Big Changes!

This is my last week teaching Literacy Launchpad in my beloved preschools... at least for a while. Can you guess why?

That's right, we're becoming a homeschooling family. 

I'm entering a whole new realm of Literacy Launchpad-ness! It's not done, folks! I will be reading and reading and teaching and encouraging with my own three at home, and sharing with you all along the way! I also plan to continue visiting my schools for some special story times every few months.

I wish I could put on the homeschool mom hat without having to take off another hat that I currently wear, but I am no super woman. And if I'm going to do this homeschool thing, I want to make sure I can give it my all for my kids. 

We might try this homeschool thing and find it to be a no-go, but we're at least going to try. I'm excited and hopeful that it will be a really good thing for all of us. 

If you are a homeschooling family I would love to hear your #1 homeschooling tips! 

And you will still find me here, sharing ideas, tips, project ideas, and book suggestions! 

Snapshots of Summer Reading

This summer has been going by so fast. It's been pretty crazy, and feels a bit like a blur. We've been visiting our library in the midst of the chaos though and continuing to read. Here are a few snapshots I captured in some of those quiet, still moments.

O.K. this moment wasn't so quiet, but it was at least pretty still. We had some of our cousins staying with us and did Madlibs as bedtime stories. My kids love Madlibs and are really good at telling you what a noun, or verb, or adjective is.

This one's not necessarily a reading moment, but I wanted to share my cute little bulletin board I posted at my schools for our summer reading!

Did you know some LEGO sets come with little comic books? So fun!

The kids wanted to share some of their photo books they made with their aunt and cousin that were visiting. They felt so proud as she sat with them and each of their books aloud. 

We got the kids' cousin hooked on reading in bed with a night light while she was here visiting. So fun!

We visited a used bookstore and my sister grabbed some Shakespeare and challenged Mel to read some of it aloud. Here's him trying. Ha!

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?




  

Finding Space for Reading

Summer never feels like a time when things slow down and life is a little less crazy. Our summers are busy, for the kids and for me. When I see these book lists on Pinterest titled things like "10 Best Beach Reads," I laugh. What mom is able to actually read at the beach (If you are a mom that does get to read at the beach, please don't tell me, or I might cry)? I'm always busy making sure my kids don't get pulled out to sea by a rip current.

... Or I'm burying kids in the sand!

Not only does extra reading hardly ever seem to happen, but I struggle to maintain the little bits of regular reading time we normally observe. Travel and late bedtimes mean we sometimes miss our bedtime stories.

My Little Reader hasn't done much napping this summer and I only just realized today that no nap means we haven't been reading our normal pre-nap stories.

My kids love to stay up and read with their book lights at night, and even that has been falling by the wayside as they are so often zonking out as soon as they hit the pillow, as of late.

When there are lulls in their days and they get bored, I have seen my kiddos pick up books and read... from time to time.

They begged to do the summer reading program at the library, and have happily been picking out books that interest them on our regular trips.

They are slowly learning to read for the pure pleasure of it. So all is not lost.

But as we creep toward the start of another school year, and I look toward days containing some kind of routine again, I realize that I need to really be intentional with our reading times. I need to guard our established reading routines, perhaps reinstate some that have been lost, and I hope to work more reading time into our routine wherever I can. We will be homeschooling in the fall, so I'm excited about getting creative with how we find time to read, and simply having the control over our routine to give reading the prioritization that I crave.

Finding space for reading turns our to be easier said than done, even for those of us that understand its value and enjoy books. So how to you find space to read in the craziness and busyness of summer?

Our bedroom floors are always covered in books, so we've at least got that going for us!

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!

Read About Robots, Make Robots

... We've been doing just that all month long! There are too many fun robot books to not have a robot-themed unit! I'm so excited about this one, I'm creating a full literacy-pack that will be available on the Teachers Pay Teachers site... eventually. Just as soon as I find time to complete it... aaaaand figure out how the heck to post it into my store (I'm a serious newbie there).

I'll share some of the fun with you here, and I encourage you to grab some robot books to read with your kids or students. You don't even have to suggest a craft or activity to follow these books - the kids suggest and ask for it themselves! I mean, what kid doesn't want to make a robot?

Here are the stories we read:

We played some robot games after each story, and these games helped us practice some essential early literacy skills like rhyming, vocabulary, and alphabet knowledge.

Then we created! Each class project serves as catalysts for further story discussion, it gets the kids' creative juices flowing, those imaginations start dreaming things up, and then they end up with a fun little reminder of that week's story to take home with them!

Here are a couple of the projects we made:

Inspired by the art in Robot Zombie Frankenstein, we pieced together colorful geometric shapes, cut from foam, to make our own unique robots. The end pages in Robot Zombie Frankenstein beg for a project like this to be done after you read the book!

This week we are turning ourselves into robots with these fun robot templates I created that we simply added our photo to! So fun! Each student gets to share about what kind of robot they are - we have learned about various kinds of robots from our reads! We had some "Robot Zombie Frankensteins," and we had some "chef robots." 

Do you have a favorite robot picture book? Would you mind passing it along in the comments? I've got some little readers itching for more great book recommendations on this topic!

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?