Baseball Spelling

A fun activity for Spring Baseball season, or ANY time of the year!

Here is a great way to practice letters, spelling, and reading with your little ones.

Supplies:

• White cardstock - 1 piece
• Brown construction paper - 1 piece
• Green construction paper - 1 piece
• Markers, red & black
• Scissors

Prep Work:

1. Trace 6 circles onto the white cardstock. You can use a cup to trace. Then cut them out.

2. With a red marker, draw 2 curvy lines on the side of the circles, and small straight lines going through the line, like the stitches in a baseball:

3. With a black marker, write the letters A, B, C, H, M, T on each of the balls:

4. Draw a bat shape onto the brown construction paper. Cut it out and trace 3 more on the paper, so you have 4 bats.

5. On the bats, write the words: BAT, CAT, HAT, MAT:

6. Trace a bat shape, and 3 circles onto the green construction paper:

7. **Optional: If you want this activity to stand the test of time, go ahead and laminate it with these self adhesive laminating sheets! Then you can enjoy it without worrying about pieces getting ripped and wrinkled. :)

 All done, ready to play!

Play Ball!!

Have your child place one of the bats onto the green paper. Read the word with them and then let them find and place the baseballs with those letters into the circles. Have them sound the word out again and read it to you.

I decided to keep it very simple and just use a few -AT words so LB(4) could hear how they all sound and practice basic reading skills. You could easily add more bats and baseballs to this activity as your child progresses with their reading!

HAVE FUN!

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Truck ABC's

Our last activity for our TRUCK week is this one. 

It's simple to make and comes with a variety of activities that you can do with it!

Check it out!

Supplies:

• Construction paper
• White cardstock
• Marker
• Scissors
• Glue
• Clear Contact Paper, OR Laminating Machine
• Dry erase marker

Prep Work:

• Cut a truck shape and some wheels out of construction paper
• Glue them onto a piece of white cardstock

• If you have access to a Laminating Machine, laminate it. If not, you can use some clear Contact paper: 
• Just trace the cardstock on the back of the contact paper, so you know what size to cut.
• Cut that out and peel the back off. 
• Stick it onto the truck side of the cardstock. Voila!

• Next, cut out a bunch of rectangles or squares from construction paper
• Write all the letters of the alphabet onto these:

All done!

Learning Time!
There are multiple ways you can now use this activity. Here are a few ideas:

• Writing Practice: Have your child choose a letter from the pile and place it "into" the bed of the truck (just place it on top) :). With a dry erase marker, have them then practice writing that letter on the truck! You can even spell words with the letters and have them practice writing the whole word. :)
• Since you used the clear contact paper (or laminated) on the truck, you can easily wipe off each letter with a cloth.

• Letter Recognition: YOU write a letter onto the truck using a dry erase marker. Then your child searches the letters to find the right one and places it into the truck.

• Sound Search: YOU say the sound of a letter. Then your child searches the letters to find the one that makes that sound, and then places it into the truck.

• Spelling Practice: YOU write a word onto the truck using the dry erase marker. Then your child finds the right letters to spell that word and places them into the truck.

There are many more possibilities, I'm sure!

We mainly focused on writing-practice this time. 

This is the first time that LB(4) has tried writing some of the letters, so it was really fun for him. We went through all the letters, and then I spelled his name and had him practice all the letters in his name. He couldn't write his name before, but he can now! And he is so proud. :)

And while LB was busy writing, LL(2) had fun just scribbling on paper, and playing with all the letters. :)

HAVE FUN!

Do you like this idea?

Looking for more activities for your little BOY?
Click here to see TONS of ideas


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ABC Ghosts!

Our final "Ghosts" preschool theme activity for the week was a hit. (Much like our Pop-out Ghost Card, and our easy to make Ghost Matching Game!) This was such a fun and easy Halloween activity for kids and is a great way to teach kids the Alphabet. Especially since LM(6) was home from school to enjoy this fun game with us!  It's a great way to add a little learning and fun to your Halloween this year. :)

Supplies:

• 4 sheets of white craft foam (mine are half-size sheets like these)
• Scissors
• Marker

Prep Work:

• You can draw lines (or just cut by eye) each sheet into 8 rectangles:

• Then, with each rectangle form it into a ghost shape by cutting the top to make it round, and bottom to make it zig-zagged, like this:

•  You can even stack a couple rectangles and cut 2 at a time!
• You'll have 32 rectangles, but you only need 26 ghosts for the alphabet. You can either cut them all into ghosts and use the extras for something else, or just leave the others as rectangles for something else later.

• Draw faces on the ghosts. Just 2 eyes and a smile. :)
• Then, write all the letters of the alphabet on each ghost. I decided to write them in lowercase to help LB(4) work on recognizing them.

Time to Play!
There are many ways you can use these cute little ABC ghosts. Here's what we did:

• I laid all the ghosts on the table face-down.
• LB(4) and LM(6) took turns:
• One of them would pick a ghost and say the letter and the sound the letter makes.
• The other one would then think of a word that starts with that letter. Then they'd switch.

The boys really loved this activity! It was great practice for LB(4) to recognize letters and their sounds. Thinking of words for him was a bit tougher. Sometimes he needed help, and sometimes he thought of some good words all on his own. It was a fun way to learn!

LM(6) also had fun. Eventually instead of just saying the word he thought of, he wanted to act it out and have us guess. This was a fun addition that I never even thought of! He came up with some great words that were tough for us to guess!

All in all, fun & learning was had by all. :)

**Click HERE for more fun Halloween activities we've done!**

In need of craft supplies--like craft foam for this fun activity?? Check out our post on the best kid-craft supplies for great prices on Amazon! We've got some good recommendations. :)

Happy Halloween!

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Tulip Words - Reading Activity for Preschoolers

This week we're doing a "Spring" theme in our Preschool@Home, and this is our first activity! 

I just made this and haven't done it with LB(3) yet, but I know it will be fun for him, and a good way to review letter sounds and to begin teaching him how letters make words. :)

How to Make it:

• Get out 4-6 pieces of different colors of construction paper. Draw a tulip shape on one, stack the papers, then cut out the tulips.
• Use one of the tulip cutouts to trace the tulip shape onto a white piece of paper or cardstock 3 times.
• Choose a word ending (like -at, -am, -in, -an, etc.) and write it in the last 2 tulip shapes on the paper.
• Using green paper, cut out stems, leaves and grass for the flowers and glue them on.

• Then, on the tulip shapes you cut out, write letters that can be used to make words with that ending:

How to Play:

• Sit down with your child and lay out all the tulip shapes. Have them pick a tulip and place it on the first flower. Then help them sound out the word.

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Feed the Penguin

For our Penguin-theme, I thought it would be fun to do something similar to the Alphabet Monster Game we made a while ago. It turned out to be really fun and LB has loved playing it all week long!!

Prep Work:

• Get an old cardboard box and some black, white, and orange construction paper. We used a graham cracker box.

• Wrap the black construction paper around the box. I only used 1 piece, so it didn't cover the top, bottom or the back of the box. But that's ok. :)
• Using a knife, cut an oval shaped hole for the mouth. It doesn't have to be perfect, just big enough for the fish to fit in.

• (You'll want to leave paper off the top of the box so that you can get the fish out after they get put in.)

• For the beak, cut a square out of orange construction paper. Then cut an oval shaped hole in the middle.

• Tape the beak onto the penguin.

• Glue 2 googly eyes on the penguin (or cut eyes out of paper and glue them on).
• Cut out a white oval for the stomach and glue it on.
• Cut out 2 orange feet and glue them onto the bottom of the box.

• Cut out 2 black, oval flaps for the wings and tape one on each side.

There's your penguin!!

For the FISH:

• A couple years ago I made these fish for a fishing game we did. They were perfect for our penguin game! We have Shape Fish, and Number Fish. 
• Just draw a fish shape onto a piece of paper and cut it out (Make sure it's small enough to fit in your penguin's mouth). Then use that fish as a template and draw some more fish on a piece of construction paper. Then place 2-3 MORE pieces of construction paper underneath and cut out the fish. (Saves time cutting out 3-4 at a time!)
• Once you have all your fish, get a black marker and draw a dot for the eye and a little smile on each fish.
• Then draw on whatever concept you want to teach: SHAPES, NUMBERS, LETTERS, MATH, WORDS, etc.
• (Optional): For extra durability, laminate the fish so you can use them in other games later! These self adhesive laminating sheets are perfect!

Then PLAY!

• Feed the penguin the fish as you teach and review the concept you've drawn on the fish! 

Have fun!!
And if you're looking for more fun Penguin things, check out these cool ideas! Like penguin lights! And little gummy penguins! That is just so cute. :)

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