We are at the very exciting stage with The Boy of beginning to learn to read. His letter recognition is now pretty good so we are just starting to practice some simple words. To help him with this today we decided to make our normal walk into town a bit of a game inspired by this treasure hunt over at Me and My Shadow. I printed out some simple words, things we could easily spot, and then laminated the sheet so that it will wipe clean. I then punched two holes in the bottom and threaded some ribbon so that it can hang easily around his neck. Then, armed with ...
Encouraging Childhood Literacy With The Scottish Friendly Children’s Book Tour
I have always loved to read and have wonderful memories of learning to read with my Mum and my sister as a child. One of my happiest, earliest memories is crawling around the floor with my Mum putting together very simple words, each written on a piece of card, stretching in a long line right across the lounge and trying to form a sentence. It was a game that I really loved. Play-based learning has been a particular passion of mine since having my own children and you can find some examples of the things we get up to here. Bedtime stories are my favourite time of the day. The Boy has ...
Teach Your Toddler Numbers with Mini-Skittles!
I have been looking for more fun ways to practice some numeral recognition with W and I think this mini-skittle game is something he will really enjoy. It is a great way of up-cycling some old yoghurt drink pots too. First I painted the empty pots with a 50:50 mixture of paint and Mod Podge glue. When dry I attached a polystyrene ball to the top with craft glue. Then I simply added some googley eyes... ...drew on faces and finally painted each with a number from 1 to 6. Now we are ready to roll! We will probably use a small bouncy-ball as our bowling ball. I am hoping for W, ...
Toddler ABC Hoopla!
Learning letters can be tricky so we made this game of ABC Hoopla to try and inject a little fun into learning. To make this you will need: 3 kitchen towel tubes Coloured tissue paper Sponge/felt letters or card letters A, B and C Coloured card Glue or double-sided sticky tape 9 old bangles 9 white sticky labels Black marker First roll three old kitchen-towel tubes in coloured tissue paper. Next attach a sponge letter A, B or C with double-sided sticky tape to each tube. You could simply cut out a letter from coloured card and glue this on instead. Draw and cut out ...
A is for Apple: Learning Letters with Marshmallow Painting!
This week we have continued our painting fun and also combined this with becoming more familiar with letters. We are starting with the letter A. Firsty I printed out a sheet of paper showing a large capital letter A, a lower case A and a picture of an apple. I placed this together with other examples of the letter A, magnets and sponges etc, that I found around the house. W and I then spent a few minutes looking at these before getting on with the painting. I then put out a couple of blobs of red and green paint in an old food tray, and a few marshmallows. We have had ...
Teach Your Toddler Numbers With Beads and Pipe-Cleaners
I came across this wonderful post by Anna over at The Imagination Tree a few weeks ago. The nexy day the boy woke up at some truly ungodly hour and after breakfast we had a great time playing this until the rest of the world woke up. It was so quick to set up and there are hardly any supplies required. The Imagination Tree is chock-a-block full of great play-based learning posts so if you are ever stuck for inspiration I strongly advise you to pay this blog a visit. For this activity this was all we needed: Five small pieces of card, folded. Five different coloured ...
Teach Your Toddler Numbers With The Hungry Caterpillar!
Following the success of learning shapes using peg monsters, I devised a very similar game for learning numbers with the boy. Although he seems pretty good at counting I am not sure how much he recognises actual numerals yet so I think this might help. This time however we made a very hungry caterpillar. This we constructed in exactly the same way as the peg monster. Here is how to do it. First paint a wooden clothes peg green and allow to dry. Stick two googley eyes to a red pom pom to form the head. When the peg is dry coat one side with glue and stick on your head and some smaller ...
The Alphabet Rocks!
This was a project inspired by yet another delightful post I discovered over on Pinterest. I am beginning to wonder how I ever lived without it. This crafty lady made a beautiful set of alphabet rocks using embossing powder and a heat tool and they look just gorgeous. I really wanted to make some for the boy, without having to spend a fortune on kit, so I decided to make some myself using plain old acrylics. First a local landscapers very kindly let me raid their pebble selection for free but if you live near the coast you could just head on down to the beach to collect some. Once ...
Teach Your Toddler Shapes with Peg Monsters!
W and I have been having some fun learning different shapes of late by turning it into a game. First we made a peg monster which was fun and super simple to make with your little ones. Simply coat one side of a wooden peg with glue... ...then stick on a large pom pom for a head and smaller pom poms for the body. We then attached two googley eyes to the head. The self adhesive ones are great for this. Now this monster is hungry so we needed to make some shapes for him to eat! I made the following document which I then printed out. This is available for free download here: ...
Colour Matching for Toddlers
W is now pretty happy identifying most colours and one of the games which I found helped with this is as simple as can be. He just loves to play with OXO cubes! Once he has finished eating I will often grab the boxes from the cupboard, red, yellow and green, and place them in front of him. We will then tip them all out, his favourite part... ...and I will encourage him to put them back into the right coloured box. He is quite happy to to do this over and over, tipping them out, and re-sorting into appropriate boxes... ...even building towers with them. This also allows me time ...