Cookie Sheet Letter and Number Matching

The "at-home preschool" idea is something that I am trying to work into our daily routine. Ha, routine! I crack myself up!

Okay, we have no real routine, so we're working on a routine, and we're working on making sure this routine has time included for specific learning activities, a proactive time set aside with my preschooler (age 3 1/2) to tackle some of the "get ready for school" type skills.

My son knows all of his letters and all of the letter sounds. This is 100% due to Starfall and not me.

Okay, I am the one who introduced him to Starfall and I'm pretty awesome at reinforcing the things he is learning, so I'll take 10% of the credit and leave Starfall 90%. Does this make me a terrible parent? Probably, but my kid and I are both very happy, so that lessens the terrible by at least 25 points. Which, since I'm also awesome at math, means I win. Moving on...

If you haven't heard of Starfall, and you have a pre-reader who loves technology, go now. You will love it. Did I mention that it's free? Seriously, GO check it out now. I'll be right here waiting when you get back. And this is not a paid advertisement, just true love. 

....

Awesome, right? (Thanks for coming back :)

My son would spend all day "playing letters" if I let him, but I do have enough parent goodness to know that unlimited screen time makes my boy craaaaanky. So he is allowed to play Starfall while I prep/make dinner (and sometimes lunch), but that is it. Except for when I need to mop the floor. Or make an important phone call. Because it entertains his sister (18 months) as much as it entertains him, so Starfall time is happy time at our house.

But, when we are unplugged, my son still loves to play with letters. He's fairly letter-obsessed, so we're going with it and riding the wave of enthusiasm.

Last fall, I picked up two packages of magnetic letters and a package of magnetic numbers at Dollar Tree, intending on painting them cute colors and patterns like Creative Carissa. That hasn't happened yet, but when I found this awesome letter matching idea from We Can Do All Things, I knew it would be a hit with my little guy. (She also gives you other awesome ideas for using cookie sheets for travel learning games, so go check them out!)

It's the easiest learning game ever, and I love that my son can do it on his own, too. I just grabbed a yucky old cookie sheet (which I will spray paint some day), saved just for occasions like this, and wrote the alphabet and the numbers 0 through 9 right on the cookie sheet using a dry erase marker.

Then I handed my son the box full of letters and set him loose.

Paul had such a great time matching the letters! As he matched them, he would tell me what each letter's name was and what sound it made, and we would talk about what words had that sound in them. Seriously SO easy. And it's teaching so many skills at once: matching, letter recognition, alphabetical/numerical order, fine motor skills, etc. Easy activities like this greatly increase the odds that we can make a routine and learning time happen regularly!

What kind of "learning time" activities do you do with your kiddos? I love hearing ideas! (You can see more ideas I'm trying over on my "learning time" Pinterest board.)

Have a happy day,

Lorene

Traveling with Young Children, Part 2: In The Car [free printable pack]

Earlier this week I gave you my worked-for-me tips on packing for traveling with young children. Next: suggestions  for keeping them busy while on the road (and don't miss the free printable pack!)

Since I was in the backseat of my parent's car with both of the kids, we didn't have the same type of room as we have on past road trips. I took a tote with a few of their favorite and most entertaining books (such as look and find type books), and some art supplies, both dry-erase activity books and traditional crayons and coloring books... and some printed pages I whipped up the night before and stuck in plastic sheet protectors. Because I love you all (yes, even you!), I will share them. :)

I am too cheap to print with color ink in my home printer, so I printed these in black and white and just used markers to color them in. But because I love you (yes, especially you!), I tossed in some color to make it even faster for you to get these printed and get on the road! If anyone out there is cheap like me, I also have the black and white versions available for download :)

download the black and white version (pdf) here

download the color version (pdf) here

The printable pack has three sheets: find the letters of the alphabet, find each color, and find a vehicle of each color. I handed my son the page (in a plastic sheet protector) and a dry erase marker, and he happily called out colors and letters for a large portion of the trip. I'll be honest... these were good for me, too, to give me something to do during the drive!

We also took our kid-tough camera (we have this one, thanks to grandma) and my son had a blast just taking pictures of anything and everything. I had jotted down a list of things to have him watch for to take pictures of (cows, windmills, different types of trucks, things of different colors, etc), but he was entertained without me giving him any tasks. I planned to make a fun photo book for him... until he deleted all the pictures. Stinker.

Technology to the rescue!

No matter how many fun things I could have packed, none of them are space-efficient or effective at holding my young kids' attention as technology. I loaded my Kindle Fire full of free books, apps, and a couple of short shows, and put a couple of games and short videos on my phone. (My smart phone is still very new and I don't love the kids playing on it, so it was to be a dire emergencies backup for our ancient iPod... which of course died 30 minutes into the trip and refused to hold a charge. The best laid plans...)

Everything I put on my Kindle was FREE! which makes it even better. There are loads of free (mostly "lite" versions) games, apps, and e-books available for every platform. These are the ones that my kids loved -- all on Amazon, and all free as of today:

Learn Along with Sesame Street and Sesame Street from Around the World are not your typical Sesame Street seasons, but they are free and my kids don't mind that some of them are odd topics, such as "Lead Away" where "Oscar, Elmo, and Rosita learn how to protect themselves from the dangers of lead." Our favorites are Music Works Wonders, Math is Everywhere, and The Get Healthy Now Show.

Car Coloring Racer. This is a super simple app, but it kept my vehicle-obsessed 3 year old boy entertained for at least an hour, and begging for more. He loved the music that went along with it, and there were plenty of "coloring pages" to keep him busy, and enough that he didn't even notice or care when he repeated them. He just used the free play mode, but older kids would enjoy the challenge of racing the clock to color the car, I'm sure.

Bubble Pop Game for Toddlers. I thought  my 18 month old daughter would love this app. She didn't, but my son did. Again, super simple -- touch (and drag) to form bubbles, touch again to pop them.

Cars, Trucks, and Community Vehicles -- Puzzles for Kids. Again, my vehicle-obsessed 3 year old boy loved this app. It didn't hold his attention for a super long time, but he was happy to redo the puzzles again another time after a break.

Subway Surfers. This game is really popular on every mobile device platform, it seems, and BOTH of my kids love it, even if they are always smashing into trains and having to start over. It's not particularly age-appropriate, but this was one of two games that actually held my daughter's attention for more than a couple of minutes, and I think she might actually be more skilled at it than my son is...

Barnyard Games for Kids (Free). This is the app that literally saved my sanity on the last few hours of the trip home. It is awesome and perfect for toddlers like mine, especially for my daughter who was so hard to find digital entertainment for. It is designed specifically for *little* littles, so they can't easily exit the game or do anything crazy. When we start traveling for famil reunions this summer, I will definitely be paying the $2 to get the full version with 9 games instead of just the 3 that come with the free version.

Another big tip: for those of you with Apple devices, learn how to use Guided Access! It is awesome and would have saved me from listening to Cookie Monster's "Share It Maybe" over and over after my daughter deleted the other videos I had loaded on my phone (by using KeepVid). I had read this article/tutorial explaining Guided Access, but I completely forgot about it until after we got home [facepalm].

With summer coming, are you planning any fun trips with your littles? What tricks work to keep your kids happy in the car?

Happy traveling,

Lorene

Traveling with Young Children, Part 1: Packing

We spent last week visiting my sister in Oregon, a mostly-beautiful but long drive from our home in Utah. It was just me and my two littles (ages 18 months and 3.5 years)... and my parents.

We are so grateful that they invited us to go with them (thanks, Mom and Dad!), but I won't lie... traveling with the grandparents made me a little nervous. My dad doesn't love traveling and he keeps his cars clean and tidy, so the thought of my kids trashing his car and screaming during the 12-hour drive had me worried.

Historically, my kids have been really good travelers, but we don't travel a ton and we have never made a trip longer than 4-5 hours with my daughter, plus she is at that age and of the temperament where if she decides she is not happy, there is very little that can be done to make her happy. And being restrained for the better part of two days is not really on her happy list.

So, I racked my brain and scoured Pinterest for some ideas to help make traveling easier on my two young children (and, uh, easier on me, too). Hopefully my experiences and tips here can help someone, because tear-free traveling is a goal we can all live with, right? :)

First up: packing.
(head over to this post to see what I did for in-car entertainment, including a free toddler travel game printable pack!)

Clothes and toiletries
Since we were traveling with my parents and staying with my sister, I didn't want to over-pack and I knew that it would be really easy to do laundry in the middle of our stay. So, I only packed clothes for about half as many days as we would be traveling, with 1-2 extra changes of clothes just in case.

Tip 1: Daily clothes/accessories bags
I used this tip from All Things Simple and packed each day's clothes in a zipper bag, and it was seriously a lifesaver! It kept me from over-packing (I always pack way more shirts than we need and never enough underwear, anyone else?) and it made it so easy for someone else to be able to help get my kids dressed. And when I did laundry, I folded the clothes into outfits and put them, along with socks and underwear, right back in the bags.

Tip 2: Corraling laundry
I packed a basic mesh laundry bag to put all of our dirty clothes in each night, so it was easy to do laundry. If you aren't doing laundry, stuff the dirty clothes back in the zippered bag they came out of! Next time, I will pack a mesh lingerie bag for the socks -- I use them at home to keep track of the tiny (or not so tiny) socks -- just zip it and toss it right in the wash! -- and we lost a couple in my sister's washer.

Tip 3: Pack for your itinerary
I packed two bags: a smaller wheeled luggage case with our clothes, and then a backpack with all the other stuff -- toiletry/bathroom bags, extra diapers/wipes, medicine (just in case!), etc. Since I knew we were going to be staying at a hotel one night on the way there and then on the way back, I also put one pair of pajamas and one zippered bag of clothes for each child in the backpack, plus pajamas and next-day clothes for myself. This made it so much easier at the hotel, to only have to open one bag to get our stuff. Less stuff strewn around the hotel and potentially forgotten (and, if you have a vehicle that allows it to stay safely out of sight, one more thing you can leave in the car instead of hauling into the hotel room!).

Snacks
I will be the first one to admit that I waaaay over-packed on snacks. But traveling with young kids, you never know when they are going to be super snacky or not, so I erred on the side of caution.

Tip 4: Individual packages
Everything I packed I either bought individually packaged or I portioned out into snack bags myself. This meant no fighting over a larger bag/package and easy dishing out of snacks in the car. I packed...

• trail mix
• Goldfish crackers
• graham crackers
• fruit snacks
• string cheese
• apple slices
• pretzels
• granola bars

I soaked the apples in diluted lemon juice as suggested by The Yummy Life to keep them from browning, and it worked great. They were still looking fresh even on the second day of our trip.  

Tip 5: Pack something special

Most of these snacks are normal food at our house, but snacks that my kids always love. Fruit snacks, however, are a rarity, and are ONLY for road trips, so they were my big magic trick to keep kids happy when they were ready to be done driving! I even let them each choose their own character fruit snacks to increase the "special" element. 

One thing I should have packed? More treats. I was so focused on NOT packing my kids full of sugar (or melting chocolate all over the car interior) that I completely neglected the major truth that my kids will do just about anything (including sit quietly in the car) for a treat. Thankfully my dad had M&Ms that got us through a few rough patches :) 

Tip 6: Space-friendly and accessible snack and drink containers 

I wanted the snacks very easily accessible, since I was sitting in the smallish backseat with my kids and there wouldn't be a ton of extra room to pack things or to move around to rummage through a bag. So I removed the store-bought snacks from their boxes and tossed all the individual servings of snacks into these awesome (recycled!) containers to keep them together and unsquished. 

The oatmeal canister was the perfect height for tucking in my snack bag so that I could easily grab the snack that was on top. The Laffy Taffy container actually held more than the oatmeal canister, but it was harder to reach since it was shorter and had a lid on it. 

Theoretically, one container was snacks for the trip there and the other for the trip back (because I'm over-prepared like that), but we only went through about half of the snacks, except for the "special" fruit snacks.

I tucked a couple water bottles, plus some snacks for me (Corn Nuts and whole apples) into the larger catch-all snack bag with the containers. I used these take n' toss cups with straws for my kids, so I could refill them from the water bottles as we drove or from wherever were stopped. 

Tip 7: Keep it cold!

There are always a few things you want to keep chilled, but even a small cooler takes up a lot of space. I put the string cheese and apple slices in one of those collapsible silver keep-cold bags (like this), with a couple frozen/cold water bottles. The bag keeps things nice and cool, plus it can expand to hold as much or as little as you have and it folds neatly and compactly when not in use.  

Do you have any great tips for road-tripping with young kids? Stay tuned later this week for my in-car entertainment recommendations (including a set of free printables!) Update: head here to read my recommendations and get the free printable pack!

-Lorene