We're Still Reading......

How do you introduce words to your kids so they are interested? That's been my question for some time now.  

Today, it came to me. Put them on balloons, duh. 

We've been working on all of these words for some time now. Today, I helped them to create a sentence with these words. 

It's also something we'd like to do real soon. 

"Zoo!" 

Here's what we put together on the balloons. "A Day At The Zoo." We still have to spend our day at the zoo! Let's do it soon! 

Then we created words of our own with our letter gems. 

Working with the word "at" by adding new letters to create new words. 

HAT 

Can you remember some of the words and write them on your own? Yes. 

Writing. 

Playing hangman for the first time:) 

They guessed the word right away! 

S's turn to go! 

They thought of their own words and did this all on their own! 

Here is a picture of I-Bell's final after S guessed her word. It is the cutest thing ever! Look at her little hangman:) 

Zoo!

Bringing the Fair Home

Last week we went to the Playground Fair for about two hours. We planned to go back the next day for as long as we could possibly stand it but unfortunately, it was a stormy afternoon:(

We still had our tickets and punch cards, so instead of getting rid of them, we played!

Cash machine, change, punch cards and tickets. 

A noodle necklace making station. 

Burlap sewing station. 

Ball toss. 

Face/mirror painting. 

Paying for and distributing punch cards. 

Ball toss! 

Checking out the mirror painting station. 

A little sewing 

Someone was busy at the mirror station! 

Back for another visit. (Every time someone visited a station, someone would punch their card.)

Making a noodle necklace... 

And then he had a better idea... 

What fun!

Train Ticket Activity for 2 Year Old

This activity is an alternative to Ticket Punch

I created this activity for D (27 months old) while his older cousins were punching their tickets.

Above is a completed hole punch ticket.

I helped my son punch the holes in his ticket, but with his little hands, he's unable to do this himself.

So, quickly, I drew some new train tickets for him. Each had a number with that many wheels.

The wheels were drawn for these dot stickers. D could see the number, count the wheels and put stickers over the wheels as he counted!

We've been doing a lot of dot sticker activities lately, so ....

his interest turned to glue shortly after. I had to include this pipe cleaner choo choo too!

Ticket Punch

This activity was inspired by our trip to see Thomas last month.

A ticket with a "punch" in the middle.

My home made tickets. 

Close-up. Boy and girl trains!

Each train has a number with a correlating number of punch circles along the sides. 

We have some first timers here. Ages 4 and 5 and they insist that they will do this themselves. They don't need help:) 

Look at those faces...

I tried sticking them to the table (I need to buy some tape). This way they could use two hands. And then I kindly showed them how to hold the hole punch so it wasn't so difficult. 

One handed! And so simple! 

D checked his out. I helped him punch the holes, but at 27 months, he's unable to do this himself. 

This activity also helped with learning numbers. If I-Bell didn't recognize the number, all she had to do was count the circles. 

Once they told me the number, then they would start punching! 

They went through a lot of tickets! 

This activity lasted all day. No matter what we were doing, there was always a ticket involved - and someone was either punching, passing out, or collecting tickets:)