A Fun Thing to Do at the Library!

I always struggle with ways to get my boys actively involved in book selection at the library. My oldest girl always begs to go to the library and keeps herself very busy searching for books while we're there. My two boys love reading books, but they often depend on me a little too much to pick out good books for them don't always put much effort into themselves on our library trips. My middle one is getting better bit by bit, but My Little Reader will still usually just quickly grab a few books to fill his bag and then want to go play with the trains or the computers.

This week we were all on a hunt for some new Christmas books to read (it was our Advent calendar activity for that day). I looked up some Christmas-y titles on the computer card catalog and starting browsing the shelves to find the books on my list.

My boys were wandering aimlessly so I enlisted their help. "Can you boys help me find this list of books? There's a lot of them. Work together and start by looking for 'E FON', then see if you find a Christmas book there." (I didn't write down all the book titles on my list.)

They were so excited to go hunting! My little guy wasn't able to find the call numbers himself, but with a little help from his big brother or from me, he could! Trying to then hunt out the Christmas title with that particular call number I gave them was like a treasure hunt. They were so proud of themselves with each book they found.

When we completed hunting out the books on our list, they begged me to make a new list so they could find some more. They seriously could have done that all day. And what great practice with their library skills and even practice with their alphabet and spelling.

To Have a Fun Library Book Hunt...

1. Choose a theme of books to look for (Holiday, Dogs, Back to School, etc.)

2. Do a computer catalog search and make a list of books to hunt for o
n the shelves. (You could involve your kids in this part too if you want.) Decide if you want to write down the book titles or just let your chosen theme guide your kiddos in hunting out the correct books.

3. Give your kids a list of the library call numbers your copied from the computer catalog. Or verbally tell your kids the call numbers as you go. If you want, you could write a few separate call numbers on separate sheets of paper and give one paper to each child. Let them race to find all the books on their list (if you trust them to not get too competitive and disruptive).

4. Assist younger children with this activity. It's great fun and helps them practice their alphabet and library skills. We sang the alphabet song a few times as we hunted for our books.

New, Fabulous Halloween Book and Activity!

Charlotte Gunnufson sent us a copy of her new book Halloween Hustle and the kids and I have been enjoying it immensely. I have actually had to get onto my kids a bit about them dragging the book all over the house (and out to the car on errand trips), before I got a chance to post a review while the book still looked nice and new!

I planned to sit down and read and play with the book today with My Little Reader since it's aimed at kids around his age (he's in kindergarten). But my older son (9) couldn't resist the fun and wanted to join us too! 

I thought it would be fun to make our own little skeletons that could do the Halloween Hustle as we read the story, and fall down just like the skeleton in the book. My Little Reader decided he wanted to make a mummy like the one in the book. After some hard work, and a couple revisions, he had it the way he wanted. We each attached our creations to popsicle sticks for marionette-style puppets. 

I used simple white yarn (because that's what I had in my craft cabinet) to attach the mummy and skeleton to the popsicle stick handles. We punched holes and used twisty ties (again, using what I had handy) to make the puppets' joints move so they could hustle. 

Isn't that an adorable mummy? I think so!

The story is full of fun and whimsical Halloween-type characters that are headed to a party on Halloween night (warning: there is a zombie in the story that is a little on the gross side). While observing the cover, My Little Reader wondered how the skeleton would be able to dance without falling apart since he has no skin or muscles, and he was right on the money with his wonderings. Turns out the skeleton has quite the trouble staying put together as he dances through this tale. 

The rhyming text makes it lots of fun. And we love that it has a happy ending for the skeleton. 

And it really says something when my nine year old thinks a picture book is cool enough to sit and listen to mom read it. 

The skeleton would be easy enough to use even without the string and popsicle sticks attached. You could make the jointed skeleton out of card stock and simply let your child hold him with his hands and make him dance. Be sure you use card stock - I don't think regular paper, or even construction paper, would be heavy enough to work very well. 

I have included a pattern for the skeleton that I made (below). I do not have a pattern for the mummy My Little Reader made. But your little reader could make their own mummy, or could create a puppet based on another character in the book. You could make all the characters and do a puppet show of the story!

Check out the book trailer here!

And learn how to do the "Halloween Hustle" here!



Have fun! And I would love to see some pics of your puppets you make!

Sight Word Practice

I have never done much sight work with My Little Reader. But now that he's a kindergartner, it seems more important. And the trick to get My Little Reader engaged with what he's learning is to make it a game. So we keep our sight word practice fun, low-key, and low-pressure. He's only five, and I'm trying to remember that forcing him down the reading road before he's ready will do more harm than good long term.

Sight Word Memory is the game we started with. We're focusing on just five sight words to begin with. I made my own cards for the game out of index cards. My Little Reader decided to underline the words on the cards, because he was getting confused about which direction they were supposed to go.


Once he was doing well with Sight Word Memory, we moved on to Sight Word Dash. I took our memory cards and put one of each word in a place in the house (I just spread them on the floor or table). I took MLR down the hall and told him a word to go find; he had to dash down the hall to the room they were in and come back with the correct word card. Then I repeated those steps till he had retrieved all the sight word cards. I would either give him a time limit on a timer or just time to see how fast he could complete the task (we played both ways). He loved this game, and wanted me to have a chance to play too. He set the game up for me just as I did for him, and he read me each word I had to go find and bring back. This variation of the game was great practice for him too since he had to read each word that I was to go find.

Then we played Sight Word Dig. I happened to have a bucket of dry beans (weird, I know). If you don't have dry beans handy, you can pick some up pretty cheap at the store. Or you could use rice, sand, or something similar. We wrote each word on a small piece of paper, and buried them in the sand. Then we took turns digging for the words in bucket of beans. MLR wanted to use the timer again. When it was MLR's turn to dig I would tell him each word to dig for. When it was my turn to dig, MLR would read me each word I needed to dig for off of the sight word cards.

As we continue our sight word practice, I'll share more fun ways we're practicing our sight words!

Learning Art Through Literature

I love reading books with My Little Bookworm and seeing his interests and curiosity sparked. He gets interested in everything he reads about! That's how we have been doing a lot of his homeschooling these past few weeks - we read lots of books!

This past week we read Color Chaos. It was one of his choices from the library, and he loved learning about the primary and secondary colors as we read through the story. Even after the story was done, he was walking around the house categorizing everything he saw according to its color.

I decided to capitalize on his interest and put him to work doing some color wheel projects.

We did this fun science experiment using water, food coloring, and cups. It didn't work for us, but I guess that's what makes science so interesting - it's unpredictable sometimes. We talked a lot about what was supposed to happen, and reasons why it maybe didn't work. He loved it all the same.

Then I thought he would love making a color wheel. But when I suggested the idea he balked. "I don't like coloring or painting," he declared (his interests seem to change daily lately). He said, " I only like doing things with toys." So I made that work, and had him create a color wheel with his favorite toys!

Again, he loved it, and was very engaged with the work. Even after he finished the wheel, he made several "robots" and pointed out to us all that he had used all the primary and secondary colors to create them - straight off his wheel!

There are so many fun books about art. Here are a few I really like. Read them with your little guys and see where their interest and imagination takes them! Real and lasting learning only seems to happen for my kids when they care - and they usually care about what they read about in books!

 

Making A Personalized Storytelling Game

Ever play one of those story-making games with you kids? You know, the ones where you take turns drawing a card with a random picture or word on it? Each person has to use what's on the card they drew to add onto the story. It can get pretty silly. We have a couple versions at our house, and the kids really enjoy them. We giggle lots when we play.

A couple weeks ago I gave my boys cameras to use, and let them go wild taking photos that we could make into our own, personalized storytelling game. I had to give them ideas of what kinds of things to photograph to get them going. The photos we ended up with were still rather interesting, but the whole point was that it was their personal game, so I tried to stay pretty hands off with their photo taking. And honestly, the sillier the pictures, the more fun the game is.

I printed the photos at our local drug store and the boys were so excited to give our version a try! We didn't mount our photographs on paper or label then or anything (I'm lazy), but you could, of course. We just used the photos themselves as the cards. We put them in a pile face down and took turns drawing. There was lots of laughing, and we ended up with a pretty crazy story.

You could vary the game some different ways:

Give the kids a specific theme of items to photograph for the game - an items for every letter of the alphabet or something like that.

You could give them some guidance in what they photograph by sending them on a list with specifics on a variety of objects you want them to find and photograph, kind of like a scavenger hunt (something fuzzy, something bigger than yourself, something that makes noise, etc). It would be fun to see how the items compare to one another, if you have more than one child photographing.

If there are two children playing, you could have them take their photos separate from one another and let them be surprised by what the other ends up taking photos of. Let the photos be revealed to each other as they play the game!

Adding labels to your homemade photos/cards would add literacy value to your game. Or if you want your kids to practice reading some specific words, you could put some text only cards in your deck with those words on it, and using those words in this fun storytelling game might help your child become more familiar with the word and more fluent in reading it. Your child's spelling words might work well too (obviously, nouns are the kind of words that work best in this game)!

Remember, narrative skills are a key pre reading skill needed to move into being a successful reader. This game is a great narrative skill builder!

Try it out. Play it with friends, play it at dinner... Laughing together bonds people together. So what could be better than giggling together and having fun over some great, meaningful literacy practice?




  

A Thrifty Way to Make Craft Supplies Accessible

We have a wonderful armoire that we got from a yard sale. My husband added some additional shelving to the inside, and now we use it to neatly house all the wonderful art and craft supplies that help nurture my kids' creativity.

Well, when I say "neatly," I mean neat from the outside... when the doors of the armoire are closed. When you open the doors it looks like this:

My kids often struggle to find basic supplies like scissors, glue, and crayons (despite my numerous and varied attempts to organize this cabinet). I'm always having to help them dig, or sometimes they just don't even bother trying and give up on crafting for a different activity. 

I want to make creativity easy for my kids to do and enjoy. This storage idea kind of happened by accident, but I love how it turned out. 

Several months ago I bought a magnet board really cheap at IKEA. What I had planned to use it for didn't work out. Then I saw an idea on Pinterest for spray painting aluminum cans and storing crayons and markers and such in them. My wheels started turning and I figured I could add magnets to the cans, and stick them to this magnet board that I didn't really have a use for anymore. 

The result was that I ended up with a great way to make our family's frequently used craft supplies accessible to my kiddos, and it barely cost me a thing!

I decided to use chalkboard spray paint because it would give me an easy way to label what each can was for (I primed my cans first with some extra primer we had laying around our garage). 

I found that more than just one magnet was needed to be able to load the cans with supplies and have them stick to the board without slipping. You can find magnets like these at craft stores like Michael's and Hobby Lobby (remember those weekly 40% off coupons). 

The idea worked out great. We attached the magnet board to the side of the armoire, and it's just so handy! Honestly, I myself love being able to grab a pair of scissors without even opening the cabinet. I love that My Little Reader can reach all the stuff he uses the most and take the crayons or markers over to the table to use whenever he wants without calling to me for help. And putting it all away is so easy, just stick them back on the board!

These cans could also work great on a refrigerator! I still haven't decided what supplies will go in some of my cans. I might have a few that I rotate what's kept in them, kind of like we do with our toys. This way my kids can be surprised and inspired every week or so with some fun craft supplies that they forgot we even had!

A good read often inspires a fun craft at our house. So I'm glad I found a way to make the crafting just a little bit easier for my kids! 

Do you have a handy way you store your art and craft supplies? Share in the comments!

Summer Boredom Buster: Make Your Own Board Game!

For some parts of the country, school is just letting out for the summer. In other parts, like where I live, we're already almost four weeks into summer break! So that means the inevitable summer boredom is creeping in a little. Who am I kidding? My kids were complaining they were bored the very first day of summer! No joke!

On one of those first "I'm bored" days I whipped out a Lego board game idea I found on Pinterest. It was an extremely simple game of rolling dice and moving along a very simple board where you gathered or lost Lego blocks till you reached the end. As I played this with My Little Reader, we were brainstorming various ways we could improve on the game. One of my older kids came and joined us and the more we talked about it, the more she wanted to make her own board game. Then My Little Reader wanted to make one too!

So the next day we pulled out cardboard and our big roll of paper, crayons, markers, stickers, and got to work. I sat down to help My Little Reader, and was really excited to implement all our great ideas into our own board game. He had other ideas. He had come up with an entirely new concept (one that I barely understood), and he could not be swayed to use any of my ideas. My assistance ended up being utilized merely for coloring and writing.

But it was OK, because My Little Reader was having a ball and getting to be creative, use critical thinking skills, tinker and design, and imagine his own little story. Because that's what a board game ultimately is, right? It's a little story you (or your pawn) ventures through, and the adventure changes a little each time.

I wrote the words on the game spaces for my son, but he dictated it all and oversaw the process (he's kind of a bossy pants). It was great print awareness practice, as he used words to design the game the way he wanted. Then as we played the game, he got to see the words he came up with being read and used over and over by the game players. Games are great tools for demonstrating the power and purpose of words and print. "Steal another player's treasure" or "lose a turn" can carry great significance toward winning or losing. Especially to a competitive preschooler!

My Little Reader had a ball with his board game! We have all played it many times. He takes great pride in his creation, and loves to see us all having fun with it. This was a spontaneous activity that kept my kiddo busy for quite a while, and helped him practice some of those valuable literacy skills while he was having all that fun!

How are you keeping the summer boredom at bay in your family? 

Try These Ideas to Kick Off Summer Reading Fun!

Need to kickstart your summer of reading with your kids or students? Try these ideas!

1. Take a summer reading field trip.

2. Read Swimmy and make something fishy!

3. Write and draw a summer journal/scrapbook.

4. Read camping stories and make cool lanterns!

5. Read Psst! and take a real or pretend trip to the zoo.

6. Surprise your kiddos with reading rewards!

7. Read I'm the Biggest Thing in the Ocean and make squid hats.

Make a Play Mat! Build Letter Knowledge!

My Little Reader has been really into Tonka's Chuck Trucks lately. They have a Chuck Truck show on Netflix, which is the driving the force behind this current obsession of his. 

I needed to keep him busy one day while we had a repair guy at the house and so I whipped out some big paper and some art supplies and we made a play mat together for his trucks and cars. 

I decided to give the activity an "Alphabet City" theme so we could work in some letter-knowledge practice as well! He loved it!

You don't need any fancy supplies to make this. Basically just some big paper and some crayons (see above). If you don't have a roll of large craft paper, the plain side of some wrapping paper might work as well. 

We rolled two lengths of paper out side by side to get the size we wanted, and then used the tape to attach the two pieces together on the back. Then we got to drawing!

Besides the alphabet stickers, we used whatever other stickers we had in our sticker box that might work for our Alphabet City. You could probably think of some cool ideas for your Alphabet City with a lot of those miscellaneous craft supplies in your art cabinet at home!

I just free-handed the road shape. My son told me what directions he wanted the road to go, then I drew it that way as best I could.

My son and I worked together to draw a variety of features on our mat: shops, library, pond, gas station, etc. Be creative, and let your child come up with the ideas as much as possible. My son was struggling to think up some ideas, so I drew some generic buildings and then pointed to each and asked, "What should this one be?" That helped kick-start his ideas. 

We named and labeled our buildings and locations as we went. We tried to cover as many letters of the alphabet as we could with our names and labels. I would say the name of a place to My Little Reader and then he would figure out the first letter(s) and find it on our sticker sheet. Then I would write-in the rest of the name next to the sticker (see photos above). 

The fun doesn't stop when you're done drawing!

This activity kept My Little Reader busy for hours. Literally. Try it!

Other alphabet play mat ideas your little one might enjoy making and then using with their toys:
- Alphabet Zoo
- Alphabet Kingdom (I'm thinking fairy and princess theme)
- Alphabet Jungle
- Alphabet School
- Alphabet Circus