Books and Giggles
Open-ended toys make great gifts! They often can outlast other toys with more bells and whistles. You can’t always tell on Christmas day which toys will be the winners. Sometimes the toys that allow open-ended play are what get played with the most over the long haul. Toys that only do one thing can get boring quickly. That’s because kids…
Today I’m sharing a fun and simple set of fine motor skill activities. You can do it with toddlers, preschoolers, or elementary aged kids. All you really need are dried beans from your pantry. Montessori-Inspired Toddler Activity My kids all attended a Montessori preschool. One of the earliest activities they learned there was spooning beans….
Books about storms can help calm children’s anxieties. Here we’re sharing the ten best books we found about rainstorms, thunderstorms, and hurricanes. Rumble, crash, boom! Thunderstorms can be scary for little kids. If your child is afraid of thunder, being calm and empathetic can help. So can reading books about storms. Storm Season Here in Texas,…
If you have a preschooler who is ready to learn a few early sight words, this quick project is for you. When my twins were at that stage, I made them tiny, personalized books. My results weren’t beautiful, but my girls loved them. Mini-Reader Suspense Part of what sparked my kids’ interest was watching me…
In Montessori programs, teachers introduce the ABCs with sandpaper letters. These are boards, maybe about 4″ x 6″, with the letters on them in a rough, sandpaper-y texture. Children trace the letters with their fingers and say the corresponding sound. Most Montessori children do, that is. Not my son. He didn’t like the feel of…
I saw this display in my grocery store last summer, and I couldn’t decide how I felt about it. On one hand, I was glad to see that they are supporting literacy in young children. On the other hand, I was kind of offended. Only 3 times a week? Why not 3 times a day?…
Realizing you can skip pages or parts of pages when you read aloud to your little kids is liberating, even if you do feel a little deceitful about it. There’s really no reason to feel guilty. In our house, we did plenty of book shortening until the kids got old enough to catch on to…
I was instantly in love with the adorable animal drawings my twins brought home from their Montessori preschool recently. During free play time at the end of the day, they’d used the standard Montessori material called a metal inset to trace ovals. In Montessori, kids usually have a prescribed way of working with metal insets….
My twins love scissors! They can spend a really long time cutting, taping, and gluing. We started working on scissors skills when they were about two. I wish I’d had this awesome tutorial on how to hold scissors. It would have been so much more fun! Once they learned the proper grip, we had them…
I love eavesdropping on my 5-year-old twins while I drive them to school. Behind my driver’s seat I hear, “Ask Mommy — she’s been around the whole world.” Then the reply: “Yeah, but she didn’t go to Texas.” It’s true. Before kids, before husband even, I took a budget backpacker trip around the world. I visited twenty countries…
This is Part Two of a Three Part series. Be sure to check out Rookie Mom Reading Mistakes Part One if you missed it. I hated not knowing what type of reader my son would turn out to be. It was really hard standing there with him at age four looking up at age 7 or 8….
This post is the first in a three part series. You know what teachers have that parents don’t? Do-overs. There aren’t nearly as many do overs in parenting. When I taught sixth grade Reading and Social Studies I loved being able to revise lessons on the fly. When something didn’t work with the first class, I could…
You know when your kid finds a book that they want you to read over and over? Recently, one of my 5-year-old twins latched onto the book Tiptoe Joe by Ginger Foglesong Gibson. I totally haven’t minded. When a book opens with a cute rhyme like “Tiptoe fast, tiptoe slow. Say hello to Tiptoe Joe” across three…
My (beautiful, strong-willed) kids like to decide for themselves which clothes to wear. I’m okay with this most of the time, as long as they are seasonally appropriate. The problem for us here in the South is that the season doesn’t always predict what is appropriate. We can get a 70 degree day in January, followed by a…