Thursday, January 29, 2009
Colors
- Go through her box of crayons with her, telling her what color they all are (At this point I am only teaching her the basic colors - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, brown, white, pink)
- Pointing out the stoplights and asking her what color the light is. She gets really excited when it changes to green.
- Talking about the colors of her favorite toys
- Having her clean up her toys, especially her blocks, by color. I will ask her to pick up all of her yellow toys. Then we start on the green, etc.
One day I got a Pottery Barn Kids catalog in the mail. Catherine was intrigued by it because it had some Dr. Seuss pictures in it, and she loves all the Dr. Seuss books. So, Catherine and I went through the catalog, page by page, talking about all the colors in the pictures. She loved it. To bad the catalog couldn't handle all that abuse for very long. I can't wait for the next catalog to arrive!
Now that Catherine seems to have her basic colors down I am working on reinforcement. One of her favorite books right now is "Go Dog Go". There are a lot of colorful dogs in the book. I have Catherine point out different color dogs as I read the book. I think things like this are really helping.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
A Few Things I Love!
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Water & Weather
It looks like there is a learning curve for me when it comes to teaching 4 kids all 2-3 years of age. I spent way too much time having them sit and listen to me at "circle time". I thought I had enough variety and fun things to keep their attention, but sadly I did not.
The following are things that they enjoyed:
Picking a song to sing out of the jar (I asked the ones who were sitting quietly).
Listening to the story of 3 little pigs while I put the houses and characters up on a felt board. (I found a cute sight where you print off the characters onto cardstock and then glue felt on the back. You can check it out here.)
Coming up one by one to trace the letter M with their finger.
Talking about weather and dressing Walter the Weather Bear. (I tried to make a bear and clothing out of felt. I used glue when making the clothing, but I think I will redo it and use markers and or sew the clothing to make it look a little nicer.)
Sprinkling water on their heads from a watering can and telling them that the cloud was getting heavy with water and so it was raining.
Throwing paper scrunched into balls around because I said it was raining meatballs (they couldn't really focus when I tried to start reading 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs' so that ended up being really random.)
Making Mud out of flour and water and squishing it all over the kitchen table.
Eating mud cups.(chocolate pudding, oreo cumbs, and gummy worms)
I have been suprised at some of the things Tanner picked up. I think it helped that I also checked out books from the library that talked about weather and the water cycle. So that might have helped him learn more too. Also I had printed out the date in large letters and used masking tape to stick them on the wall. Today he was pointing to each piece of paper and asking what it said. Now if I ask him what the month is he points to the paper that says January and he will say "January". You could also talk about Noah and the Ark and I found a site with fun weather experiments (see the side column) but they seem like they are for older kids.
Unrelated to weather; if you see him ask him who the president is. It is pretty cute the way he pronounces Barack Obama.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Puzzles
When Tanner was really young I focused on just having him match the pictures. I would help him to put the piece in. I would also give him verbal clues about what to do and show him, then let him try to do it himself. I think at first he just loved dumping out the puzzle pieces. When he mastered this type of puzzle I introduced frame-tray puzzles like the one below (and the one I had was from my childhood so it was thicker cardboard. Some of the ones they sell new are really thin and more difficult and poorly made.):These type of puzzles are great because the "tray" has part of the picture already there to get you started and underneath the puzzle pieces it has an outline of the shape of the puzzle pieces(which can help your child to match the shapes of the pieces with the outlined shapes). I was surprised at how young Tanner was able to master this type of puzzle. He could do these 12 piece puzzles before his 2nd birthday. Then we graduated up to wooden 12 piece puzzles like the one below (the picture below shows the wooden box the puzzle comes in.):
This type of puzzle is of course more difficult because your child has to learn to really look at the picture to try and match up pieces. If Tanner wasn't so interested in puzzles I don't think we would have done these at such a young age. It took great patience on both our parts. He would try to match up pieces that didn't work and I would either point out a different piece he should try or tell him to rotate the piece. Of course some of the directions had little meaning to him at first. So I would tell him and then show him what I meant. I also talked about the picture it was making and I would tell him to look for the bus's wheels or the man's yellow shoes. After these puzzles your kid could probably do most any puzzle of course the biggest puzzle Tanner does right now is about 48 pieces.I like the wooden puzzles because Tanner can rip the pieces apart and not break them! Also they seem like they will last longer.
Candyland
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Hide and Seek
A great way to teach shapes and numbers . . .
1. First print off two pages of shapes. I used the "Trace Shapes" from http://www.coloringcastle.com/. You can find it here.
2. Color the shapes in pairs. (i.e. the triangles green, the circles red, etc.)
3. Cut out all the shapes on one page.
4. Place loops of masking tape on the back of the shapes you cut out.
5. Match up the shapes, sticking the loose one on top of it's mate.
6. Introduce the shape if your toddler is new to them. (i.e. point to the circle and tell them the name, then ask them to show you the circle.)
7. Then have your toddler take the shape off and hide it somewhere in the room. (i.e. stick it to the wall, chair, couch, or door)
8. Continue will all six shapes.
9. Then ask your toddler to find the shapes one at at time. (i.e. "Where is the circle?") If needed give them clues if they are struggling to remember which one is a circle. (i.e. "the circle is red" or "is it the one on the door?")
10. Then have them stick it back on to it's mate.
Variations: You hide the shapes and your toddler hunts for them, laminating the pages and using Velcro instead of tape would make this a game that will last for multiple uses, it works great for numbers or letters too (it is easy to make your own template in Word.)