July Stuff

In all of the excitement to go to the US for six weeks, I forgot to post this before we left. 

We use letter tiles to spell words.  Even Ryan can do this and he loves spelling the names of people he knows.

Legos and blocks are always favorites.  The boys worked together on this project, which made it a special one.  Anything they can build together without fighting is a miracle!

One of the books Justin read suggested making an x on the floor and throwing beanbags on it.  We added numbers on the tape as well.  Ryan just called out the numbers the beanbags landed on.  Justin had to add up the totals.  The beanbags are different colors and different shapes.  That must make the activity an entire math lesson for Ryan. :)

Ryan kept getting really close to his X.

If you have ever read The Big Orange Splot you may recognize this as Mr. Plumbean's house.  The boys enjoy the story and had fun making the house as well.

Ryan is hysterical to watch as he makes his way through the tires.  We continue to go to the petting zoo to see the animals and to play on the playground.

My boys are superheroes!  Thank you to Alicia for the fun surprise. :)

I line up an alphabet with a mix of upper and lowercase letters and Ryan has to match the mommy letters to their baby letters.  It is also a good activity to make sure we have all of the alphabet pieces before we put them away. :)

Fir some reason it is hard to sing the ABC song while wearing sunglasses.  I guess it is all of the coolness in the way.

Match Me!

A few months ago when a photo developing site was having a special, I ordered a few 16 by 20 (or something like that) photo collages.  One of them included two copies of 12 pictures, one picture for each month of Ryan's first year.  I thought the order had been lost in the mail, but it ends up that it was just lost under Rob's desk at work. 

I cut the pictures apart and laminated them to make them a little more durable.  Now we have a fun little matching activity.  Ryan thinks that the baby in the pictures is cute.

Color Hunt!

Today I pulled out some 9 inch by 12 inch color flash cards that I made a million years ago (okay, probably in 1993) to try out a color hunt with my kids. Justin knows all of his colors and Ryan, though he is a bit young, likes to do whatever his brother does.

I held up a card and had Justin identify the color and then look around the playroom for something that was that same color.  He was clueless!  He wandered around aimlessly and I wondered if he might be looking for an identical flashcard or something.  So I modeled it for him and had him try again.  He did much better once he got the idea.  Ryan didn't know what was going on, but he loved having his brother find an object that he could bring to me.  I would thank him for the item, using the name of the object he brought and pointing out the color.

For the second round, I had Justin hold up the cards and I would look for objects that were the same color.  He loved being in charge of the cards and watching me run around the room.

We are ready for variations.  I am going to print out the color words so Justin can get some practice reading them.  I will let him match the card to the color flashcards we were already using.  This way he can self-check.  Ryan can carry around the color flashcard while Justin helps to find objects that are the right color.

I think I will have a speed contest.  I will see how many objects of a certain color Justin can find within a set time period.  We can keep track and then see what color is "the winner."  Justin is really into contests and comparing, so he will be excited to see which color wins.

Once Justin has found lots of different things (instead of always choosing the same couple of objects for each color) I might give him additional requirements such as it has to have red but NO blue.  It has to have green and be bigger than your hand.

Sometimes I spread the cards out on the floor and give Justin a group of objects to sort by color.  He really enjoys this too.  Ryan's main goal is to play with the objects and move them from where his brother put them.  When Ryan gets a bit older and he can do the sorting, I will have him sort by color while Justin uses tally marks to count how many objects of each color.  I will have him use the data he collects to complete a graph.

Perhaps after that I will toss the cards.  If I ever teach again  and need something like that, I bet I could make them.