Preschool Days

When I think of preschool, I think of fun. I have boy/girl twins that are preschool age and they couldn't be more different from each other than sugar and salt. My girl loves to learn and is always exited to do something knew. My boy isn't really interested in learning anything new and would really love it if nothing ever changed. My girl can sit for hours enjoying one type of activity whereas my boy gets bored within minutes. I have had to get creative and find/create several activities to teach the same concept. You will find many posts that share ideas for teaching the same concept over and over again. 

I found a fantastic idea on a this blog. She made word strips with the names of bugs on them and included a picture. She then  wrote letters on clothespins and had the children spell out the word by clipping it to the word strip and matching up the letters. She only had names of bugs because they were working on a unit about bugs. I made some word strips of my own with some words that have the same endings because I like to teach reading with phonics. I wrote the uppercase letters on one side of the clothespin and the lowercase letters on the other side. I did two clothespins per letter except for the letters least used. The strips were printed on colored card stock and the clip art was found for free on the internet and printed on regular paper and glued to the word strips. The word strips were then laminated. You can find this document here. You can use the clip art I found or you can find your own. I did make sure that there weren't any restrictions on the use of the clip art I found and that it was completely free. 

Leia was quite proud of herself for completing her first word strip.  

Children this age usually need to work on fine motor skills as well as counting. I thought combining the two would make a fun activity. I know I have seen something similar on a blog somewhere but I can't seem to find it. I made this activity to be used with numbered clothespins or paperclips. I like the paperclips because it takes a little more concentration to get them onto the card the right way. The number cards were also laminated. You can print them here.

Luke had to really think through this activity because he wanted to slide the paperclips on sideways. It took some concentration and coordination to get them on there right but he enjoyed the activity and didn't get frustrated. 

The next two bumblebee activities can be found on this blog. I can't seem to get enough of it. Her ideas and cute printables are fantastic and suit our preschool needs right now. The first one is a bumblebee paper plate sort. 

I found small plastic plates at Dollar Tree. There are a few things I did differently: Instead of gluing the bees to the plate, I put magnet tape on the back of each bee and magnet tape in the center of 6 plates. This makes the plates interchangeable and 6 is more manageable than 26. When using the uppercase bees the child matches the lowercase letters to them by placing them on the plate and just the opposite when using the lowercase bees. I thought pictures of things that start with that letter would be a fun addition to this game. I found free clip art online and created little cards that can be placed on the plate that has the corresponding letter. You can print A-Q here and the other half of Q-Z here. After creating these documents and printing them out for my children, I noticed that I only had three pictures for the letter F. I hope to find time later to create more for that letter. There are also fewer pictures for those letters that are not as common. 

Bumblebee pick and say is a fun activity to play with your preschool age child. Luke and Leia love it! The idea is that the child picks a letter and then tells you what it is and I like them to say the sound it makes. The file includes uppercase and lowercase letters. 

I found some great deals at Michaels. I used a 25% off total purchase and a 40% off one regular priced item. Don't forget to use coupons, they can save you so much money on teaching tools. I found some wooden magnetic letters in both upper and lowercase. They came in a nifty wooden box with a clear hard plastic cover for storage. I love it when things come with their own storage. 

School supplies are on sale right now. I found this little white board, which is also magnetic, at Walmart for only $2.00. 

My little ones love flannel boards so when I found flannel boards with numbers and letters, I had to get it. 

While at Michael's I also found these great wooden lace cards. They also came in a wooden box and had several shoelaces to go with them. This box, however, didn't have a cover. I store mine in a pencil pouch that I was able to purchase for $1.00 at Walmart. My twins get fine motor skills practice and my 18 mos. old can join in. 

I love finding new ways to teach my children and creating activities that teach while playing. 

I know most of my posts are for preschool kids. I will be posting more for older children when we get a little closer to the beginning of the school year and as they complete projects.