Whether it's the "Wow, you've got your hands full" or "Gee, I wish I had that much energy" to the "Boys are just different" comments I get daily, it's a no brainer that my son isn't a kid who will sit nicely, listen to a story or lesson and go along with your instruction if that's all that there is to do in his day. So, after a morning of hard-core playgrounding (including a beautiful, free kids park with water features and wonderful learning spots), I decided to try the Clothes Pin Matching Game with him while my toddler napped.
Total success. He loved it and we went through both sets of letters. I need to finish another box of cereal to free up some cardboard for the pictures & letter matching though I have it printed, cut and ready to go. I printed the circles on cardstock and then used basic cardboard from a cereal box to make them a bit more sturdy. He loved the chance to talk about the big and little letters but also the motor skills practice of using a clothes pin.
And yesterday, we visited story & craft time at Barnes & Noble. We read "Watch Out Little Wombat
" which was very cute. Then, made paper bag puppets. The kids loved it! You'd need brown paper bags, construction paper for ears, arms & tails (if you make the crocodile, both of my kids made wombats), foam pieces for eyes (or googly eyes, buttons, whatever), glue sticks & crayons for decorating. 
Amy, how does this letter game work?
ReplyDeleteBasically, after you make the circles with the letters (there will be 3- you can pick which one you want or print all three), your child can take the clothes pins and match up the letters to their mate on the circle. I made 2 sets of letters- one upper and one lower- out of clothes pins using a paint marker, but a sharpie would work too. (Clothes pins at my Walmart were near the laundry baskets.)
ReplyDeleteSo, they'll match the upper case clothes pins to the lower case alphabet circle or vice versa. A more advanced version is the picture circle where they will match the letter to the picture of the word, like a picture of an apple gets the "A" pin. Does that help?