Making Mini Books

Anna is really into storytelling right now and is starting to make up her own stories.  Most of her stories closely follow other stories that we have read or she has heard....and most of them are about Dora, the Snow Princess or Mariana the Mermaid (all from Dora books).

I want to continue to encourage her storytelling so I put together these little mini books following this simple tutorial from Playful Learning.  

After the books were assembled, I invited Anna over to make up some stories with me.  We talked about how stories have a beginning, middle and end and we talked about some of her favorite stories.  Of course, all the Dora stories were the top of her list so she told me a few stories and I wrote them down for her.

She wanted her little books to have a picture on the front so we looked online and I printed off several pictures that correlated with her stories.

Below is the story of Dora and Mariana the Mermaid.

Anna carries these books with her everywhere and reads them to anyone who will listen.  She's quite proud of her books and I love that she loves them.  We will definitely be making many more!!

Halloween Rhyming Game

This was a fun little game Anna and I played one afternoon while Drew napped.  I printed off the cards from here....

The game is basically a rhyming/matching game.  First we read through all the words together.  Some are obvious (house, hat), and some not so obvious ("boo" for ghost, "rich" for a pot of gold).  

Once we read through all the words and I felt like Anna knew what the picture represented, we mixed them up all over the floor and she had to pair the rhyming words together.  I also had her try to "make up" another a rhyming word to rhyme with the other two....just for practice (for example, "candy" and "sandy" and then she would make up "pandy".)

Then we played a little matching game with the cards by turning them all face down and finding our matchings.  Luckily for her, you could see through the backs of the cards so she won that game pretty quickly....ha!

Check them out and print off your own for some Halloween rhyming fun!!

It's the simple things....

I love to find my kids sitting and reading all by themselves.  Anna has always loved reading and looking through books, but Mr. Man is usually hard to keep still enough to finish a few pages.

Recently he has really found a love of books and stories.  Hoping to keep this up forever and ever.

Click here for more ideas about setting up your own reading nook and how to encourage reading in children!

For the love of reading...

I love books and I LOVE that my kids love books.  I've always tried to make sure books are a large part of our day and our life.  I'm sure you know this, but a love of books and reading sets such a precedent for early learning and achievement.

I wanted to share how I try to make sure my kids enjoy reading.

Book nook

Sweet Girl and I set up a book nook in her closet one afternoon and it's been fabulous!  Together we put all her books on her bookshelf and created a little basket for all those small books and paperback books.  Then we moved her chair into the closet.  She loves it!  I catch her in there reading often...especially during her nap/rest time.

Books, books and more books

I always make sure books are out and easy to get to.  I move them around a lot too.  Sometimes I set them on our television stand, sometimes I will stand them up on our fireplace.  Basically....I try to keep them new and exciting.

Read together

We read lots of books together.  I really think Sweet Girl would sit with me all day and read books.  Reading together is probably the single most important thing you can do with your child.

Library time!

We go to the library about every other week.  I try to get the same number of books each time so I always know how many I need to return...it makes it a little bit easier because the books usually are all over the house by the end of the two weeks.

Electronic books

Both of my kids love the iPad, but Sweet Girl is an Apple addict.  I try to limit how long and how often she plays around on the iPad, but I love that she generally prefers to listen to the books on there.

Books on CD

You can't really tell from the photo, but here Sweet Girl is hanging out in a "fort" listening to some books on CD.  These are great, and may very well be my favorite.  I usually set up some type of "fun" and different environment and invite her over for some reading and listening.

Activities based on books

I try to incorporate lots of activities to expand upon our books.  Above, Sweet Girl is working on hanging some mittens (from our Goodnight Moon activities) and shadow matching with buttons (from our Corduroy activities).

Happy reading!!

Read with Me: Corduroy

We all read lots of books at our house.  I love when I find Sweet Girl all curled up surrounded by books.  Last week we read Goodnight Moon and did some activities focused on the book and letter M.  Sweet Girl really loved doing all the fun things and asked to play with all things we made several times throughout the week.  So...I ran with that and am trying to incorporate more of these reading activities into our daily routine.

This week has been all about Corduroy.  This is such a cute, sweet story and I really love reading to her.

To go along with the book we did several of the activities found at Homeschool Creations.

I also brought out our buttons and Sweet Girl worked on some shadow matching, matching, color sorting and counting.

We finished off our day with a little "bear game".  These little guys are definitely a favorite in our house...especially the purple ones.

(click here to be taken to this printable)



ABC Fun - Letter M

We've started back our ABC fun, but have changed it up a little.  Sweet Girl is really loving sitting and completing activities and tasks so I tried to add some more challenging things for her.  I'm also trying to correlate our activities to a book that we will read throughout the week. 

This week we worked on letter M using the book Goodnight Moon.

I printed off some Goodnight Moon activities from here.

Coloring balloons

Practicing writing the letter M

Finger painting a picture of a moon

Cutting practice

I really think Sweet Girl is loving this set up.  She definitely loves to cut, color and write.  I'm hoping to continue this in addition to our tot trays, but I will likely only make trays once a month.  Since they are only used when Little Man is down for his nap, I figured we could keep them out for a longer period rather than changing them out each week.