What's Your Move?

Today's lesson got off to an interesting start. The girls were in their dress up clothes, Chloe wasn't down for her nap yet, and we were all a little bit tired. We started by reviewing "L" using a page out of this little Alphabet workbook I found awhile back at Target for only a dollar! It's nothing fancy, but it's great for practicing tracing letters. It also has mazes, connect-the-dots, color by letter and other fun activities that the girls can do independently. I keep books like this around to throw in my bag when we go to a restaurant, a doctor appointment, on an airplace or any place where I know the girls are going to have to be patient (aka waiting politely). After that we did two different "M" worksheets and made a list of "M" words. I noticed that it helped them think of words if I said, "Name an animal that starts with "M" or "Name something on the table that starts with "M". Sometimes it's overwhelming for kids when they have everything in the world to choose from. Sophie especially will go right into "deer in the headlights" mode!

Next we played memory with some of our index cards. I grabbed 8 pairs of upper/lower case letters, spread them out on the floor, and played your basic memory game. Once the girls made a match, they had to tell me the name of the letter and a word for that letter (again I made categories for them if they couldn't think of one).

Sophie dressed as Super Girl and Zoe dressed as a Barbie princess:)

For math today, I wanted to continue our work on number recognition, specifically numbers 11-20. I made up this game I call "What's Your Move?" To play, you need index cards numbered 0 - 20 and an open space. First, brainstorm with your child different ways you can move your body or different actions you can do with your hands. Some ideas are: jump, hop, skip, gallop, run, take giant steps, twirl, somersault, jumping jacks, clap hands, snap fingers and leap. Now, spread out your index cards face down. Have your student name an action that she can perform, then draw a card. Have her tell you the number on the card, and then instruct her to perform the action she named that same number of times. For example, Sophie picked somersaults, then drew a card. She got the number 12, so she had to do 12 somersaults. The girls had so much fun playing this, and by the time we had gotten through the cards, they'd gotten some exercise (try 20 push ups!) and I got to check where we are with our numbers - I was pleased to see that our practice has paid off. This is also a great opportunity to see where your student is with gross motor skills and milestones, such as hopping on one foot and balancing.

Zoe doing jumping jacks!

For snack we had strawberries, grapes, peanut butter filled pretzels and graham crackers with cream cheese. The girls are really into the Arthur books by Marc Brown, so we read several that we borrowed from the library. The books came with a CD and they had lots of fun listening to the stories again and following along with the recording.