Education resources for parents and teachers
Find a variety of hands-on shape and color activities in today's post! Colors and shapes are two of those things your child should know before he starts kindergarten. Thankfully, they're fun to teach! Even though I have taken a very laid-back approach to teaching my kids colors and shapes, my oldest four kids have learned them well by age 3 1/2. I'm doing the same sort of activities with my Two. We talk about ... Read More
Looking for fun syllable activities? You've hit the jackpot! Hamburger. Ham-bur-ger. Macaroni. Mac-a-ro-ni. Motorcycle. Mo-tor-cy-cle. Did you know that the ability to break words into syllables is a part of phonological awareness? Phonological awareness. That's a big teacher-y word, but it's easy to define. In this post I'm sharing six ways to help young children learn to count syllables ... Read More
Today I'm sharing a set of printable games that will help your child learn digraph sounds. Today I'm sharing a new set of single-player games. My Four loves these, and they're really helping him learn the sounds of common consonant digraphs! My little guy knows his letter sounds, but those tricky consonant digraphs (sh, ch, th) are another story. I began by creating a game ... Read More
Is your child struggling to write his name independently? Try this simple strategy for kids who are close to entering kindergarten but still need some help writing their names. (This post contains affiliate links.) Try hands-on activities first! Before you have your child practice name writing with a pencil, you'll want to do a lot of hands-on activities to help him recognize and form ... Read More
Looking for a simple activity to help your students learn the sounds of consonant digraphs? Try this one! My Four knows his letter sounds very well, thanks to many months of hands-on alphabet activities. While he's not quite ready to sound out words, there's a lot of learning we can do in the meantime. Up next: hearing and identifying consonant digraphs! For this activity we focused on the common ... Read More
Are you teaching letter sounds? Try this spring beginning sounds activity! This activity is a quick, low-prep way to give kids practice with beginning sounds. Simply print the "sticky sounds" page of your choice. Then write the featured letters on round office stickers. Have your child say the name of each picture and find the corresponding sticker with the beginning letter. He should place the ... Read More
Liven up your spring with these beautiful books about flowers! Enjoy these lovely books any time of the year! Save ... Read More
Let's practice reading ay and ai words! Did you see our War card game for ai and ay words? Today I'm sharing a simple follow the path game that teaches the same phonics patterns. The first two games in the pack review the ay pattern (as in hay) and the ai pattern (as in rain). Each board game features just one of the patterns. When your child is ready, pull out Game 3. It ... Read More
Today I'm offering a quick Spring freebie! Today I'm sharing a simple counting mat. Print the mat and provide your child with objects he can stack up to ten. I'll admit that my Four wasn't at all interested in doing a learning activity with me today, but when I told him we could use coins, he was game. Simply count the correct number of coins and stack them on the corresponding numbers. Getting all ... Read More
Print this free card game for practice with ai and ay words! My Five and I have been playing a lot of games to help him learn the common phonics patterns. So far we've played games for short vowels, bossy r, silent e, oo, and ee words. Today we're starting games that teach ai and ay. I decided to keep ai and ay together because they both make the long a sound; the only difference is where ... Read More
