Hello all!
I love love love turning learning into games. I believe its important that kids are having fun when they learn. If they are not having fun while learning it can make the child apprehensive in any future learning experiences. I know parents want the very best for their children, that is a given. We want them to be ahead of the curve. But we have to realize as parents that they are just kids! The most important thing for children to do is have fun. If your kiddo isn't digging a certain learning activity it's ok! Whatever you do don't try to push them into it. Try finding a different activity they relates the same information in a different way that your child will enjoy. Or you could try setting out a couple of different activities and let your little one choose which one they would like to do.
Children are always learning, they are little sponges absorbing everything around them. You don't necessarily need planned activities either. Everyday experiences can be learning experiences. Take you kids to the grocery store (make sure you have ample time and are not in a rush). I have always had Ayden get things off the shelf for me. I will say, "Ok I need 3 red apples and 3 green apples. Can you get them for me? How many apples do we have all together?". I even let Ay pump gas every now that he is big enough (under close supervision). I have him enter our zip code at the pump and watch the numbers as the gas is being pumped, "Ok we need to stop when the numbers get to $30.00".
But I do love printables. Especially one's we can use our bingo daubers on.
This week we have been working on letter recognition, formation, and sounds. Ay is pretty good with his uppercase letters so our main focus was on matching lower case with upper case and formation. I found these amazing printables from
1+1+1=1. I'm addicted to her blog and she has a huge collection of printables that are FREE. Anyways, we used the letter maze printables. I printed one for every letter, once Ay got the hang of it he was off and running doing them on his own. We used our bingo daubers and regular markers to follow the letters on the maze.
These are just great. They incorporate upper and lower case matching and have a picture of something that begins with that letter. For example, the letter Aa has apples on the top left corner and a basket on the bottom right. You follow the maze to get the apples into the basket. You can use the corresponding pictures to practice stretching words out to hear each letters individual sound and give more examples of words that start with that particular letter.
SO, these have been a huge hit with Ay. He keeps asking to do them over and over again. So enjoy!
