Summer Fun Schooling 2009 - Week 1

We have been doing lots of educational fun. I love not being restricted by any curriculum. She has been completing about half a dozen workbook pages daily. These are just little consumable books from Sam's and the dollar store. Some are at preschool level, but they are still valuable for brushing up on skills.

Now, I'm not a mean teacher. . .

We've been doing lots of other fun things. Like earning brownie badges. . .

Making and blowing bubbles. . .

and other educational activities!

When painting my bedroom last week, I came across a bunch of old homemade games I made and consumable workbooks. So, we're going to enjoy them one last time before passing them along.

Playing Bingo

Letter Hound

This is an easy homemade game. Just find a printable dog color page online, color it, cut it out and then in half. I glued mine to cardboard to last longer.

Then write an upper and lower case letter on an index card.

The object is to make letter hound grow by putting the index cards in alphabetical order.

(letter recognition)

*Note to self: I think I might make a variation of letter hound - a book worm for the wall. For each book she reads aloud to me, she gets to add a circle with the book name in it on the wall. Hopefully, this visual reminder will encourage reading!

Count the Buttons

or beans, or pieces of paper, whatever. Shayla loves to play with my jar of buttons, so we chose to use them. Use whatever you have.

Make dots on index cards 1-10 (or you could use dice). Count out buttons or other objects to match the same number of dots on the card.

(math)

Fun With the Letter B

Read a story with multiple b letter sounds in it. We read B.B. Bunny. When child hears b sound they can bounce on a ball or jump up and down, whatever.

Print images from google image clip art that begin with letter b. Some examples are book, ball, box, boy, bone, bird. Cut them in a triangle shape and make another corresponding triangle with letter Bb on it. Make butterflies using springy clothespins.

(letter recognition, fine motor skills)

Other Bb ideas:

• Build a building with blocks.
• Toss beanbags into a basket.
• Blow up balloons.
• Blow bubbles.
• Talk about beautiful things or being bossy.
• Make bugs on a bed. (Spread peanut butter on bread, put raisins, nuts, cereal, or candies on top for "bugs.")

Walking Along (Counting/Number Recognition)

Trace your child's feet or shoes. Cut 10 of each out. This would be a fun time to measure the paper feet, talking about growth. Read Dr. Seuss's Foot Book.

I wrote numbers 1-20 on each of the feet. Shayla put these in order.

I have to say that I was surprised that she had difficulty with the numbers 12-19! UGH!

More things to do:

• Dot-to-dots
• count cars as driving, pennies, blocks, marbles, toys
• Use a calendar to count days. How many days til a special day?

(math)