Thinky Linky Thursday

Featured from last week with the most clicks:

Liquid Layers from Life with Moore Babies

Congrats, get your button on my right sidebar. Thanks to everyone for linking up and don't forget to click on some links to vote for them!

Big News!!!!!

I wanted you all to know, I haven't been purposely neglecting my blog. I really do have a good excuse. We just found out I am pregnant!!! So, I can check that off my summer bucket list :) I am due April 5, 2013. I have been extremely tired. Also, I haven't had much material as the kids haven't started back to school yet, but I have been busy setting up and going to training.

Anyways, I would like to thank all my guest bloggers for your wonderful posts as they have been pretty much solely keeping my blog afloat for the past few weeks. I promise I will try my best to get some new content put up as soon as possible. In the meanwhile, I hope all of your back-to-schools are going great!

Tutorial Tuesday: Pretend Play

Pretend play is such an essential part of childhood. My 2.5 year old has a grand imagination and loves pretending. Aiden enjoys making caves from blankets. Any time things go over his head (power lines, trees, bridges, etc), he sees them as tunnels waiting to be explored. Lately, he has been playing under the dining room table saying it is a tunnel. I decided to set up a little invitation for pretend play.  

 Our table has drop sides that make for a natural tunnel. I hung a blanket to the front and back creating a cave. 

 

Inside the cave, I placed several of his stuffed animals.  

 The animals were going to have a party in the cave, and they needed some supplies. I added some foam letters to a toy pan for some alphabet soup. I placed the soup on some torn pieces of orange paper that represented fire.  

 To a bowl of cheerios, I added some magnet letters and a spoon. The letters on top spell Aiden's name.  

 A stack of plates and a few plastic discs completed the setup.  

 When Aiden awoke from his nap, he saw the blankets covering the table. Curious, he looked at me. I told him he could go in the cave and see what was there. He crawled in and saw the party that awaited. He made some noises of excitement and began to play. "I'm going to eat some cheerios," he said. "My animals want some, too." He passed out the plates and gave them each some cheerios. He pulled the letters out of the cheerios and named them each. "A - I - D - E - N that spells Aiden!" He gave the animals magnet letters and foam letters to eat along with their cheerios. Not only was he practicing letter recognition, he was also working on fine motor skills by serving the animals. As he talked to the animals during his pretend play, he was working on language skills. Pretend play is a wonderful venue for practicing a number of different skills. It's all up to your imagination. Thanks for letting me share our fun with you! Would you like to see more ideas for toddlers/preschoolers from me? Here are a few of my favorites. What Can you Learn from a Cardboard Tube? 20 Ideas for Practicing Measuring Outdoor Sound Hunt Inspired by Mr. Brown Can Moo. Can You?

 

Trisha is a stay at home mom to her 2-year old son, Aiden. She writes about their adventures at Inspiration Laboratories, a blog dedicated to encouraging learning through creativity and play. Trisha is an educator with a passion for science literacy. It is never too early to start encouraging science learning (or any kind of learning for that matter). Follow along on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest.

Thinky Linky Thursday

Most clicked link from last week:

DIY 2 in 1 Car and Ball Ramp from CAUTION! Twins at Play!

Tutorial Tuesday: Puzzle Sight Words

Puzzle Sight Words 

Happy Tuesday! I am so excited to be joining Cachey Mama's Classroom today. I am Jillian also known as A Mom with a Lesson Plan. One of my favorite lessons to plan is sight words. Making sight word practice fun and easy is one of the ways I keep my kids excited about learning new words.

How to Prepare

Do you have any old puzzles with missing pieces? Don't worry if all your puzzles are full sets, you can find a cheap puzzle at a garage sale, thrift store, or dollar store.

 I used a puzzle with big pieces but any size pieces would work.
  
Put the puzzle pieces together. Make sure you have enough pieces connected to match the letters in the word you are making. Then flip the puzzle over so the back of the puzzle is up.
 Write one letter of the word on each puzzle piece. That's all the prep you need. Easy right?

3 Ways to Play

I love this idea for a couple of reasons. Puzzle sight words is perfect for a quiet classroom activity or for at home practice. I also love that it can be varied to work with kids of different levels. 1. Lay out the sight word card right next to the letters needed to make the word. Mix the letters up a bit and then have your little one put the "puzzle" together to match the card.

2. Lay out the sight word cards. Mix up all the letters and have your little one create the words by finding the letters in the pile.

3. Mix up all of the pieces and ask your little to make words from the pieces available. This is a good one if you've already practiced these words quite a bit.

Besides a love for her kids (and well just kids in general) Jillian has a degree in Early Childhood Education and 10 years experience as a preschool teacher. Right now her “students” call her mom. Jillian believes that life offers an abundance of learning opportunities. She loves figuring out what they are and how they can be expanded on. Join the journey at amomwithalessonplan.com.

Thinky Linky Thursday

Most clicked links from last week:

Helping Children Stand up for Themselves- Kelso's Choices from Mrs. Goff's Pre-K Tales

Australia- Dot Art Button Turtles from Glittering Muffins

Winners, please get your "featured" button from my right sidebar! Thanks for sharing.

Tutorial Tuesday: "Capture the Pigs!" Math Game

Hi this is Casey from Second Grade Math Maniac! Thank you Lori for letting me share over here today! 

Okay, so my tutorial is for a math game that you can use with kids at home or in the classroom to build fact fluency.

I am constantly reinforcing with parents how important it is for kids to add and subtract fluency without their fingers. They need to be able to focus on what problems are asking of them and not worrying about how many fingers they are going to need. :)

I made a cute game (with the audience of this blog in mind) to help kids practice adding numbers that equal sums of 10 or 100. 

For my tutorial I used the 100 sum set. 

First I cut apart all of the pigs. I used my paper cutter because I didn't have time to cut each pig out individually, I also think they will laminate better this way. 

Second, I glued the instruction page to the front of a large envelope. 

Third, I glued the barn to the back of the large envelope. After they match the sums they will put the pigs back into the envelope or "barn."

Now all I need to do is laminate and let my students practice! :)

Click on the images download these games from Google Docs! You can have the version with sums to 10 or 100.

Enjoy your week everyone! :)

Dollar Finds

Here are just a few dollar items I found this weekend. They are all from Target except the sorting tray which I got at Dollar Tree. There were so many more things I wanted to get from Target (mostly Seuss stuff), but I decided to put most of it back when I found a rug with streets on it for my son's room. I have been looking for one that he can drive his cars around on. 

Anyway, The Lorax bag is an addition to my collection of Seuss bags I bought last year. The idea is to put in the book that goes along with each bag and some other various items that also relate to the book such as stickers, word cards, etc. Then there are the Seuss number flash cards. I already have the shapes and colors cards that I divided among the other bags.

Then just some dry erase markers and dry erase cards to practice writing the alphabet.

Hope you get some ideas for your room!

First Week Back

Well, I have officially started back to work this week, so I can actually say TGIF! So far, we have had 2.5 days of training, so I have only been in the classroom 1.5 days. But I just wanted to share a couple of things I have made and done. I am also at a different center this year, so there will be plenty to organize and prepare!

This is one that I thought would be easy for the beginning of school because most kids already know this rhyme. The pictures are held on by velcro (or they WILL be as soon as I can get the thing laminated, resource room laminator died). I will probably choose one person to help find the right picture and place it in the correct place.

Helper chart. Although I really love this one, I can't take credit for it. The teachers that were there last year made it, but I wanted to share as it is SOO cute! (Close-ups below)

And.... my favorite area so far. Writing center. I love the little square things on the left, red and green. They are kind of like eye spy bottles with letters hidden amongst the beads!

One last thing I wanted to share is a CD that I have reserved from the library. I want to use song 9 which I heard used over the summer at the library's toddler storytime. It is an action song where the kids put on their glasses and get ready to read the book, but oh no! Is there something scary in there? Quick, shut the book! It's very cute and I think it will be a good transition into storytime.

Thinky Linky Thursday

Yay, we had a few first time linkers last week! Thanks to all for linking up. The most clicked link was:

Light Tables 101 by Caution: Twins at Play