Retro Learning

Ok, I'm showing my age here, but does anyone else remember these totally rad bell charms from the 80's?

I had a bunch when I was a kid and I recently found more on Ebay. :) They bring back such fun memories - I remember my friends and I use to bring them to birthday parties and trade them. Collecting as many as possible and filling up an entire plastic chain was the goal. They were a must-have accessory for 80's preteens!

Fast forward 20 some years and they are still a must-have for me. True I don't/won't wear them as an accessory, but these little lovelies just make me smile. Of course I'll pass them on to Juliet when she's old enough and hopefully she'll pass them along to her children thus keeping the 80's forever alive. :) But what do I do with them in the meantime?

Turn them into learning tools, of course! I came up with a list of 13 different ways to use these charms for learning. Here are just a few:

~I Spy~

You know the game, "I spy with my little eye...". I've written a list of all of the charm in the above photo on a separate card. James will go down the list and check them off as he finds them.

~Sorting By Type~

I threw this together in order to get a photo, but when James does it he'll have 6 little baskets to sort in to. There's the possibility of a bit of crossover with a few of the charms, but ultimately each charm really only belongs to one category.

~Clipping~

I couldn't think of a better title for this activity. :) Basically it's just clipping each charm onto a notch on the chain necklace. I'm not sure if it's because these little charms are nearly 30 years old, but they require a steady hand and some focus in order to attach them to the chain. Excellent fine motor activity.

~Spelling~

James is quite good at spelling, and he enjoys it too, so I know this one will be a huge hit. We're using our Moveable Alphabet to accompany this activity.

~Measuring~

It's surprising how large some of these charms are! I image we all looked pretty ridiculous, little as we were, carrying around this mass amount of giant plastic charms around our necks! Their varying size make for a good measuring activity, though. :)

The rest of my learning activity list includes:
:: arithmetic
:: mystery bag
:: counting - skip/ordinals/rote
:: more sorting - by color/exact type (I have many duplicates)
:: transferring - tweezing/pouring/tonging
:: shadow matching
:: bingo
:: pretend play

If any of you can think of more learning activities, let me know! I'll gift one charm to the first 5 people who comment on this post with an idea! :D

~Thank you for your comments!~

Money Match Activity

It's been a while since we worked with money and I realized James needed a refresher, so I pulled out our jumbo paper coins and the nomenclature cards I made last year. I also decided to put together this "Money Match" activity.

It's just a basic coin/denomination recognition activity, but it's proved to be very useful and James really enjoyed it. I printed off two copies of each sheet onto cardstock and cut one of each sheet, using the cut pieces to work with any of the other sheets. Does that make sense? Basically this activity can be used in a number of ways just by mixing and matching the sheets and by using real coins as well - see (the very dark photo - yikes, sorry!) below for examples:

I'm sharing these with you in the hopes they'll be useful to one of your kiddos!

Click here for US coins only, and here for Bermuda AND US coins.

Please keep in mind that I format these myself, so they're not perfect, but they'll certainly get the job done. : ) Also, as with all of my printables, these are for your personal use only - please do not sell or offer them in a giveaway. Thank you and enjoy!

~Thank you for your comments!~

Angry Birds Mini Unit

The Angry Birds mini unit is ready! I had hoped to get this out here sooner, but my sweet little girl came down with a viral infection and was quite ill for a number of days. : ( She's on the mend now, though - thanks for your kind thoughts and prayers for her!

Here's a closer look at what's inside this unit:

DIY Angry Birds Game. We used our set of Lincoln Logs, a few items from our sensory tub, and our homemade slingshot for this game. I ordered these plush Angry Birds and we'll use them to try and knock down our structures.

Tic Tac Toe. I found the Angry Bird images here, and I made the game board. Easy peasy!

Launch-A-Bird. For this activity, James uses the slingshot to shoot the "birds" (puff) across the room. He then uses the measuring tape to determine how far they flew, and makes note of it in his nifty homemade Angry Birds notebook. :)

Bingo. I made these myself - you can download them here.

Gluing Practice. James really enjoyed this one (though anything involving glue is usually a hit!) - he glued googly eyes and bits of colored felt onto some of the jumbo puffs to make his own Angry Birds.

REAL Angry Birds. I made these cards, but I credit this website for giving me a jump start on the information. James thought it was neat to see his favorite birds in real life!

LOTS of worksheets from 1+1+1=1 and Teaching Happily Ever After.

Thermic Tablets. Since there are a variety of materials used in the Angry Birds games, I thought it'd be fun to dig out the tablets and have a review of them.

Memory Game. Using the same images as in the Tic Tac Toe game, I (haphazardly!) cut these into cards for a memory game.

Tweezing Pigs & Birds. James got a bunch of these little pigs for his birthday one year, and the birds are from who knows where. I've had them forever. :)

War Card Game. I found the cards here.

Parts of a Bird Puzzle.

Patterning. Images are from this site.

Measuring "Bird Seed". I didn't want to go out and buy a huge bag of bird seed, so I bought some sunflower seeds instead (yum!). James uses the measuring spoons to find out how many of each measurement is inside of the container. He records his findings in his notebook.

Angry Bird Craft. I printed these off from here. Once they're all put together they're little cube shaped birds. :)

Sensory tub - click here for the original post.

~Click the button below to view more of our mini units.~

~Thank you for your comments!~

DIY Montessori Color Tablets

The thrifty teacher's version of Montessori color tablets. :)

These have been in the late stages of completion for well over a year now and am I ever glad they're finally done!

Paint samples are great and free - there are SO many things you can do with them! To make these color tablets, I simply cut the paint samples so they were all of equal size, then I laminated them, and cut out each.and.every.one. (That step was the hold up in completion.)

What I like about these is that they stay true to the Montessori style in that each one is uniform and that the child's fingers do not actually touch the color portion of the tablet. To accomplish that I left an extra quarter inch on either side of the tablet. Easy peasy!

~Thank you for your comments!~

Memory in Motion

Lately I've been finding it a real challenge to keep James focused during school time. He's so easily distracted, which I know is normal for this age, but it makes teaching him a bit trying. I was looking through my teaching manuals and came across an easy and interactive memory game.

Here's what I did: I set up a tray of owls (you could chose anything, obviously, I just liked the excuse to use these owls I made a couple years ago!) in the living room, then I wrote down the numbers 1-13 on individual pieces of paper and put them in a drawstring bag.

James randomly selected a piece of paper, looked at it, and without showing me or saying a word, he took a little basket to the living room to collect owls based on the number indicated on the paper. The key here was that he had to stay focused on the task at hand and keep in mind the number while walking through three rooms to get to the living room. When he returned to me I counted the owls and I'd say, "I think that piece of paper has a (#) on it!". James would get so excited when I guessed correctly! He'd then have to bring the owls back to the tray and we'd start over again.

As I said, this is a very simple game, and at first I wondered if James would think it too easy and boring. While it was very easy, it definitely wasn't boring for him. He really enjoyed it and wanted to play it several times over. I think it was the constant motion that he liked best. :)

~Thank you for your comments!~

Our School Library

After finding this haul of books at the local thrift shop, I decided it was high time I reorganize our little "library" of children's books and learning books.

My first job was to separate our books into piles by subject. James and Juliet helped. : )

Next, I used dot stickers to visual discriminate each subject. I couldn't find inexpensive dots in the variety of colors I needed, so I purchased some plain white dots and colored them with markers.

I created this legend to help James find what he needs. For example, for homework each night, James must read a book to his father. I tell him to go to the classroom and select any one of his readers, which are the green group. He knows where to get them and, most importantly, where to return them!

After a lot of thought, I decided to use one of the bookcases in our classroom. I know this seems like an obvious choice for school books, but I actually had a hard time giving up two of our Montessori shelves. That is, until I determined our new routine and realized we'll be using less of our shelves for tray work.

There are a couple of baskets to hold the smaller collections of books, such as our Nat Geo's for kids.

Our reference books (encyclopedias, dictionaries,etc.), my teaching books and manuals, and any other textbooks are on a bookcase just outside the classroom. James has lots of non-school type books and all of those are on the bookcase in his bedroom.

At the moment, I have no desire (read: energy) to catalog our all of books. I know there are a variety of awesome online resources that would help me do this, but our selection is still relatively small and quite manageable. :)

~Thank you for your comments!~

Homemade Notebooks

You guys have been making me laugh lately - whenever I put out a new post, I'll undoubtedly get an email or a comment telling me to "just relax and rest!" before the baby comes. I suspect you think I'm running around like a crazed pregnant women stuck in a crafting frenzy? Well, minus the running part, I suppose that's a pretty accurate statement. But what you must realize is that 1) I LOVE crafting and 2) creating things is a very relaxing pastime to me. Laying around and watching TV makes me anxious - I need to be doing something with my hands. Since we're officially done with school for a while, I've had more time to just sit and craft, hence my recent posts. It's been wonderful and very restful!

And thanks to the plethora of ideas out on Pinterest I've been at no risk for running out of crafty projects. I ran across this idea from Simple Home Stuff and went right to my happy place in making some homemade notebooks.

These are actually a much needed supply in our classroom since pre-made store-bought notepads (the kind with blank pages for drawing) are ridiculously expensive here. And my child is one of those who likes a fresh sheet of paper for, oh say, every new line he draws. Sure I gently encourage him not to do that and sure we use scrap paper and the back of old documents, etc., but when it comes to creating I understand the need for a clean slate. Also, there's something alluring about a book of paper. At least to me and James, anyway.

I won't bother sharing a full on tutorial since these are SO easy to make. Basically I just used cardboard boxes from various food items, I cut them into a variety of sizes and folded them in half to make a book. Then I folded sheets of printer paper (fyi, here's where the cost saving lies - when looking at the paper ratio, the price of a ream of paper is FAR cheaper than a pre-made notepad), and then cut the paper down to the size of the cardboard. After that I simply stacked and then stapled the paper in middle at the fold of the book. Easy peasy.

I know James will get a kick out of the images on the cardboard, but I'm a little.... particular... when it comes to how things look in my classroom. :) So, I covered some of the books with interesting scrapbook paper (see first photo). Those will go on our shelves for various works while the others will be for everyday use outside the classroom. The great thing about these is that they fit right into my purse, so bringing them to a restaurant or doctor's office or adding them to one of our activity kits will be a cinch.

I made some mini-notebooks, too. Just because I thought they were cute. :) I added a couple to the sibling gift I made earlier this week.

Another great thing about these notebooks is that they're reusable - all you have to do is pull out the staple and add more paper!

~Thank you for your comments!~

Pattering With Paper Clips

I heard about these links and patterning cards and went around the island in search of them, but not surprisingly I came up empty handed. That's one fun benefit of living in a place where resources and selection is limited - you're forced to become inventive!

I realized the links are really nothing more than paperclips without the clip. :) The point is the link and you can certainly do that with paperclips! And the cards were easy enough to create (in Word). James will use the them as a guide to create various patterns (ABAB, AABB, etc.).

I'm making these cards available to you - just click this link to download. As with all of my printables, these are for your personal use only. Please do not sell or offer them in a giveaway. Thank you!

Oh and here's another paperclip activity James came up with. He began creating letter and number shapes with the clips, so I dug out these jumbo cardboard numbers for him to use as a template. BIG hit! (FYI, I *think* the cardboard numbers were found at Michael's Crafts.)

~Thank you for your comments!~

Tic Tac Toe, Jumbo Numbers & A Mini Giveaway!

~This giveaway is now closed~

There! How's that a for a creative blog post title? Ha! Can you tell I'm just really running out of brain power and energy? (Btw, only 10 more days 'til baby comes!!)

We've been taking things really easy lately. Really easy. I haven't felt like doing much and thankfully my sweet boy is quite content to do anything as long as it means we do it together. So there's been a lot of reading books, coloring, and playing simple games like this one...

I made this tic tac toe board on Word (you can find the download link on my Free Printables Page) and I found a variety of things to use as the game pieces. Game piece options are endless (think legos, mini erasers, coins, die cuts, toys, etc.) and changing up them up keeps the game interesting.

In addition to the flat marbles, we also used these fruit manipulatives. You've seen us use them in the past and they really are just the most versatile things - aside from game pieces you can use them for counting, sorting, mystery bags, poetry baskets, practical life work, etc. I bought them at a garage sale here on the island, but you can find them at Lakeshore Learning.

Another fun learning tool we've been working with are these jumbo cardboard numbers. I've had these for quite some time and I can't be sure where they came from - I *think* Michael's Crafts? Anyway, these too are quite versatile in that you can use them in art projects, counting activities, math games, or even as classroom decorations!

Ok, as for the giveaway, I realized I have an excess of both the jumbo numbers and the fruit manipulatives. With a class size of just ONE child, I really don't need all the extras that come in these packs, so I thought I'd share them with one of you!

Here's what I'm offering: one set of jumbo numbers (0-9) and 20 fruit manipulatives - 5 of 4 different styles (apples, bananas, oranges, and grapes). Basket NOT included.

I don't want to make a big deal out of this giveaway because, as I said, I'm just keeping things light right now. If you'd like to win this little combo pack, simply leave a comment on this post.

But wait - now that I think of it... if you're in the mood whilst leaving said comment, I'd sure get a kick out of any baby predictions you'd like to make (i.e. what day/time you think she'll arrive and maybe even her height/weight - just for fun!). And who knows, perhaps I'll send a little something to whomever guesses everything correctly! For those interested in taking a guess, it may help to know I'm already 3cm dilated, I've been having strong Braxton Hicks contractions a few times a day, I'm scheduled for a c-section on the 22nd (which is exactly 39 weeks for me), and my belly is measuring on schedule. And not that this really has much influence in this pregnancy, but James was 9 days early, born at 5:54am, weighed 6lbs. 11oz. and was 19.25" long. :)

The giveaway is open to US residents only and will end on Tuesday, August 16th at 9:00pm Atlantic Time. Good luck!

~Thank you for your comments!~

Me On The Map

I saw this nifty idea over on Finally In First and knew we had to make our own version. James can already recite his "place" on the map, but I thought he'd enjoy making and having a visual guide, too. And he loves when things are personalized.

We had such a great time putting this together and spent the entire school day just working on this project! James had so many questions, thoughts and opinions on various aspects of this - it really was quite educational for him (and very entertaining for me, too!).

The idea here is to teach a child that the world is much bigger than what they know and it gives them a sense of where they are in the grand scheme of things.

~our planet~

I printed this coloring page off the internet, James colored it in and then added star stickers to symbolize outer space. He loves anything that has to do with numbers and letters and was giddy about the letter stickers we used to spell out 'Earth'.

~our continent~

I found a North America outline on Google Images and I printed and cut it out. James pin punched that onto orange foam paper (orange being the traditional Montessori color for NA) and I cut it out from there. The little orange dot to the right is Bermuda. James insisted we add a dolphin to the ocean. :)

~our country~

It was fun to be able to use up some of my old scrapbooking paper. The water paper was a huge hit with James. I found an old deck of cards that had an image of Bermuda on them, and we decided to add the national bird, flower and flag, too. Oh and the airplane - that was a must as far as James was concerned for "How else are we going to get home?", he said. :)

~our parish~

Bermuda is made up of parishes, which are basically small towns.

~our street~

James said he likes this one best because of the green car. Our car is green and at the moment he's very attached to it and imagines it has feelings and sees, hears, and thinks things. (This is thanks to the movie Cars 2 we recently saw in the theater). I purposely blurred out our street name in the photo for security reasons.

~our home~

All of the homes in Bermuda have quirky house names (one of my favorite things about Bermuda). Again, I blurred out ours for privacy. James LOVED the little cut out of himself and it made me think that I should create mini cut outs of our little family and paste them onto popsicle sticks - he'd get such a kick out of it.

On the back of each circle is a little factoid sheet I made. They all start with "5 Facts About My....". These are just simple facts, nothing overly textbook-ish, especially the facts about the street and home - I had to get really creative there! I wrote things like, "My street has 3 bus stops", and "My home has blue hurricane shutters".

To create all of this I used cardstock for the main circles and whatever fun papers I could find to match. I chose my color scheme ahead of time, got everything ready to be put together and then I had James do all the pasting and decorating. I didn't use a template for the circles, I just drew them freehand, and I don't know the dimensions. I paper punched a hole at the top of each circle and connected all of them with a cute little brad.

This was one of my favorite projects we've done so far and even after we move, I plan to hang on to this as a sweet keepsake. :)

~Thank you for your comments!~