Word Families on a Budget

    To us, a huge part of the learning process is making sure it's fun, which usually means allowing my preschooler to interact as much as possible with what he's learning.  It's very easy to head to the teacher store and buy a ready-made learning game but I've notice that if our son is involved in making his own out of everyday items, he is much more motivated during the learning process.  In learning word families we decided to use paper cups from the dollar store.  He loved it so much that he asks to do the same type of activity when we do our math number studies.

 

The Letter H

It always amazes me how much fun preschoolers have with the letter H.  Something about making the H sounds makes them silly.  From eating "H"ershey kisses to visiting the zoo to see the "H"ippos, we thoroughly enjoyed learning about the letter H.  It's always fun walking through the zoo singing the "I see a Hippopotamus" song while wearing hippo ears.  On the ride home we had a letter find contest.  Whoever could find ten H's on signs that we passed, got to eat 1/2 a "H"ershey Bar. 

Word Stretching

  We have recently been working on phonemic awareness (becoming aware of each sound in words) in our home.  This is a prerequisite to successful reading.  My four year old is very hands-on so to solidify this concept we have been working with rubber worms to "stretch out" the sounds in words.  He had so much fun while he learned.  Watch as we stretch out single vowel words such as DOG, ROCK, and FISH.
                                                                                                
                                                                                                 

DOG

D

O

G

                                                

Name Writing Practice

We found this awesome dry erase envelope in the $1 section at Target. 

We've been using it for writing practice.