Learning to Read with "Sing Spell Read and Write!"

When I was a kid, I learned to read using the Sing Spell Read and Write curriculum by Sue Dickson. It's awesome, and covers WAY more than just reading/writing! I loved it, and always figured I'd use it with my kids. I bought the pre-K curriculum package, and would recommend buying their whole package if you're looking for a curriculum (if you buy nothing else, get the level 1 CD for all the phonics songs!) but there are plenty of free/cheap resources we found:

You can find tons of explanations and demos on youtube by typing in the curriculum name, but here are our favorite videos:

The Phonics Song: This is the alphabet with pronunciations instead of letter names. I started playing it when my daughter was a toddler, and she was trying to sound out words before she was 2! I love that there is a slide show with the letters as they're singing so kids can learn to associate the shapes with the sounds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asfVlQ0bmv4&list=PL32962BEB0218870A

Here's another version, with the chart/placemat that comes with the curriculum pack (worth making or buying one of your own):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXc-_hxRXlo

And here are 2 links of kids singing it, because it's adorable, and there is no better motivator than seeing other kids do it, too!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyXogrVY89o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w70ZRbTOXFk

When they get more advanced, there is a song for the short vowels (which they've already learned in the alphabet song) :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2k8xYMWMDc&list=PLTJdTUd9iEZtmh3Nn0yxab8_JGKTQhvGW&index=2

And new long vowel sounds:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldxIEIgbaWA

Once they've got the letter sounds, then they move on to 2-letter combinations, once again, using singing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CC1yCleMLhc 

I did the above activity by writing the vowels on a magnetic white board, then swapping out magnet letters for the consonants.

It takes a while to get to the combination stage, but once they've got it, it's amazing to watch them take off! We used the BOB books after that to introduce really simple words, and she loves reading! (I bought the first set from Amazon, and they gave me the option to buy the Kindle version for .99 as well. The physical books were really important as she was learning to read, I think, but after getting through set 1, we used the Kindle Owner's Lending Library to borrow each set as we needed them. Yay for free readers!)

http://www.amazon.com/Bob-Books-Set-Beginning-Readers-ebook/dp/B00HDPOY84/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400968584&sr=8-1&keywords=bob+books 

Anyway, I hope that's helpful! We really enjoy the songs, and I made homemade  charts, books, and coloring pages by using black and white clip art for each letter (print each letter/picture combination and put them in a dollar-store photo album!).

"Pre-School" Lists

Last Spring I scanned through tons of "what your child should know before starting Kindergarten" lists (and a few "before 1st grade" lists), and compiled a "master list" of topics that I would like to cover with Kaja in these pre-school years. This is NOT an exhaustive list, nor does any Kindergarten teacher expect their incoming students to know these things (honestly, this is more like a Kindergarten curriculum, with several more advanced elements, too)! I DO NOT expect her to become an expert on everything on this list, and when I wrote it, I anticipated it would take at LEAST two years to get through most of it. Some items are a piece of cake for her, and some are extremely ambitious and probably won't be learned until she's older (the difference between a verb, noun, and adjective, for instance), but I put it on there as a reminder to help me work it into our conversations if it comes up, and to give me a goal to work toward, since I know she will need to learn it eventually. Who knows? She has surprised us plenty in the past!

Disclaimer: I'm not an educator. While some of these items came from education sources, this is purely my personal goals for my own daughter. This is literally just cut-and-paste from my brainstorming, so sorry for the discombobulated mess! Some items include suggestions on how to work on that concept, and at the bottom is my (incomplete) "wish-list" of supplies to play and learn with.

English/Language Arts:

• Rhyming words
• Telling stories from pictures
• Putting story pictures in order
• makes predictions about what comes next in a story (and why)
• Retelling and recalling story details
• identifies setting, plot, character, conflict (where/when, what, who, why, how)
• empathizing and talking about characters feelings and emotions
• "story stones" (making up stories including certain elements)
• Writes her own (full) name
• Concept of sentences, simple punctuation (period, question mark, comma, quotation mark, etc.)
• Title, author, illustrator, chapters, table of contents,
• basic word types (noun, verb, adjective)... do madlibs together?
• Fact vs. fiction
• Capitalize 1^st letter in sentence, and proper nouns.
• Tracing and writing letters and numbers

Math/Numbers:

• shapes (2D and 3D)
• Tell Time
• count to 30 (work in with months), 60 (work into minutes/hours), then 100
• seasons
• months of year?
• days of the week (this method using vitamins in pill organizers makes it so easy!)
• Yesterday, today, tomorrow, last week, other time words (work into vitamin lessons)
• Right and left
• sorting by size, color, shape, type, etc
• more or less
• measuring (length, width, height, weight, volume (liquid measurements), time, temp. etc)
• Money!
• Simple addition and subtraction
• working with a number line
• graphing
• ordinal numbers (first, second, third)
• simple fractions ("cut the cake in half")
• skip counting (2's, 5's, 10's)?

Science:

• Observations and hypotheses (prediction based on observation)
• use magnifying glass to examine items carefully
• 5 senses
• weather
• living vs. non-living (plants, animals, minerals, etc)
• What living things need to survive
• life cycles (like frogs and butterflies)
• classifications (bird, fish, reptile, amphibian, insect, arachnid, mammal, etc)
• plants: from seed (bean sprouts), grow a garden (from sprout to blossom/fruit), roots and root vegetables, different food sources (fruit, vegetable, grain, dairy, nuts/legumes, meat)
• stars, planets and solar systems
• Look at stars, talk about what they are, simple constellations, point out planets, etc.
• waterways (definition of: wells, springs, streams, rivers, lakes/ponds, oceans), currents, etc.

Geography/History:

• Understands different places have different climates, animals, cultures, languages, etc.
• 7 continents (list and locate)
• 4 oceans
• north pole, south pole, equator
• compass directions
• understand the difference between “city, state, country, continent”
• understands “Past, present, future” concepts, and the difference between stories and history
• Use timelines to show progression of time (seed-plant, baby to adult, progress of day, then history, etc)
• Talk about kings, presidents, governors, other authority figures

Life Skills:

• ROUTINE!!!
• Dress self
• button and zipper fastening
• tie shoes
• set and clear table
• help with cleaning tasks (sweeping, dusting, wiping)
• put away books and toys (sorting)
• early folding laundry skills (matching socks, folding towels, etc)
• sort her own laundry???
• Know her own birthday, address, phone number
• Know when to use titles of respect (Mrs., Mr., Pastor, Doctor, etc)
• help in kitchen (stirring, using the manual egg-beater, helping to pour/measure, use the food chopper or wavy chopper)

Gross Motor:

• bounce and catch ball
• skip
• hop on one foot
• climb ladders

Art and fine motor ideas:

• scissor work
• color blends (red+blue=purple, blue+yellow=green, etc)
• pipe cleaner and cheerio threading
• drawing shapes in different sizes
• using shapes to make a picture (start by using pre-cut shapes to make pictures, a-la funny face, eventually working toward drawing in the shapes freehand)
• stencils
• mist plants with spray bottle to build hand strength
• use an eye-dropper for coordination (fun for color mixing games! 2-in-1!)
• tracing in clay, cutting clay
• Recreating pictures, shapes, etc from looking at a model (no directions)
• creative modeling materials (toothpicks and marshmallows/raisins, etc.)
• Looking at and talking about different styles of art

Items/equipment ideas:

• Magnifying glass
• balance scale
• misting spray bottle
• eye dropper
• plastic test tubes?
• Small table/chairs
• low cupboards for her dishes/silverware
• Ideally, Kid-safe kitchen items in reach with a low workspace (hang a low shelf?) (wavy chopper, food chopper, manual egg-beater, plastic dishes/silverware, etc)
• Full-length mirror to hang sideways near ground (for baby), or larger/multiple mirrors (fun for dancing!)
• 5or7-compartmet organizer for laying out outfits for the week
• clothing hamper(s) for K
• trampoline (those small ones for exercising)
• tumbling mats (IKEA!)
• balance beam (again, IKEA!)
• items to climb, hang, swing, and rock on
• Hang a lower closet bar so she can reach her own clothes
• Tension/closet rod and bags with hooks for puzzles and sets of small things
• Chalkboard Paint! (magnetic?)
• Or giant, glossy sheet metal that can be magnet board and dry-erase board (oil drip pan?)
• The Crayola Dry Erase Activity Center is seriously the BEST thing ever! You can slide any 8.5x11 paper under the clear plastic and it becomes a dry-erase board! We use it for coloring, tracing, worksheets, mazes, you name it!
• play money
• letter stamps and stickers
• counting manipulatives (pebbles, bottle caps, glass beads from the dollar store, etc)

Felt Anatomy Set Patterns

Kaja has been on an anatomy kick lately, and I've been looking for some good hands-on ways to engage her interest. I've been seeing a lot of really cool felt anatomy sets on Pinterest, and I thought I'd make my own from random felt scraps laying around.

Ah, the digestive system. Her favorite part! She has to feed her "patient" once it's put together!

We still have a ways to go for the cardio/pulmonary system...

I couldn't find a pattern, so I made my own. I guess you could just trace an image from an anatomy book, but it's hard to find one good resource for that (and if you use multiple images, you have to scale them), so I'm posting my pattern, in case anyone else wants to try! The images are at the bottom of this page.

Here are the awesome things that inspired my project:

This was the first one I found, and I love how detailed the organs are!

Here is the printed felt set that we had when I was a kid.

This very cool person made an anatomy DOLL with removable organs. She even published a free pattern! How cool is that?! I appreciated her suggestion to start with smallest/most detailed part and scale and size everything else to fit. That made my project much more manageable!

And here are some other clever ideas that I may have to try soon:

Life-sized felt organs that will "stick" to your clothes,

this anatomy apron,  or this version, or make your own!

As an added bonus, I sized the organs to fit over a 2-page body diagram in one of Kaja's favorite lift-the-flap body books. So if you're looking for an educational book to go with the set, I'd recommend Usborne's "See Inside Your Body." 

Bones: Skull, spine/pelvis, ribs, collarbones, humerus (2), ulna/radius (2), femur(2), tibia/fibia(2).

Digestive: esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine

Cardiopulmonary: trachea, lungs (2), heart

Waste/other: liver, kidneys(2), bladder, pancreas (with gallbladder attached), spleen, and Brain!

Here are the patterns. Click on the image to view and download. Each one is sized for an 8.5x11" sheet of paper. When you go to print the image, just select the "fill entire paper"option for scale in the print menu.
For the body silhouette, I assembled the skeleton on a large piece of felt and used a piece of chalk to trace an outline around it. Pretty simple, really, and the chalk just rubs right off! :) I also used a sharpie to detail a few of the organs, shown on the pattern with dotted lines (small intestine and heart). 

Skeleton

Cardio-pulmonary

Internal organs

Skull/brain

Thank you, Pinterest!

Today was a "sick day" for me. I've been fighting a cold for days and finally succumbed this morning. Nothing terrible, just your run-of-the mill sore throat, swollen sinuses, runny nose, headache and fatigue deal, but certainly enough to make me want a quiet day doing "nothing" at home.

Of course, my 2-year-old felt just fine and was wondering what new adventures we were going to have today?! Thankfully I've been collecting ideas for fun activities on Pinterest and happened to have the right supplies handy (didn't take much). Today's post is a photo journal of how I kept my toddler busy while I sat idly by and convalesced. 

We haven't really worked on lower case letters, but I made an upper- lower-case match-up card set and she caught right on! She really enjoyed putting the "daddy" letters with the "baby" letters (her words, not mine)!

Next, I cannibalized an empty cereal box and a sweet friend let us raid her yarn remnants for some lace-up cards!
Again, she's never done anything like this before, but got it pretty quickly.

"Hey! I was playing with that!"

Q-tip painting! Who knew they made such good little paint brushes?! Again, it took a few minutes for her to figure out how to paint in the little circles, but after that she was unstoppable! She could have done this all day!

Super cool templates found here:
http://therapyfunzone.com/blog/2012/12/q-tip-painting-with-templates/

Isn't that just delightful?
I cut the Q-tips in half to extend my supply and pack in a little fine-motor-skill oomph.

I'm so thankful for the creativity of others who are willing to share, and the resources we have on the internet! Not only did I keep my daughter busy so I could rest, but we also had quality time painting together and the day was filled with great educational/developmental activities. Honestly, in some ways it almost feels like we did MORE today than we usually do! Time to look around for more ideas in case I'm still under the weather tomorrow...