Mitten Letter Matching Game (with Snowflakes!)

Playing this winter-theme matching game recently was exciting because it showed me how much my five-year-old is able to do with letters.  First, we matched some upper and lower case letters.  Then I wanted to see if my son could read some three-letter words.  And he did!  

Read on to learn how we made the mittens and snowflakes and set up the game.

Mitten Letter Matching Game

     Materials Used: 

• Felt in two or more colors
• White paper (lighter weight copy paper works best)
• Scissors
• Fine line marker

1.  Cut identical mitten shapes out of felt.  I made 16 mittens.

2.  Cut snowflakes out of white paper that are slightly smaller than the mittens.  You want the mittens to be able to cover the snowflakes.

3.  Write sets of upper and lower case letters on the snowflakes.  One letter goes on each snowflake.  I had 8 sets of letters.

4.  Arrange the snowflakes and cover them with mittens.   I decided to use the same color for matching sets.  In the photo below you can see that "A" and "a" are both red.

5.  To play, turn over two mittens and see if the letters match (upper and lower case).  Take turns trying to find and remember where matching letters are.

6.  After the memory game, you can try to form short words with the letters on the snowflakes.  See if your child can read any of them.

More fun follow-up activity ideas:

• Make mathematical patterns with the different colors of mittens.  For example, green-red-red-green-red-red...
• Read The Mitten, a popular book for kindergarten kids, by Jan Brett.
• Play the Snowflake Stomp Game.

The Snowflake Stomp: A game to learn sight words and more!

We developed this snowflake word game last winter.  Today's frigid temperatures prompted me to set it up again for my 4-year-old son, who is now a pre-reader, and likes to move.

How to play:

1. Set up the snowflakes and secure with tape.   Decide what version you'd like to play--sight words, letters, pictures or numbers.
2. Call out or say a phrase that includes one of the words/ targets.  The child should step or stomp on that snowflake.
3. After he or she has stomped on all of the targets, ask the child to choose a target word/ letter/ number and stomp on it.  Or the child can be a "caller" to instruct someone else where to stomp.

Helpful tips and options:

• Tape page protectors lengthwise so that the opening is available to slide paper flashcards in and out. 

• If using zipper bags, tape around the edges except for the opening, so you can insert and remove what is inside. 

• Electrical tape or masking tape are probably superior to painters tape, which we used.

• If your tape is not sticky enough, reinforce it with clear packing tape.

• At first we wrote on the plastic with wet-erase overhead markers.  The ink rubbed off after playing the game, so I switched the text to paper flashcards placed under the clear plastic. 

• We taped our plastic covered "snowflake quilt" onto a fleece blanket, which can be folded and reused, but you can also tape the snowflakes onto the floor/ carpet directly.

I'm linking this idea to Show & Share Saturday , Show and Tell and It's Playtime.

More snowflake-themed activities:

Snowflake Flying Disks
Snowflake Window Clings
Crystal Snowflake

Menu and Activity Plan {5/9-5/14}: Reality Check

Plans were many, but what came to pass was not what I expected last week.  I aimed to read all of our children's books (details here). I planned to use my slow cooker every night.  Both of those plans are carrying over into this week.  Several out-of-the-ordinary events, like a field trip, my daughter falling and getting a slight arm fracture, and our hot water heater going out temporarily, made for a challenging end to the week.

My version of Fish Rolls.  So simple to make!
Check out more fish recipes at the Ultimate Recipe Swap!

Feeling the need for some stress relief, I opted to bake and watch The King's Speech.   By lunchtime Saturday, I was at a loss for what to concoct with the few ingredients we had in the kitchen.  Finally, the idea to make fish rolls came into my head.  It was the perfect way to use up leftover Puxa Vida Tilapia we enjoyed two nights before. 

I am holding loosely to my plans this week, though I still believe 'tis better to have planned and lost than never to have planned at all!

Plans for dinner:

• Vietnamese Chicken
• Lasagne
• Slow Roasted Venison 
• Chalupas
• Noodle Stir Fry
• Roast Leg of Lamb

Plans for activities:

• Finish our book challenge.
• Feed some ducks all of our stale bread.
• Visit the children's museum.
• Help with MOPS registration.
• Do a craft with my son.

Find more menu plans at Menu Plan Monday.

Children's Book Week 2011: Progress Report

Did you know that this week (May 2-8) is Children's Book Week?  As a happy coincidence, I thought it would be fun to start reading through our entire collection of children's books.  This would basically require our screen time and my cooking duties to be minimized.  I thought several nights of slow cooking would help my chances of success.  But I forgot to take into account all the extra activities we were doing this week.  As a supposedly stay-at-home mom, I have not managed to stay home and read much.  Every morning so far we've been out--shopping, caring for other children, attending our weekly Bible study, and then today I went on an all-day class field trip!

We're still on the first shelf!

Not surprisingly, we've read just 20 books out of an estimated 200 plus titles.  Still, we will press on and enjoy reading together.  I will be sure to report when we've accomplished our goal.  I'm aiming for the middle of next week, which would extend our challenge to about 10 days (versus the idealistic one week goal that I set initially).

Want to join our reading challenge?  It's not too late!

Simply comment over here and I will add your name to the list.

Celebrating Children's Book Week: The Count 'Em Up Book Challenge

How many children's books do you own?  Do you think you could read them all in one week?  Or maybe in one month?  Join me as we celebrate the joys of reading books with a challenge and work our way through the shelves together.

My goal is to read and count all of our children's books in one week*.  Maybe you'd prefer to give yourself the whole month.  The choice is yours.

Ready to start?  Just leave a comment at the end of this post and I will add your name and web link to the list below.  You are welcome to link back here or add the button on my side bar to let others know about the challenge (though it's not required).  I'll post an update of my family's progress on Thursday.  Then next week, stay tuned for the report on how we did with our book challenge.

 Let's read and count 'em up!

Who's in:

1.  Me @ Roots of Simplicity
2.  Asian Treasures
3.  Strasilo
4.  Doris
5.  B
6.  [ You're next!]

* With our longer children's books, I may opt not to read them cover to cover.  We'll look through them and choose certain parts or favorite stories in a collection.  Whether or not we read every page, I'll count every book we manage to crack open.

I'm linking this to Anti-Procrastination Tuesday.

Teaching My Child to Read: What is the Best Way?

My oldest child was extremely eager to learn how to read before she entered kindergarten.  I had never taught anyone how to read before.  I wasn't sure how.  So, since we were opting to send her to public school, I thought we would leave it to the experts and she would be reading in a couple of months. After all, she knew her alphabet and the sounds of the letters very well.

Every day for the first two months or so, she would come home impatient that she had not learned to read yet. In her kindergarten class they worked on the alphabet and the sounds of the letters so that everyone in the class could first master these.  They also worked on learning to write--a lot.  Each day they would busily trace letters on worksheets and copy words from book titles.  But these activities did not seem to be propelling my daughter toward her goal of learning to read words.  These were pre-literacy tasks for the children who still needed them.  Meanwhile, we tried to encourage my daughter to be patient.  The reading would come.

After the first quarter we started hearing a bit about sight words.  Finally!  Perhaps during these weeks of waiting,  I could have taught my daughter to read.  But I felt I lacked the know-how and that she might be bored if she were suddenly able to read while the many in the class lagged behind.  So we let it be.  Oh, we still read together every day, just like we were told we should and wanted to do anyway.  My daughter was constantly writing words, asking us to spell them.  But at six years old, she was still on the cusp of reading, not quite there yet.

Neither my husband nor I quite remember how we learned to read. My husband is a doctoral student in the field of education, and he has said that from everything he has read, literacy is still, in some ways, a "black box."  No one knows exactly how that threshold of being able to read is crossed.  But after observing the process my daughter went through, he and I are in agreement about some of the practices that might slow down the learning-to-read process.

1. The emphasis on writing.  Based on our experience and knowledge of language education, writing is the most difficult of the four skills to master.  The receptive skills (listening and reading) are easier than productive skills (speaking and writing).  So we think that just like children understand what they hear before they are able to speak, they can be taught to read before they need to write.

2. The approach of sounding it out.   Slowly sounding out the letters is not always the most effective or efficient way to tackle new words.  If children are used to hearing the word, when they try to read it, they can use a variety of clues to say or even guess the word without focusing on each and every letter.

So there.  This is my emerging philosophy of how reading should be taught.  I have much to learn still, and I would love to know what more experienced parents and teachers have to say on the matter.  Perhaps I'll do things a little differently with my second and third child as my knowledge and confidence grow.  Or maybe now that my oldest knows how to read, she'll be able to teach her siblings. I wouldn't be surprised if she did.

Have you taught a child or children to read?  What do you think is the best way for a child to learn how?

This post is linked to the Moms' 30 Minute Blog Challenge at Steady Mom.