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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School Bus Spelling

I came up with this easy activity to go along with our "Back to School" theme this week.

LB(3) had fun with it, and it was a good way to practice the sounds of letters with him.

Supplies:

• Construction paper in yellow, black, white, blue
• Scissors
• Glue
• Marker

Prep Work:

• With the yellow paper, cut out a bus shape.
• Then draw on 3-5 windows and cut them out.
• With the black paper, cut out:
• 2 circles for the wheels
• 1-3 rectangles the size of the windows
• With the white paper, cut out:
• appx. 10 rectangles the size of the windows
• appx. 10 strips (to write the words on)

• Glue the bus onto the blue piece of paper & glue the wheels on.
• Draw a rectangle on the bus. This is where you'll place the word strip:

• On the front and backs of the strips of paper, write some simple words. We used some sight words, and some word-family words. Here are the words we used:
• the, and, then, at, 
• bad, had, mad, sad, 
• can, man, tan, 
• bat, cat, hat, mat, sat

• If you use the same words we used, write the following letters on the 10 white rectangles:

Everything's ready. Time to play!

How to Play:

• Sit down with your child and lay out the bus, the words, and all the letters.
• Have them choose a word and place it on the bus.
• Count the letters, if it's a 3 letter word, then place a couple black rectangles in the windows that you won't be using.
• Then have your child find each of the letters in the word, make the sound of the letter, and place it in the bus window:

LB(3) thought this was pretty fun.

But like most 3 year-olds, his attention span was short. We did about 3 words and he was done. :) But there's always tomorrow! I also want to write the letters of his name so he can practice spelling his name too.

Have Fun!

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Picture Presents Christmas Game

We played this easy game to go along with our Christmas Present themed week. 

This is a fun way to practice abc's, letter sounds, spelling, colors, speech sounds, reading--anything you want to work on with your child!

Prep Work:

• Get 4 envelopes and 4 bows.
• Find something that has pictures (Old magazines, Newspaper ads, Other pictures you've got tucked away----like mine. I used the pictures that came with an ABC banner which I bought at the dollar store months ago. I cut the pictures off because I just wanted the letters as a banner in our kitchen.):

(Banner in our kitchen--sans pictures):

• So, whatever concept you decide to focus on (abc's, letter sounds, spelling, colors, speech sounds, reading, etc.) look in your magazines, ads, or other place for pictures that go with that concept.
• I wanted to work with LB on his speech sounds, so I cut the words below off and just used the pictures:

• Next, get your envelopes and place 4 of the pictures you cut out inside each envelope.

• Then place a bow on the flap of each envelope so it looks like a present!

Here's what you do:

• Lay out your envelopes and let your child choose one. Have them open it up and pull out the picture inside! Have them name it, pronounce it, talk about it, match it----whatever and however you want to practice the concept you've chosen. 
• Open all the envelopes one at a time. Then have them close their eyes and put new picture presents in the envelopes and do it again!

Since I just wanted LB(3) to practice his speech sounds, I had him pull out the picture and tell me what it was. Then we'd practice saying the word together a couple times to practice his pronunciation of sounds. 

Nothin' to it. And he LOVED it!

Later, I think it would be fun to play with LM(5) to practice reading. I would have him pull out a picture and match it to the word that I cut off the bottom (or you could just write the words on papers to match). So many fun possibilities!

Spelling Treasure Hunt

A fun way to do a treasure hunt is to hide LETTERS that spell what the treasure is!

Supplies:

• Letters (you can write letters on pieces of paper, or use toy/magnet letters.)
• Treasure (whatever you want or already have: candy, crayons, toy car, dinosaur, doll)
• You don't even have to give your kids a NEW toy, you could even use toys your kids already have. Just pick a toy and get the letters to spell what toy it is! 

Here's what you do:

• Choose a "treasure" and hide it in a special place.
• Get all the letters you need to spell what the treasure is.
• Hide all the letters in a different room and have your kids hunt for them.
• Once all the letters are found, help put them together and sound them out to discover what the treasure is. Then have them go in the other room to hunt for the treasure!