Roar! More fun with shapes!

Check out Yellow Mum’s super cute dinosaur shapes free printable.  If you want a larger size, she has them for purchase from her etsy shop. Regardless of the size, there’s a ton of ways you could use these guys.

• make into magnets and use on the refrigerator or for portable fun, a cookie sheet
• cut them out and glue onto notecards.  Then make a memory/concentration matching game
• depending on your child’s skill level, practice writing the first sound or shape word
• match color words to the color of the dinosaurs
• glue onto posterboard and cover with contact paper.  You’ll have a placemat for fun at dinnertime.

Recipe for Kool Aid Playdough

I just stumbled across an old recipe I used to use to make Kool-Aid Playdough when I taught Kindergarten.  It’s fun to make, smells great and is tons of fun to use when learning.

• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup salt
• 1 cup warm water
• food coloring or 1 package of Kool Aid
• 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 1 Tablespoon cooking oil

Cook ingredients in a medium size saucepan over medium heat stirring constantly.  When the mixture pulls away from the spoon and forms a ball, you’re done.  Knead and let cool on waxed paper.  When cool, store in tightly covered container.

Easy letter recognition activity

I’m always on the look out for more fun (and even better, easy to make) letter recognition games.  Just visit Tired, Need Sleep (don’t we all?) and print off her lowercase letter templates.  Then cut out the pieces from foam and away you go!  This also works on spatial reasoning, as it’s just like a puzzle and fine motor skills, as those pieces of foam are pretty small.  Once your child is ready to move on to something harder, print, cut and paste more letter templates to spell out their name or sight words.

If you want to make this a fun car or airplane game, make the templates and foam magnetic with a bit of refrigerator magnet tape and use them on a cookie sheet.

Lacing Cards

Here’s yet another idea to work on those fine motor skills.  Nikkala from The Crafting Chicks gives you a tutorial on how to make your very own lacing cards.  You can buy these at teacher stores but they’re kind of expensive.  Plus this has the added bonus of being able to create cards of characters and/or objects your kids love.  So cute and pretty easy too!  Start lacing away and you’ll have another fun activity that works on fine motor skills!

Get creative with sight words!

Chasing Cheerios has a cool idea for creating sight words out of cheap beaded necklaces.  This got me thinking about other stuff laying around the house that you could also use:

• yarn
• shoelaces
• ribbon
• play dough rolled into snakes
• legos
• blocks
• sticks in the yard
• noodles or dried pasta
• cereal
• buttons

The list goes on and on because you could use practically anything in your house.  Challenge your child to come up with something and get spelling.  Tons of fun and great practice too!  If your child isn’t quite ready for spelling words, have them make letters and/or numbers!

Fun Fine Motor Activity

You may remember a previous post on fine motor skills.   Here’s another idea from I Can Teach My Child to add to your list of activities to strengthen and fine tune this skill.  I didn’t even know that they made window crayons.  So cool!  After further research I found out they also have washable window markers.

Finger Plays and Action Songs

Why are finger plays and action songs so great, other than the fact that you don’t need any supplies, they’re free, great for any age and fun?

• help kids practice following directions
• lengthens attention span and develops listening skills
• practices ordering, sequencing, number concepts and rhyming skills
• builds vocabulary

Some fun finger plays and action songs to try are:

• The Itsy Bitsy Spider
• Five Little Apples (The Activity Mom has posted this one)
• There Was a Little Turtle
• Five Fat and Speckled Frogs
• Where is Thumbkin?
• This Old Man
• Five Little Monkeys
• If You’re Happy and You Know It

Circles, Squares and Rectangles

It seems like if my child doesn’t already know their colors and shapes by the first day of school they will be behind.  Is this true?

Nowadays identifying shapes and colors is something that while not required for entry into Kindergarten it is pretty much expected. Number identification, addition, subtraction, counting to 100, patterning, measurement, and graphing are just a few of the concepts your child will learn this year, and having some prior knowledge about shapes and colors will make learning these concepts a lot easier. Below are the curriculum guidelines for shapes (in Texas). Curriculum guidelines for color don’t even exist. Of course there are many opportunities for students to use color in mathematics, patterning, comparisons, and identifying attributes.

8(C) sort a variety of objects including two- and three-dimensional geometric figures according to their attributes and describe how the objects are sorted
9(A) describe and compare the attributes of real-life objects such as balls, boxes, cans, and cones or models of three-dimensional geometric figures;
9(B) recognize shapes in real-life three-dimensional geometric figures or models of three-dimensional geometric figures; and
9(C) describe, identify, and compare circles, triangles, rectangles, and squares (a special type of rectangle).

While shape identification is most certainly a part of the math curriculum, you see that students will also have to describe and compare three-dimensional shapes in both the real world and with models. This means that any bit of prior knowledge you can give your child concerning shapes will help them with the geometry and spatial reasoning portion of their math.

Know that I know, what can I do?

Shape Walk: Go on a shape walk. Take a walk and point out all the shapes of different objects you see. If you like, take pictures of the objects/shapes you find on your walk. Then print these out and make them into a book.

Color Race: Quirky Momma has a cute idea for a Color Race. Before starting announce the color that you will be looking for during the race. Then turn on some music and have your child collect as many items of that color as they can before the song is over. Then put the items back and pick a new color.

Rainbow Writing; Have your child write their name in all the colors of the rainbow. Be sure to discuss each color as they write.

Read Color Books: Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?, Color Zoo, Little Blue and Little Yellow, A Color of His Own and My Many Colored Days are just a few. Of course you can also just talk about the different colors you see as you read any book.

Sort odds and ends: Gather odds and ends from around the house. Anything will work and then sort them by color, shape or both. Be sure to discuss the different shapes and colors you sort by.

I Spy: Play I Spy the regular way with colors but also change it up and spy different shapes!

Puzzles and Board Games: Look for puzzles or board games that teach shapes and colors. Candyland is an old favorite! Plus these can also teach counting, spatial reasoning, numbers, sequencing and other math concepts, an added bonus!

Feely Bag: Place different objects in a bag. Have your child just feel the object to see if they can determine the shape.

Goooooooal!

Amy from Let’s Explore guest blogs at Simple Kids and discusses the importance of kids setting goals.   Setting goals really is important and having a goal chart like one of Amy’s really helps a kid visualize their progress and become motivated.  This is something great to do at the beginning of the school year, and you can bet your child’s teacher will be talking about setting goals in class.  It will also likely come up in parent/teacher conferences a little later in the fall.  Talk with your child about something they’d like to work on and make a plan for how they’ll accomplish it.  Then celebrate it when they do!

Play Dough

What kid doesn’t love play dough?  Not only is it fun you can also use it for all sorts of fun learning activities.

• Make snakes out of the dough to make letters, sight words and family names.
• Create characters out of the dough and then tell a story.
• Mix different colors.
• Roll it out and use cookie cutters to cut fun shapes.  Then count, add and subtract these shapes.
• Describe how it feels to build vocabulary.
• Use it for play/pretend.  It’s amazing what kids can do with their imagination!

Check out Kate’s how to for play dough made from natural colors at Mini-Eco.