Monday Meanderings - Read Across America

On Wednesday, March 2nd we celebrate Read Across America. National Education Association's (NEA) Read Across America is an annual reading motivation and awareness program that calls for every child in every community to celebrate reading on March 2, the birthday of beloved children's author Dr. Seuss. NEA's Read Across America also provides NEA members, parents, caregivers, and children the resources and activities they need to keep reading on the calendar 365 days a year.


Here are some links to some great Dr. Seuss related activities that you can do with your kids.

First is A to Z Teacher Stuff with a large list of Seuss activities to do with kids of varying ages. They even have a lesson plan for my favorite Seuss book - "Horton Hatches an Egg".

Next we have Crafts and Art For Children with a recipe to make Oobleck. If you have not made this yet, I recommend it. It is so much fun and amazing that it goes from a solid to a liquid.

Another fun activity is to make cupcakes  with your kids to celebrate the day. Every birthday deserves cupcakes and Southern Plate has a very cute cupcake printable of a wocket.

In addition to enjoying these activities with your kids on March 2nd I hope you will take the time to read to your kids on a daily basis. There is no reason to limit the enjoyment of reading to just one day. Lots of parents read to their kids at bedtime and this is great but be sure to read to the kids at other times too. At bedtime they are tired and do not always absorb the great experiences that reading can do for them. When you talk to your kids and read to them they pick up on the language of the books and the form of conversation.

Family Game Night - Balloon Volleyball

This is one the least expensive games you can play and it will give you some exercise.

Supplies:
Balloon
Chair or Tape

Begin by blowing up the balloon and tying it off. Now you will clear a good area to play in. Once you have cleared you area of breakables and you have space to move around in you will need something to be the center line. You can place a small chair to divide the areas, or we just put a line of tape down on the floor.

The point is to volley the balloon back and forth without letting it touch the ground and without catching the balloon. It is fun and exciting and will get your heart pumping.

Another twist on the game is to let one person play it alone. They start on one side and volley the balloon to the other side, then they must run to the other side and volley it back before the balloon touches the floor.

Have a great Family Game Night and feel free to leave comments telling us some of your favorite family games.

B-I-N-G-O and Bingo was his Name-O

Okay, every time we play bingo in my house it takes at least 2 days to get that song out of my head! Now you can sing along with me.

In my house we like to make our own bingo cards so I thought I would supply you with the links we use to make ours. It is fun to make cards and since it is pretty easy, you can customize them to match themes you are talking to your kids about; holidays, numbers, letters, etc.

Some of the links I have used:
Print Bingo
DLTK - great site since you can easily follow themes they have on the website.
Tools For Educators - Another great site since they have lots of themes pre-listed on the website.

I have also made us personal cards in Microsoft Publisher. It is a bit time consuming to go that route but sometimes it is worth it. My favorite card made in publisher is the one we use to work on our colors. It is loosely based on bingo. I call out a letter and a color, like B red and then my son has to go find an item that is red and show me before he can put a marker on his B red spot. As he gets better with letters he will have to find an item that is Red and starts with a B. You can download that bingo card.



A good game of Bingo is a fun way to teach a child. The more fun, the more memorable. Life is not just about teaching our kids, it is also about creating great memories.

Wordless Wednesday - Yee Haw!

If you can't ride a horse, ride a Komodo Dragon.

Gumball Math

Below is an attachment that you can print out that has the gumball machine on it. We took the gumball machine and ran it through the laminator so we can play the game over and over again.

Besides the printout the other items you will need are round color labels and dice. My son would roll the dice and then he would count the numbers and put that same number of stickers on the gumball machine.

We worked on a few things with this:
1) Counting skills
2)Treating each item as a separate item as I only wanted him to put stickers side by side, not on top of one another.
3) We also used a dry erase marker to mark on the paper how many rolls it took to fill up the gumball machine and then we kept track of that. This taught him that one activity can have numerous outcomes.

Monday Meanderings - Money Lessons

I frequently hear people on TV discussing money issues and how Americans do not save. We are a culture of spend, spend, spend. The only way to stop this vicious cycle is to teach our kids about money, saving and living within our means. These can be hard lessons for kids as they see us buying things and assume we can have anything we want.

With President's Day upon us, I can think of no better time to start teaching kids about money. To begin teaching about money, the kids have to learn how to recognize coins and the values of each coin.

First we have The Amazing Mess make a coin collection book with the kids. What a great idea.

After that great idea, The Amazing Mess comes back with a great coin sorting activity.

Next up is Me and Marie with a cute poem to tell the difference between coins.