Monday Meanderings: Talk Like A Pirate Day

I love a chance to be a kid so Talk Like a Pirate Day is just what I need today.
Here are some great pirate activities for you and your family to enjoy!

Handprint and Footprint Art has a great pirate handprint craft. I love handprint and footprint crafts. It gives me something cute to see the change in my child's size.

Great Resource Childcare did several pirate activities but I really love the paper plate pirates that they made. There are no directions but they look pretty easy to make.

Here are some great Pirate Printables from 2 Teaching Mommies.  It includes Roll and Graph, Size Sequencing, Letter Match and so much more.

The Imagination Tree give a great lesson on making a treasure map and putting a realistic look of age on the paper.

The Fickle Pickle put together the cutest Pirate Birthday Party. I love the pirates games: Walk the Plank, Roll the Cannonballs and Swab the Deck.

Arrrgh Matey!

Tuesday Teachings - Scavenger Hunts

As the weather warms and the family spends more time outside it is a great time to explore your surroundings. A great way to do this is to go on scavenger hunts with the entire family. This is an easily adaptable process by customizing your sheets. I am going to attach a few sheet for you to print with typical nature items found in most areas but you could also do a sheet using clip art available in any program.


We love to go on scavenger hunts at different times of the day. We then keep track of which items/creatures we were more likely to find in the morning, afternoon or evening. This is a fun and easy way to begin teaching graphing skills to your child.


There are 4 lists that we put together for scavenger hunts. You can use one for each child or everyone can use the same list. You will notice that each list does have one item that is exactly the same. We have encouraged each child to find one piece of trash to recycle. This will be a great opportunity to encourage your kids to be great stewards of the Earth.

Tuesday Teachings - Summer Learning

Picture Source

Most schools are out or getting ready to let out here in the United States and kids can not wait for summer vacation. As a child, I remember the excitement and thrill I felt when it was time to finally put away the textbooks and pencils; it was time to run, play and be free! Kids need that time to just be kids but summer vacation is also no time to just forget everything they learned in the past school year.

You can give your child numerous opportunities to continue learning over summer vacation without them even realizing it.

Cook together - Let your child pick out a new recipe to try and then take them to the store to purchase all of the ingredients. This gives them opportunities to work on reading (recipes and food labels), writing (grocery list), math (measuring ingredients and timing meal) and is a great activity to do together. Research shows that when kids are involved in selecting and preparing food they take ownership of the meal and are more likely to not only try the food but to also enjoy the food.

Garden together - Go to a local garden center and give your child a set amount of money. They can then select several plants to grow in your yard or in pots. This works on math skills (spending money and spacing plants), nurturing skills (caring for the plants)and then recipes and cooking skills.

Scavenger Hunts - See our blog post of 6/4/10 for a great scavenger hunt in the grocery store and we are hoping to give another scavenger hunt sheet for the great outdoors in the next week or so. This is a great skill for kids to teach them to focus, pay attention, search and read.

Photo Source

Public Libraries - Our local library kicks off their summer reading program on 6/1/11. The theme this summer is One World, Many Stories. We have participated in the summer reading program every year. It is cheap, challenging entertainment that encourages literacy making it a win-win for everyone!

Art Camp - No need to pay expensive camp fees. Get together with some of your friends and organize a camp for the kids. Each day the kids can rotate the house they go to and each parent would be responsible for one day of camp. If you need some great art ideas check out Pink and Green Mama's blog for some great ideas and e-books on outdoor arts.

Make homemade art supplies - see our blog posts for Cinnamon Applesauce Ornaments, play dough, Chalk Paint, and Surprise Soap.

In addition the the activities listed above, also remember that "Playing is Learning"! Have a great summer!

Getting Ready for Math - Alike/Different

As children begin to work on their math skills many parents are eager to just teach them to count. Counting is a skill we all need but it is not necessarily the best place to start with our math skills.

The earliest math skills will begin with the concept of alike and different. Show your child two identical cups. Ask her how they are alike (size, shape, color, etc.)

Now show your child a cup and a mug. Discuss how they are alike and how they are different. For example, they may be the same color and size, they both hold liquids but the shape is different. During your daily activities there are many times to see the likeness and difference of items.

Set two oranges and one apple on a table. Ask your child if the items are alike. Which one is different? Why is it different? What makes it different from the other two items? Why doesn't this item belong with the other two items?

Go through your house and take pictures of 5-7 items, like the toy box, the kitchen table, the refrigerator, the sofa, the bed and a chair. Now set up the game. Set the toy box picture to the side, go to the toy box though and lay the picture of the kitchen table on the toy box, now go to the kitchen table and lay the picture of the refrigerator on the kitchen table, etc. To start the game, explain to the child that he will need to look for the exact same item in person as is in the picture. Give her the picture of the toy box, when she finds the toy box she will find the picture of the kitchen table and keep going this way until he gets to the last item (a chair) where she finds a book that you can sit down together and read.

These type of scavenger hunts are perfect for the 2-4 year old set. It teaches them to look closely at items and gives them independence to complete the task. The end result is that they are awarded with private time to read a book with you and they are learning math skills.

Monday Meanderings - I Love to Write

In honor of I love to Write Day, we are going to cover some writing ideas for kids.

Before we get to the links though, let's talk about pre-writing. It can be very difficult for a child that does not have enough strength in her hands to try to hold a pencil for a long time. In addition, it can be difficult to old a full size pencil. Imagine if you as an adult tried to hold a long carnival style pencil and write for very long. Your hand would cramp up and the writing will probably be illegible. This also applies to a child. With my own child, we try to use golf pencils. They are smaller, about the size of a crayon and he is better able to control the pencil.

Demonstrate  to your child how to properly grip the pencil between the thumb and pointer finger, letting the pencil rest on the middle finger. This is called the Tripod Grip. This will take awhile to teach. Be patient and if your child seems uninterested, come back to it later. You want your child to enjoy writing and if they are pressured constantly they will never enjoy it. To help your child relax, have her shake her hands, make drawings in the air or in a salt box (see below), or roll a piece of clay between her hands.

Our first link is PB & J Preschool discussing how to set up a Preschool Writing Center. She has some great ideas. I really like the thought of doing a Journal with my child to track his improvements over time.

Next up is Mama Jenn with the directions on making a homemade salt box for the kids to practice writing in. I love this idea! It is very sensory aimed and will give the children an opportunity to feel the letters.

Have you seen Sandpaper Letters? I bought some and they set me back about $30.00. Wish I had found Beautiful Sun Montessori prior to my purchase. She has a step by step tutorial on making your own letters. These have been great for working with my son on the letter sounds.

So we have covered pre-writing activities, let's move to some thoughts on writing. Here are some things you could have your child write:

1) Thank you notes for all gifts. If the writing is illegible, you can write something to the recipient also to let them know about the thank you.
2) Grocery lists. Cut out pictures of items you need then let your child glue them to a page and then write the names beside them. Your child can then also do a scavenger hunt (see our blog post of 6/10/10).
3) Their name. I have a small chalkboard that I painted my child's name on and he practices writing his name below it. I made the chalkboard with a piece of cardboard and chalkboard contact paper. There will be a blog post soon for all of the uses of chalkboard contact paper.

Grocery Expedition

If your child is anything like mine, they want to go to the grocery store with you and then they beg for all of the sugary snacks and sodas that they see advertised on TV. This is a big problem for me as like everyone else, I am on a budget and groceries are expensive enough without buying lots of unnecessary processed snacks.

One way to combat this is to give them their own shopping list. I have attached a shopping list that I put together and I just print it out and fill in the numbers of items I need. The list is a picture list so we kind of think of it as a scavenger hunt. Once he finds the food items and puts it in the cart, we discuss the food's growth habits as we move to the next item on the list.

This is an excellent time to teach your kid about where food comes from. Be prepared to "quiz" them.
1) Is this a plant?
2) Does it grown below ground?
3) Does it grow in a tree?
4) Does it come from an animal?
5) Who in the family loves this food the most?
6) How should we use this item at home?

I know it can be stressful to go through the grocery store with a kid or two in tow but if you have to do it, you might as well make it fun and educational. As the kids get older, you can even make them responsible for counting out the money for the cashier.

I hope this makes your next expedition to the grocery a little more fun. You can right click on my grocery list to print it or you can just click here.

Spring is in the air

As we prepare to “Spring Forward” this weekend I wanted to take a moment and remind everyone to get outside and enjoy some fresh air with your family. Take a walk, ride a bike, play ball or just a game of tag in the backyard. The National Wildlife Federation (www.nwf.org) is encouraging children to get outside with their “Get Wild, Child” campaign during March 15-21, 2010. Please check out their website for some great ideas and printouts of things to do with your family. Leave a comment and let us know what you are planning to do with your kids to Get Wild.

Children no longer have the freedom to run through the neighborhood until their parent’s call them home for dinner like we had as children. This is reflected in the childhood obesity level increasing to frightening levels. All persons, regardless of age should strive to get a minimum of one hour of physical activity per day. Children need unstructured physical activity and the chance to “just be kids”. Dance, sports, the academic team and all of the other extracurricular activities are important but we also need to let them just be kids.

There is no expensive equipment that is required. Just open the door and have fun with your kids. These are the days they will remember forever. If dinner is a little late, it will be okay. Get busy making memories with your kids. You do not need an expensive swing set, the latest bike or a nice leather baseball mitt. You just need to take the time to enjoy some fresh air. A great game that can be played with multiple ages is a scavenger hunt. For the younger non-reading kids, you can draw or cut out pictures from magazines of items you would see outside and give the list to the kids to look for the items. If they are older, you can just give them a written list of items to look for. Once everyone has found their items, you can then discuss the items with the kids. You get a combination of physical activity along with practice reading and maybe a little biology thrown in with the discussion.

Enjoy your week-end and be sure and get outside with the kids!