easier to distinguish...and she's turning out fine.  We've since learned, though, that it's better to practice their lowercase letters more, since you encounter them in reading so much more often than uppercase letters.)

Then we played Candy Land like normal, but we had to say the sound the letter makes when we landed on it.

Little Brother loves it!  Just the letters is almost to easy for Little Brother, though, so I think I'll take the tape off soon and add some sight words, like "the, and, that" as well as some short words for him to sound out.

Firecracker is not a huge fan of me modifying regular games for educational purposes...but she had fun with it in spite of herself.  For her we made it a bit more challenging...we had to think of a word that started with the letter we landed on. 

You could personalize the spaces as much as you want to...maybe focussing on tricky words in a unit your child is learning at school.

I'm linking to: