Search Results for: read

Decorating Gingerbread Activity

December 16, 2013 By Deirdre

Gingerbread men design activity came to mind as a traced cookie cutter shapes to make the number tally math matching activity. There had to be another way to use our Christmas cookie cutters. When we went to a big box craft store recently, JDaniel just had to visit the Crayola aisle. I had told him that all of our crayons were Crayola and he has since decided that he wants to learn about what other products that they make. It was while visiting the Crayola aisle that he noticed Model Magic. He hasn’t ever used it and thought it sounded like fun. I decided it sounded like fun too and I ended up buying a couple of packages of light brown for a gingerbread activity.

Creating Gingerbread Activity

Cookie cutters and creating gingerbread men with Model Magic just seemed to come together as an idea on our way home. I didn’t tell him what I was thinking, though. The brown modeling dough was pushed into cookie cutters and set out to dry without a word to him.

Decorating-gingerbread-men-with-stars
On Saturday I set out the dried gingerbread men and various odds and ends that could be used to decorate and redecorate them. JDaniel’s eyes lit up. He was really surprised.

I had made holes in the gingerbread men with the end of a pencil thinking the odds and ends would fit into them. Some of the odds and ends ended up being a little too big. Thankfully the Model Magic has some give to it. JDaniel was able to push in the buttons when he wanted too.

He made all different kinds of gingerbread men that day. Some had button eyes and others had stars in their eyes. The rubbery dough held up despite the number of times it was used.

Creating shaped Model Magic creation spaces was so easy to do and JDaniel seemed to enjoy the gingerbread men design activity. We will have to make some using our other cookie cutters for other holidays.

Read.Explore.Learn. – Fire Safety Themed Activites

October 4, 2013 By Deirdre

October is Fire Prevention Month. JDaniel loved to climb all over a fire truck when it came the library for Fire Prevention Month. Now that he is in school all day we can’t head over for story time and the fire truck’s visit. I decided to share with you and him fire themed learning activities and book designed to help children learn about fire safety.

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Most children love fire trucks, dalmatian dogs, and well everything that is fire safety related except maybe fire alarms. Sparky the Fire Dog is a book filled with cute and informative pictures about a dog how he keeps safe.This books opens great discussions about fire safety and what children need to do encase of a fire. It is written in such a way that it doesn’t scare kids or place ideas in their heads about fire that they don’t need there.

Fire Safety Themed Activities to do After Reading the Book

Fire Roll and Count 1-20

Fire Safety Themed Activities - Roll and Cover Fire Truck

One of the areas JDaniel is working on at school is number recognition. He can count almost to 100 without skipping numbers, but recognizing numbers can be a challenge. I decided to focus this number recognition game of the numbers 1-20. He is actually good at recognizing most of the numbers in that range. I thought introducing a new number game would be easier with number he knew most of the numbers. I can always go back and put in more challenging numbers on the board later.

Fire Truck Roll and Cover 1-20

The game is really easy to play. You simply roll the three die and then you count the dots displayed on the dice. Once you have the number, you place a red button on the number.

I like using buttons for game board pieces. They are great for fine motor skills and the game board came we used again and again because it is mark free.

Options:

You could use any of the following to mark the game board permanently if you like:

bingo marker
magic marker
pencil
crayon

You could also put the boards in a plastic sleeve and mark on the sleeve instead of the board itself.

You could used dice with number instead of dots to make the adding more challenging.

Fire Safety Lotus Chart

Fire Safety Themed Activities - Lotus Chart

JDaniel’s teacher mentioned that they will be using lotus charts a lot this year. I wasn’t familiar with them and how they were used when she mentioned them at Back to School night so, I googled them. A lotus chart contains a central box that displays the theme or concept of the chart. Around the center box words or pictures can be placed that illustrate the concept or theme.

I created a lotus chart that JDaniel and I could used to display fire safety words. The wonderful thing about doing a chart like this while exploring a book is that you can look back in the book for words that you want to use and how to spell them.

This is not one of my a fire safety themed activities focused on math, but I thought you would like to see it.

Fire Dog Number Count

Fire Safety Themed Activities - Spot Counting

This is more of a preschool center activity than one for kindergartners, but I love how cute it turned out. JDaniel didn’t have any trouble placing the correct number of button onto each dog to give it spots. I guess I could have made it harder by giving him bigger numbers and bigger dogs to put the buttons on.

Free Worksheets

I get comments all the time about wanting to have the handout or worksheet we have used to explore books. Up until now I have been sharing them. Not because I didn’t want to share them, but because I haven’t taken the time to create PDFs of them.

This week I have copies of the Fire Roll and Count game and the Fire Safety Lotus Charts. All you have to do is click on this Fire Themed Learning Activities and they are your.

What books are you exploring this week?

{Read.Explore.Learn.} Reading Activities with an Apple Theme

September 27, 2013 By Deirdre

Apples is a wonderful picture book that shares tons of information about apples. The illustrations help young readers picture walk through the book. There is a lot of text on each page and many young readers will need to have this book read to them. It is so worth reading with them even if it is only a page or two at a time.

The book shares how bees help pollinate apple blossoms, young trees are encourage to grow, the history of the apple and so much more. My son loves to know why things are they way they are. This book shared with him a bounty of information on apples. He really liked the history of apples the best. It discuss ancient Greece and Rome. JDaniel is really into that time period right now.

As I mentioned the illustrations are wonderful. Phyllis Limbacher Tildes pictures really illustrate what the text is sharing. I think you will really enjoy exploring this book.

What did we do to explore this book?

Working with Syllables

When I was teaching syllables were taught in second grade, now identifying syllables is taught as a pre reading activity. JDaniel came home with worksheet focusing on syllables. I decided maybe we should work on them at home too.

I used the same template I created of the math activities last week to create syllable cards with apple themed words on them. JDaniel and I sounded out the words on the cards and clapped the number of syllables each word has.

Then he put a paper clip over the number of syllables each word has. We had fun clapping and clipping. This maybe a style of task card that I make for him again and again for reading activities and other content area skills.

{Read.Explore.Learn.} Math Activities- Number Recognition

September 20, 2013 By Deirdre

Apples A to Z literally shared facts about apples from a to z. A small fox and his friends fill the fun illustrations with displays of what each page is discussing. Simple concepts like when the apple falls off the tree fruit forms to grafting branches from one kind of tree to another produce healthier trees. JDaniel was fascinated with grafting and how it works. I was impressed that Margaret McNamara found varieties of apples from a to z. I have never heard of the queen cox or the Xavier de Bavay much less the za ber gau.

This book does another amazing thing. It delivers information for each letter of the alphabet that doesn’t seem forced or trite. Each word selected for each letter is interesting and adds to the trip through the alphabet. It does this with humor, fun facts and great pictures by Jake Parker.

How did we explore this book?

Math Activities for Preschoolers

Writing Number Activity

{Read.Explore.Learn.} Math Activities- Number Recognition- Writing Numbers

JDaniel invented his own way to write many of the numbers. Despite being shown how to write them correctly. Now that he is in school, he has to write them using the traditional style of number writing. I decided to create for him some writing number cards.

The cards were created to have two steps. The first step is to trace over the number on each of the cards. The second step is to write the number inside of the apple on each card. So we would be able to use the cards over and over again the cards were placed in plastic sleeves. (If you have access to a laminator, you can laminate the cards. I may laminate the cards later on.)

{Read.Explore.Learn.} Math Activities- Number Recognition- Writing Numbers to Ten

How did I make them?

There are lots of writing number activity sheets available online. JDaniel does worksheets at school and while these look a lot mini worksheets I hoped they would be different enough for him. I simply went into Paint and drew a rectangle. Into the rectangle, I placed a clip art apple and the dotted number. I repeated this process over and over until I had the number 1-9. The pictures were then inserted into Word in rows of three and then printed out.

${Read.Explore.Learn.} Math Activities- Number Recognition- Addition Game$

Apple Addition

Themed work mats are a great place to work on addition facts with counters. I made these apple mats to go along with this book. JDaniel was asked to roll a pair of dice and decide which number would go into which white section of the apple. Then he placed the correct number of buttons into each section. ( The buttons were supposed to look like seeds.)

You will notice that I put a plus sign in the core of the apple. I want to be able to use the mats for subtraction too. Leaving the brown paper area of the empty and writing it on the apple when it was in the plastic sleeve allowed me to write the function we were focusing on when we needed it.

When JDaniel had counted the button on both sides to find the sum, I had him place the number tracing card with the answer beside the work mat.

He did a great job of working with the counters and the concrete numbers. It is so important to hit more than one type of learning when working on concepts. I think these math mats do just that.

I have decided to ask you to link your posts to the Read.Explore.Learn. Facebook page instead of running a link up. I hope you will stop by and share your children’s book related activities there.

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Simple and Fun Reading Strategies- How to Teach a Slug to Read

September 13, 2013 By Deirdre

Links below are affiliate links.

How to Teach a Slug to Read shares the steps a slug goes through to learn to read. If you want to teach a slug or child how to read, you will easily be able to follow these steps. They are simple and fun reading strategies.

Simple and Fun Reading Strategies- How to Teach a Slug to Read

Without giving to much away here are some of the steps:

Put labels on his favorite things.
Read books your slug will be interested in.
Show your slug words that they will see over and over again.
Help him sounds out the words in the book.

We loved the commentary between the slug and his mom on each page. They have the best chats about each step. The pictures in this book are wonderful too. I confess we have giggled a lot as we read this fun book.

What did we do to explore this book with reading strategies?

We looked at several simple and fun reading strategies from the book and from my experience as a teacher.

Highlight a Page from a Book

The book suggested that highlighting favorite words in a text. Rather than actually highlighting in a book I found a passage online about slugs for JDaniel and I read together. I read JDaniel the text and he highlighted fun slug related words.

We will try this activity again. I may photocopy a page from a favorite book or find passage online again. It is a great way to work on building vocabulary and learning new words.

This same activity could be used to find sight words or words with specific sounds in them. You may decide to keep a journal of found words or maybe even create a homemade dictionary of them.

Slug Reading Guide

A paper slug glued onto a stick made a simple reading guide. What is a reading guide? Well, it is a pointer or flat tool that can help children focus on one line of text at time. The guide was put together so that the slugs slime line would be right under the text. The slug’s eyes could be used to find and point to particular words or areas of text by holding the stick so the slug’s eyes are lined up with the words. This is great way to look for sight words.

Reading guides are so easy to make. You may want to make different guides for each theme or unit of study you are doing.

Slug Tracking Guide

Learning how to track your finger while reading text can be done using a folder with solid lines where the text would be. Dotted lines connect the solid lines and mimic the movement your fingers would making as they move from one line to the next. The lines can me drawn in any color you like. I chose yellow so the lines would like like slug slime lines. Yes, my guy got to run his finger right over drawn slime! How cool and gross at the same time. This activity is great reading warm up and help put into muscle memory the flow of text in a book.

Anticipation Building

We did one more activity to go along with this book. I will be putting it up next week. It was such fun I thought it needed a post of its own.

Reading tools and strategies can help young slugs and young children learn to read. Do you have a favorite reading tool or strategy for helping children learn to read?

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{Read.Explore.Learn} The Pirate of Kindergarten Activities

August 30, 2013 By Deirdre

The Pirate of Kindergarten (Richard Jackson Books (Atheneum Hardcover)) is about a little girl just starting kindergarten named Ginny. Ginny loves books and she loves the reading circle. When she tries to get to the reading circle, she runs into real chairs while trying to avoid the unreal ones. When she tries to read, she sees double words and pictures.

Activities Based on the Kindergarten Pirate

It is at the beginning of they year eye exam at school that her double vision is finally uncovered. Ginny didn’t realize everyone didn’t see things double. Her parents didn’t know she saw them this way either. They do take her to the eye doctor. He prescribes glasses, some exercises , and an eye patch.

Jinny loved the patch it made it so she didn’t have to squint. Back at school Ginny became the Kindergarten Pirate who could do work, cut bunnies out without three ears, and read.

I bet there are a lot of children that have vision issues that aren’t picked up until they start school. Ginny seemed to enjoy some of the benefits of hers. She loved seeing letters, numbers and pictures double.

What did we do to explore this book?

Sight Word Eye Charts

I made JDaniel some sight word eye charts. I set them up to look like the eye charts that doctors have. They have words spread across several lines and the lines are numbered. The words get smaller as you go down the chart. JDaniel had to cover one eye like the Pirate of Kindergarten.

One eye chart at a time was hung on our kitchen door for JDaniel to work on. I would call out a line and he would read me the words.

Here is a PDF for the Preschool Sight Word Eye Charts. (These charts have been updated)

What Do You See? Folder

Activities Based on the Pirate of Kindergarten

This What Do You See? The folder has extra large holes cut into it. It was designed for young children working on visual discrimination. For older children would benefit from a folder with smaller cut outs like the ones in the cat folder I made to explore the book Midnight: The Halloween Cat.

If you can’t find large pictures in magazines, you can mount smaller pictures on a piece of construction paper.

Double Vision Math Activity

Jinny had double vision so, I made JDaniel a game that worked on addition facts with doubles. He has a work mat with areas to put manipulatives in. The is a space to place the dice he rolls on the lines under that glasses. A third die can be used to display the answer to the math fact.

I put out wooden blocks to count with. They ended up being a little large. Next time we play the game I will put out a smaller manipulative. We also put these sheets into a plastic sleeve so we could use them over and over again.

I have decided to ask you to link your posts to the Read.Explore.Learn. Facebook page instead of running a link up. I hope you will stop by and share your children’s book related activities there.

Disclaimer: This post does contain affiliate links.

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{Read.Explore.Learn.} Is Your Buffalo Ready for Kindergarten?

August 23, 2013 By Deirdre

Is Your Buffalo Ready for Kindergarten?Well, is he? The buffalo in this wonderful book by Audrey Vernick thinks he is ready and so does friend. Kindergarten does have some challenges for him. He doesn’t cut well with scissors. He does eat grass at recess and have trouble fitting on a swing. He can’t finger paint due to not having fingers. He can hoof paint though.

Is Your Buffalo Ready for Kindergarten Activities

Other things he can do well. He can take turns and cooperate. He can keep his cool when called names for being clumsy. He can share with others. He is big enough for everyone to sit next to a story time. A buffalo has all the skills he needs to start and stay in kindergarten.

I love the humor in this both. Both the words and illustrations share ways that new kindergartners might find challenges in a way that will make them giggle. Being able to giggle when your anxious about something new is a very good things to be able to do.

What did we do to explore Is Your Buffalo Ready for Kindergarten??

Painting with Hoof Prints

I took a sponge brush and cut out a triangle from it to make the brush look like a hoof print.

JDaniel used the hoof shaped brush to paint on a card board pizza circle. (The buffalo had hoof painted in the book and I thought it would be be fun for JDaniel to hoof print too.) He had been given white, brown, yellow and black paint to blend and paint with. The paint was layered over and over again on the cardboard circle. The hope was that is would look like fur when it dried.

For some reason he started by layering single colors that were not brown first. Once he had established a foundation of black and white, he did add layers and layers for brown. All different shapes of brown ended up being created when he started to blend them.

When the pizza circle was completely covered, we set it aside to dry.

Cutting Practice

While the painting project was drying, we moved on to some cutting practice. One of the things JDaniel was supposed to have worked on this summer was cutting. His preschool teacher said we needed to work on it.

I drew the parts of a buffalo we were going to need to add to the pizza circle head to create a buffalo. There were ears,a nose, a beard, and a tuft hair. I drew them onto brown paper bag paper so, they would be easy to cut.

JDaniel did a great job of cutting out ear curves, an oval and the zigzagged beard and hair. There were a few slips of the scissors, but not many. I think he will be ready to cut out objects when he is given them at school.

Made a Buffalo Head

After JDaniel had cutout all the brown paper pieces, I add outlining if needed to them with a black marker. I also cut out some eyes, a smile, nostrils, and some horns to add to the facial features we would need to decorate the pizza circle to create the buffalo’s head.

Then arranged them on the circle to see how they would look. When we had the pieces just where we wanted them, we glued them onto the card board circle.

I think he can out well. He looks a little different than the main character in the book Is Your Buffalo Ready for Kindergarten?, but not that different.

Counting Hoof Prints

Since we already had a hoof print brush, I thought it would be good to practice our number recognition skills. JDaniel was asked to put the correct number of hoof paint brush prints in to the space that had that number in it. The spaces were a little narrow and ended up with overlapping hoof prints in them.

He also had to push the brush down to make the pointed area of the brush show up on paper.

Conclusion

I believe that not only the buffalo in the book is ready for kindergarten JDaniel is too.

I have decided to ask you to link your posts to the Read.Exlore.Learn. Facebook page instead of running a link up. I hope you will stop by and share your children’s book related activities there.

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Bread Recipe- Apple Cinnamon Bread

August 20, 2013 By Deirdre

Whether you are looking for a special treat to send into your child’s teacher or you just love desserts with apples, you are going to love this apple cinnamon bread recipe. JDaniel and I made a trial loaf last week to make sure it would taste great and turn out well. Both my husband an JDaniel loved it. Actually I love it too. It is a little tart due to the Granny Smith apples and a little sweet due to the brown sugar.I remember at the beginning of the school year having a parent stop by at the end of the first week with a treat. She thanked me for a great start of the year and wanted to give me something to celebrate the beginning of the year with. That was over 25 years ago and I still remember her generous gift.

JDaniel’s kindergarten teacher deserved to have the same thoughtful gesture at the end of her first week so, JDaniel and I made this wonderful apple cinnamon bread. (It a simple enough recipe for families to make together.)

Apple Cinnamon Bread RecipeIngredients1 1/2 cups of flour
1 1/2 cups of tart apples chopped finely
1 tsp of baking powder
2 tsp of cinnamon
1 cup of dark brown sugar

1/2 TBSP vanilla2 eggs1 cup of milk
1/4 of vegetable oilDirections

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Rub the inside of your loaf pan with oil or shortening.
Mix together the flour, apples, baking powder, brown sugar, and cinnamon in a large bowl.
Mix together the eggs, oil, vanilla and milk in a small bowl.
Pour the contents of the small bowl into the large bowl and mix thoroughly.

6.Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes. Check to make sure the bread is cooked with a toothpick. If it isn’t fully cooked, put it back in the oven for 5 more minutes.

This super simple recipe would be great to share with teachers and others your care for. It is a fun twist on giving the teacher an apple to show them that you appreciate what they do. I bet there are other people that work at school that would love to try this bread recipe for apple cinnamon bread too.

More recipes for apples beyond this bread recipe:

Applesauce Toppings Bar

Apple Chicken Salad Bento

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Read.Explore.Learn is Changing

August 9, 2013 By Deirdre

Read.Explore.Learn. has always been a link up that shares ways people are exploring concepts in the children’s books with children. It has always been up on Fridays and it will stay that way. I have decided to offer the option of linking up your post to the Read.Exlore.Learn. Facebook page instead.

Each post will still be visited and truly book related post will be shared with others. I try to share the posts linked to Read.Explore.Learn. on a variety of social media sites. Lately I have been sharing them on the Read.Explore.Learn Pinterest board, Google +, and Facebook.

I am hoping that I will be working full time this fall. Having some of your post already post on the Read.Explore.Learn. Facebook page will allow other readers to see your post faster.

There will not be a Read.Explore.Learn link up on the blog tomorrow. (I will be participating in a Kid Blogger Network Back to School event. ) Please place your link on the Read.Explore. Facebook page so will not not miss out on seeing your amazing posts. Oh! Please make sure it is about an activity done after reading a children’s book. All other posts will be deleted.

Read.Explore.Learn – Space Boy Learning Activities

July 19, 2013 By Deirdre

Space Boy by Leo Landry (2007-09-24) by Leo Landry inspired the space learning activities we did this week. Space Boy is the story of Nicholas who needs a little time away for the noise and commotion of family life for just a little while before he goes to bed. His home is filled with his sister’s crying, a barking dog, and the radio blaring. ( I believe his parents turned it up to drowned out the sound to the baby crying and the dog barking.) Oh! His neighborhood is noisy too.

He decides that he need to get faraway from it all so, he packs a healthy snack and puts on his spacesuit. Then he gets into his rocket and heads to the moon. (Apparently he has made space trips before.)

The moon is quiet and the perfect place to have a bedtime snack. It is also a wonderful place for a quiet moonwalk. There is something meaning on the moon. Nicholas quickly realizes that he miss his family and wishes his family could shared trip to the moon with him.

Nicholas rockets back to Earth and checks on each member of his family just before going to bed.

I think parents and children may both feel as Nicholas does at the end of the day. Taking a off for a walk on the moon is something everyone may enjoy from time to time. If only we all had a getaway rocket waiting for those days in our backyard.

What did we do to explore this book?

Sight Word Rockets on the Moon

Read.Explore.Learn - Space Boy Learning Activities

We used rockets on sticks and an old beverage holder to work on sight words. JDaniel was asked to read me the the word on each rocket. When he had read a word, he was able to land it into one of the slots on I had cut into the beverage holder.

One of the fun things about working with rockets on sticks is that you can have them zoom through the air and you can make rocket noises as it travels to it landing slot on one of the moon hills.

Space Science Experiment

I found a science experiment in a library book that I thought we could easily put together. The materials were ones we already had and it took just a little while to put it together. There were just a few challenges. Putting the holes in the top of the bottle cap with washer on top and the base of the soda bottle were a little tough.

Joining the two rubber bands together to feed through the holes as easy. After a few slips of the bands out of holes, we quickly secured each of the rubber bands with straws. Each of us took responsibility for one of the rubber band loop.

Adding the beans was super easy for us. We tried adding them by handfuls, but later moved to adding a bean or two at a time.
Once we secured the rocket and astronaut to the straw, we thought that the experiment would go smoothly. We turned the rubber bands as tightly as we could and then let the large straw with the pictures on it go and nothing happened. Literally nothing.

JDaniel suggested we turn the bottle upside down and try the experiment. It worked! The astronaunt and rocket flew around and around. I am sure why it worked better, but I am glad it did.

Rocket Snack

JDaniel has been asking for snack food creations lately. I decided to make him a rocket sandwich with a trail of blueberry flames.

When I finished it, it looked liked it was missing something. I cut out little pieces of a flour tortilla and a small grape slice to make an astronaut for the rocket. Some tiny sprinkles were used to give him eyes and a mouth. My husband thought it was clever. My son just like the way it tasted. I think we would enjoy another Space Boy snack.

How did you explore books this week? If you have a post you would like to share, please link it up below. Once you have added your post, please visit at least three others.

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