E is for Erasers

  Always keeping an eye on the practical, I know that the more Noah can do for himself, the better for all of us, including him.  So last week while we were learning the letter E was the perfect time for Noah to practice putting erasers on pencils.  Not only was this a great vocabulary exercise (eraser is probably a new word to him), not only was this a great fine motor exercise, but this was also a great life skills exercise.  He walked away from this knowing what an eraser was, what its function was, where to put it and how to use it.

Make sure to put an eraser on at least one sharpened pencil and allow your child to write a line and then erase it.

This activity would be a perfect opportunity to practice previous skills.  You could write a letter on the pencil eraser and write the same letter on the free-floating eraser and have your child match.  You could also use colored pencils and have your child match the colored eraser to the same colored pencil.

Noah usually is enthusiastic about using materials to learn that he knows we use in everyday living.  It’s a nice dynamic because capitalizing on that means that he is learning how to interact and operate the tools in his environment.  I mean, just look at the joyful concentration on this kid’s face!

How about you?  How have you gone about teaching life skills to your precious ones?  Any favorite mediums or materials?

E is for Egg Cartons

And yet another fantastic alphabet activity from Pinterest that Noah absolutely loved:

(Here’s the original pin:)

Let’s face it, arts and crafts are messy.  And it’s just not worth it to me to do 15 minutes of supply gathering and prep work in order to do a 5-minute activity followed by another 15 minutes of cleanup.  For what?  For an awesome project that might make it to the honorable mention sections of my wall and might not.

I loved the thriftiness, the look and the sensory appeal of this egg carton E, but what I loved even more is that I saw several ways to extend the use of this project.  Here’s my version:

Activity:  Egg carton E

Supplies:

1. Egg carton cut into four sections:  One with five cups, three with two cups.
2. Large piece of construction paper, cardstock or poster board.
3. Bottled glue and a paintbrush.
4. Permanent marker.

Directions:

1. Draw an upper-case E on your poster board in the size that will be covered by your egg cartons.  Draw a smaller E underneath to serve as a model.
2. Allow your child to paint glue onto the bottom of the egg carton segments and glue them on the cardboard E.  The longest segment should be used to form the vertical line of the E.
3. Allow to dry and then hang or proceed to extension activities.

Extension Activity 1:  1:1 Pom Pom Correspondence

This extension activity is pretty self-explanatory, so I’ll let the picture do the talking – ice tongs, pom poms and your egg carton E.

Extension Activity 2:   Uppercase E and Lowercase E Egg Matching

Color Coding Labels, which can be found in the office supply section of your local store, are extremely helpful when it comes to multi-purposing materials.

For this activity, rather than try to fit my pen into the egg carton sections to write the letters, I wrote 5 uppercase E’s and 6 lowercase e’s on the stickers and then applied them to the egg carton sections.  When finished, this approach allows you either to simply remove the stickers and apply new ones, or you can apply a new sticker directly over the old ones. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Then I wrote the same number of E’s and e’s on plastic eggs.  Noah’s job was to match the uppercase and lowercase egg Es to the uppercase and lowercase E sections of the egg carton.  If I didn’t have so many plastic eggs to use up, I would have used the removable color coding labels on the eggs as well.

E is for Elbow Stamping

Now, how’s THAT for an action shot?  Just look at the concentration on that guy’s face!  (Or maybe it’s a look of “Enough pictures already, MOM!)

I think I saw this idea first on Pinterest and later on a website.  Of course now that I want to cite it, I can’t find it anywhere.  If you’ve posted this activity, leave me a comment and I’ll make sure to add a link.  Honestly I was surprised I hadn’t seen it before, so classically simple yet a very effective way to practice Es.

Activity:  Elbow Stamping

Supplies: 

1. One elbow 🙂
2. Paper
3. Stamp pad or paint

Directions:  This is a great time to review basic body parts with your child.  Sing Head, Shoulder’s, Knees and Toes.  Then go back and touch and name face, arms, elbows, hands, stomach, legs, feet, etc.  Now refocus your child’s attention on his elbow.  I find it effective to point to my elbow and say, “Elbow.  This is Mommy’s Elbow.  Where is Noah’s elbow?” 

Now it’s time for the real fun.  Allow your child to press his elbow into the stamp pad and then onto the paper.  This really got Noah’s attention because it was such an unusual move to use his elbow to do art.  Looking back, I see this would have been even better if we would have stamped on a letter E printout.  Well, there’s always next year.  (I figure we’ll be doing at least one more round of alphabet activities in the future.)

 By the way, my 3-year-old and 8-year-old joined in on this activity.  What I’m finding is that most of my kids LOVE to do preschool activities no matter how old they are. 

Extension Activity:  For an activity like this, it would be easy to make it more challenging for the older kids by asking them to make a picture out of their elbow prints (for instance, a flower, one elbow for the middle, and then elbows in a circle around the middle.  They could also use a pen and turn their elbow print into a creature or figure by adding details.