L is for Library

The library is a great place to encourage a love of reading. Libraries usually let kids get their own library card at age 4 or 5. Plus, many have great story times and activities for preschoolers. For letter L week, Anya was really excited to go and get her first library card!

We read this fun book - Library Lion by Michelle Knudsen - before we went. 

 

It is about a lion who wants to go to the library. It discusses rules of the library in a fun story with great pictures. This book is really great for making inferences. Inferences are when you figure something out without the story telling you. For example, the lion walks away slowly with his head down. You figure out that the lion is sad.

We hope you'll have as much fun exploring your library as we do!

B is for alpha Builders

  

We found a great letter learning tool from this blog. She calls them alpha builders which is a very perfect name. You use the different shapes to build letters. This is going to be a new staple in our letter learning curriculum! 

I made one change to her directions, instead of using magnetic laminate, I just laminated and attached magnets to the back. It still worked great and this was an awesome discovery and learning experience!

Thank you so much Erica!

Monster Bookmarks

Wouldn't these little guys be a fun addition to your child's pencil box or backpack or to your home library? Make them as a back to school gift or make them together as a fun afternoon activity. 

We had a lot of fun making these bookmarks that help you eat up a great book. (Excuse the pun ; ) Even though my preschooler doesn't "need" a bookmark to save her place. She loves putting it on the books she is looking at or on the books she wants me to read to her.

We used the great tutorial at Tally's Treasury and added a bow for extra beauty. She includes a printable template as well as a step by step for the how-to. For detailed instructions click here. 

Happy reading!

Bottle Cap Alphabet Soup

My daughters and I had a fun time practicing our letters and making words using simple things that you probably already have at home. The great thing about this game was that it worked for all three age levels of my girls - toddler, preschooler, & elementary aged. Read below for how I changed it up for each age level.

 

We started by collecting plastic bottle caps from things we were getting ready to recycle (milk jugs, juice, gatorade, water, etc.). I wrote a letter on each cap with permanent marker, relating to the words we were working on. (In this case I used letters from the names of the people in our family.) 

 

**In these pictures, you will also see baby food jar lids, but we found out that they don't work as well because they sink.**

We filled up a bucket of water and put the letters in. A towel under the bucket and on the table is really good for this project. The girls used a slotted spoon to fish out and play with the lettered bottle caps at their own level:

My toddler just had fun trying to grab the letters. If your toddler is ready, you could have them grab certain colors or draw shapes instead of letters on the bottle caps.

My preschooler worked on makings words from word cards and identifying letters. She is really into writing the names of the people in our family right now so I used this to practice the spelling. I wrote the names of all the members of our family on 3 X 5 cards for her to use. She would spell each name, using the word card as a guide. (I learned the hard way that the word cards should be laminated. It was one of those, "Uh, duh Laura" moments.)

 My elementary aged daughter made up words with 4 letters or more from the letters in the bucket. She could make any word that she wanted, but had to spell it correctly. (Kind of like that text twist game on yahoo, is anyone else out there addicted to it too?) 

It was a really fun and easy project that is great for hot summer days!

L is for Lion!

When studying the jungle, you can't leave out the king! We made lion faces this week and read an amazingly beautiful and fresh take on The Lion and the Mouse. We read the version by Jerry Pinkney. 

 

The art is amazing and the fun part about this book is that there are no words. We talked as a class about how using the pictures in a book can help us understand and know what's going on in the story. It's a important comprehension strategy for young readers. The first time we read the story, we read it silently and I had the kids make up what was happening in the story in their head. Then we read it again and talked about what was happening in the pictures.

After, we made our own lion faces complete with a crazy mane of hair. 

Here's What You Need:

• Paper plate
• Brown, white, orange, and black construction paper
• Glue sticks
• Crayons

Here's What You Do:

1. Cut a lot of strips of the orange paper. Ours were 1 X 4.5 inches. 
2. Cut out eyes using the white and black. Cut out a nose using the brown.
3. Color the inside circle of the plate yellow.
4. Color the outside circle of the plate orange.
5. Glue on the face and draw a mouth and wiskers.
6. Flip the plate upside down and glue the orange strips around the edge of the plate.
7. Curl the orange strips with an open pair of scissors like you would curling ribbon.

Tip of the Month: Reading and Phonemic Awareness

As your kids are getting better at understanding the letters and their corresponding sounds, they might start to show an interest in reading. Here is some quick info about the process of learning to read and a few simple ideas of how you can increase phonemic awareness.

Phonemic Awareness
Each word is made up of small parts of sounds (phonemes). Ex. "Stop" has four phonemes /s/ /t/ /o/ /p/. Having phonemic awareness means your child can hear, identify and manipulate the individual sounds in words.

Phonemic awareness helps children read and spell.

Here are a few games you can play with your child in the car, in line at the grocery store, or while you are reading together.

1. Find words that all start with the same letter. Or which word doesn't belong. - bug, bun, rug.

2. Blending individual letters to make a word. Ex. /b/ /a/ /t/ squished together makes bat.

3. Rhyme together. Ex. "The pig has a . . . ?" Wig!

4. Clap out the syllables in words.

5. Identify the first sound in a word. Ex. What's the first sound in van?

*Information comes from Put Reading First (2001), a pamphlet put out by the Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement and the National Institute for Literacy. For more information or to get your own copy go to nifl.gov

Rosie's Walk

If you haven't had the pleasure of reading the book Rosie's Walk, I suggest that you run to your library and find it.The words in this book are really simple and the thing that really makes it special is that the pictures tell a completely different story than the words because it adds more details to what is going on. Rosie goes for a walk and unbeknownst to her a fox is trying to catch her. I used this book to talk to the kids about using the pictures to help us understand what is going on in the story (an important comprehension strategy).



After we read the story, we made our own Rosie the hen. Since it was letter R week we added some pretty red feathers to her tail using tissue paper. We started with this drawing that I did to look like Rosie.


Here's What You Need:

• liquid glue
• tissue paper cut into small squares (maybe 2 inches by 2 inches)
  
• unsharpened pencils
• crayons
• copies of the hen

Here's What We Did:

1. Color your hens.
2. Put a dot of glue on the tail.
3. Put the tissue paper on the table and put the unsharpened pencil in the middle of the tissue paper square.
4. Take the edges of the tissue paper and wrap it up around the pencil.
5. While holding the tissue paper to the pencil, put the paper in the glue and let go of the paper. Lift up the pencil so the tissue paper that is left forms a type of cup shape.
6. Repeat until the surface is covered.

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

In honor of Dr. Seuss' birthday and Read Across America day, we had a read-a-thon in class this week. It was so, so, so much fun! All the kids brought pillows and blankets and their favorite book to share. Before we started the read-a-thon, I had each child color a Dr. Seuss bookmark and every time we read a book, we put a stamp on the back of the bookmark so they could count how many books we read. To keep things exciting, we read in different places.

We read inside.
We read outside.

We read in the dark.

We read where it was bright.
As we read, we would stop occasionally to do a Dr. Seuss craft. The kids colored these Cat in the Hat hats and we added a strip of construction paper to turn them into hats. We also made these easy Cat in the Hat bow ties.

Here's What You Need:
a rectangle of felt (ours were about 12 X 8)
painter's tape
yarn (enough to go around their head like a necklace)
ribbon

Here's What We Did:
Bunch the felt in the middle in an accordion fashion and pinch.
Put the ribbon under you fingers at the bottom of the felt.
Put the yarn under your fingers at the top of the felt.
Have the child hold the accordion pinch in place by pinching on either side of your fingers.
Use the painter's tape to tape the felt, yarn, and ribbon together where your fingers were.
Tie the yarn together and enjoy!

And of course for snack we had green eggs and ham! I was surprised that only one of the kids refused to try it.
Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

As a side note, this is a cute idea that my girl's made to go along with the book Ten Apples on Top. We didn't do it in class, but I thought it would be fun to share.

Reading For Understanding - Comprehension

Ask these 15 questions before, during, and after your reading time to help develop comprehension skills at home.

Questions to ask before reading:

1. What does the title tell you about the story?
2. What do the pictures tell you about the story?
3. What do you already know about . . .? (Discuss the topic of the book.)

Questions to ask during reading:

1. Who? Who is doing something right now in the story?
2. What? What is going on right now in the story?
3. When? When is this taking place?
4. Where? Where is ______ happening?
5. Why? Why did _______ happen?
6. How? How did _______ happen?
7. What do you think will happen next?

Questions to ask after reading:

1. Who were the characters or people in the story?
2. What was the setting for the story? Where did the story happen?
3. What was the problem?
4. How was the problem solved?
5. Why did . . .?
   

Inspire a Love of Reading

Reading is such an important part of future success in school! Many of us want to help our students become better readers. One way to do that is to show them your love of reading.
Try one or a couple of these ideas and see if they work for your family.

1. Read books, magazines, and newspapers around your child.
2. Read aloud to your child for at least 20 minutes a day! Establish a daily story time together. Make your voice sound enthusiastic as you read.
3. Encourage reading by providing a well lit area with bookshelves full of books. Books can be inexpensive holiday or birthday gifts. Bookshelves can be made from old boxes, cartons, or scraps of wood.
4. Limit your child's exposure to TV, movies, computer, and video games. Offer good alternatives like reading!
5. Talk with your child about what they are reading at school. Keep in contact with their teacher about their progress.
6. Teach your child how to care for books. Discuss the importance of keeping books clean.
7. Help your child get a local library card and make a point of visiting the library together.

Taken from "101 Ways to Love a Book"