Distinguishing Between Number, Letter, and Word

This is a literacy activity we did to see if the students could distinguish a number from a letter and a letter from a word. Surprisingly, both classes did really well with it. I mostly had the older children participate. This is super easy to prepare and great for practice with beginning reading skills. 

Bean Letters

Here is our art project from today, bean letters. Each child got a letter (printed from a word processor document) and glued beans to the letter. Then we glued them to cardboard to make them more sturdy.

Short and simple one today. What are you doing to start teaching literacy to your class?

Tutorial Tuesday: Fall Centerpieces using Bag Painting

This week's guest blogger is Tina from Mamas Like Me.  Her blog is packed full of all kinds of activities that she does with her children including crafts, letter and writing activities, math, science, recipes, and much more. Please stop by and get some wonderful ideas!

I saw the idea for finger-painting in a bag over at Open Hands and figured I'd give it a try with this activity. The bags made it easier (and less messy) for us to paint both sides of these Fall leaves - and I love how the colors blended. 

 For this activity, we used:

 Red, Orange, and Yellow paint 

Leaf shapes cut out of card stock 

(I highly recommend the card stock rather than regular construction paper) 

Ziplock bags 

Glitter Glue 

Ribbon 

A branch from outside 

1. To prep for this, I cut leaf shapes out of card stock for each child.

2. Then, I put one leaf into each bag, along with a squirt of red, orange, and yellow paint, and a few drops of water to help it mix. Make sure there is some paint on both sides of the leaf. Try to get as much air out of the bag as possible when sealing it.

3. Next the kids had fun squishing the paint around and covered their leaves.

4. (Now, for the messy part!) I took the leaves out of each bag and replaced them with another leaf so each child got to do more than one.

5. When the kids were done covering their leaves, I offered them the option of just finger-painting with the paint in the bag. Some of them wanted to continue squishing with the paint and some were finished :)

6. Once the leaves dried, we used glitter pens to write each child's first initial on their leaves. (I love getting letters into an activity).

7. After the glitter dried, we hole-punched each leaf and tied it with ribbon.

8. Then, we went outside and found a branch to hang our leaves on and make our own Fall tree inside.

Doesn't it make an adorable centerpiece? You could also use these for garland or hang them in a window.

Tina is a former Elementary School teacher turned SAHM to three active boys (with one more on the way)! She blogs at Mamas Like Me where she shares kids activities, recipes, tips on frugal living, and reflections on life as ‘Mommy’.

Tutorial Tuesday: Teaching Letter Sounds

Hi! My name is Tammy from 123 Teach With Me. 

I'm so glad Lori invited me to be here!! I'm a teacher of 10 years and love sharing and inspiring other teachers. I think it's so important to build a strong connection between school and home. That's the main reason why I started my blog....to share my ideas with teachers AND parents. A child's success is not possible with only the teacher or only the parent. It's takes both to build a successful student.

Today I'm going to share with you a fun way I teach my own kids beginning letter sounds and practice with finding sounds in words. 

I came up with this when my son started to learn his letter sounds and he loved it!! We played this in the car, outside, and while we were shopping in stores. When I knew we were going play the game, I would give my son a magnifying glass and tell him we were going on a "hunt". It might be a good idea to keep a hand lens in your purse or bag so if they ask to go "hunting" you will be ready. He always loved to have his own lens to carry along while he was "hunting" because he thought it was funny the way things looked.

The song with this game goes to the tune of "A Hunting We Will Go" Here it is....

A hunting we will go

A hunting we will go

"B" is the sound we're listening for

A hunting we will go

**When they find something that begins with that sound sing...

Bat begins with "B" (make the sound)

Bat begins with "B"

Bat begins with "B B" (make the sound twice)

A hunting we will go.

When we returned home or finished the game, I would get this sheet out (pic below) where we would talk about what we saw that day and I would write down the words. Again, a sheet protector is great so you can easily erase the letter with a tissue and start with a new letter the next day.

This is a quick activity that your children or students will love!! You can also alter this for whatever sounds you are finding in words; ending sounds, blends, digraphs, long vowels, short vowels or just simply finding the actual letter....any specific phonetic skill will work! All children love a little song and I know they will really enjoy this!

Thanks for reading! 

 

Outdoor Letter Hunt

For this activity, we placed laminated alphabet cards (printed side down) all around the ground on the soccer field.

Then, we passed out small foam letters to each child.

 Then, the kids were off searching for their letter! Since they were face down, the children had to turn each one over until they found their match.

They had an awesome time! This is a great way to take your literacy outside and get some exercise in the process. Learning to read and write doesn't have to happen sitting at a table.

The kids did a great job and helped the others who were having a little bit of trouble. This can also be a good cooperative activity. Maybe you could pair the children up and give one the upper case and the other the lower case of the same letter. Please share your results if you try this activity!

Happy Hunting!

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10 Literacy Ideas for Toddlers

When working with the little guys and gals (toddlers), it's important to make the activity fun, simple, and developmentally appropriate so they don't get too frustrated or feel pressured and maybe not want to do it at all. So here are some of the ideas I have put together that you can do with your little ones to give them their first critical experiences with letters and words!

1. Read to your child. I know this one seems obvious, really allow the child to turn pages, point to pictures, hold the book his/her self. Read books the child picks out plus new fun ones they have not seen before. I like interactive books where my son can move things on the page, turn, push, pull, and touch because children learn better with hands-on experiences. There are some wonderful interactive books out there!  These are just a few hints to make reading aloud to your child more meaningful.

2. Magnetic letters on the refrigerator. 

3. Sing ABC songs. There are more than just "Now I know my ABCs," and tons of variations of it. Below are some I found on Amazon (Check out the great deal on 50 songs for $8.99!) or you can hit your local library and search their kids music section to see what you discover. Most children love clapping or dancing along with upbeat music.

4. Foam letters in the bathtub or water table/bin. They stick to the side of the bathtub when wet!

5. Letter stencils with chalk on a chalkboard. 

6. Dig for magnetic/foam letters in sand. You can even use cardboard cutout letters.

7. Spell child's name on cookie/baking sheet and have them match the magnetic letters.

8. Name puzzle. You can make your own by writing each letter of the child's name on a piece of cardboard and cutting it out. You can have the child paint it or decorate it to make it brighter. My example is a little messy, but I'm sure most toddlers won't even notice. You don't even have to cut around every edge.

9. Play a game with your child where one of you points to an object. You say what it is and the letter it begins with and then encourage the child to repeat the sound that letter makes with you several times. 

10. Make a  song out of the letters of your child's name. For example, to the tune of B-I-N-G-O: "There was a boy whose name was Aaron, Aaron was his name-o, A-A-R-O-N, A-A-R-O-N, A-A-R-O-N and Aaron was his name-o." Get creative!

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Thinky Linky Thursday

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I am featuring the top 4 most clicked links this week. All the ideas that were linked up this week were great. Thanks so much to all of you for making Thinky Linky Thursday a success!

Color Mixing and Oobleck from Train Up a Child

Bobbi Pin Learning from My Child-Centered Life

Eat Your Sight Words from School Time Snippets

St. Patrick's Day Fun from Crystal's Ramblings

CONGRATS TO THOSE WHO WERE FEATURED. FEEL FREE TO GRAB THE "FEATURED" BUTTON BELOW. PLEASE LINK BACK TO CACHEY MAMA'S CLASSROOM.

Storytime Sunday: Dr. Seuss's ABC

Today's book is one of my favorites, Dr. Seuss's ABC. There are so many activities you can do with this book. One of my favorite things about Dr. Seuss other than the rhyming of course, is his made-up characters. The kids really get a kick out of these creatures and the silly things they do! 

So, we decided to do a writing activity with this book. We used this as our sample. The kids were to write as much of this as they can (choosing their own letter) and then draw a picture of something that begins with that letter.

Here is one of the children's work:

And here is another. She didn't get around to drawing a picture, but she wrote more of the text.

We made letters with gear blocks as you can see here. We also have the Dr. Seuss's ABC computer game on our computer, so it was a great extension of the book about which we had read and written.

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Thinky Linky Thursday: A Day in Preschool

Here are some of the things we did since being back from winter break. (only 1 day) It was so nice to be back with my kiddos! Love them :)

Floating sailboats. Matching colors and shapes. One of my little girls made up her own song "I'm sailing, we're sailing together."

Love the way this little boy set up the dramatic play area with our new baby dolls! Setting the table shows understanding of 1:1 correspondence.

Isn't this snow angel adorable?!

For small groups, we sat at the discovery area by the window and looked out at the snow. We talked about winter and what happens to the weather when winter comes. Then we drew pictures of things we can do with snow.

My car-obsessed student decided to build this ramp/street/track to run his cars on. A bunch of other kids joined in. Just look at how he matched up the blocks to make them fit together. Excellent!

And lastly, we used these gear blocks (not sure what they're really called) to make letters. 

What have you been doing with your kids?

Link up below!

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