Happy holidays! If your homeschooling and looking for a fun way to go over shapes and incorporate reading or looking to supplement over holiday break these early reader coloring pages are a great way to sneak in extra reading practice. Sight words in bold font for quick recognition.
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Happy holidays! If your homeschooling and looking for a fun way to teach shapes over the busy holidays or just looking for something to keep your little ones busy as they’re out of school on break these coloring pages will give the kids something to do while supplement learning.
(I am a participant in the Amazon Associates Program and any qualifying purchases made through affiliate links I may earn a commission on at no additional cost to you.) Items above are my Amazon picks.
Today I decided to try a craft activity to cover several subjects at the same time. Colors, shapes, scissor skills, tracing, creativity, counting and writing. It worked better than I had envisioned in my head. Although my youngest became bored early on I was able to hold her interest long enough to go over a few basic skills. We made fish without templates. I wanted an activity that allowed especially my oldest to use her imagination and create her own creations.
The activity was simple and I did it without prep. I simply asked my daughters if they wanted to pretend fish today and when they replied yes I then asked if they wanted to make their own fish. In which I gathered construction paper, markers, glue, scissors, and my oldest grabbed an old box. When finished you can count the fish with small children to practice counting. Using various construction paper colors gives an opportunity to mention colors. More variety the better. The fish can be cut into various shapes to add in shape learning. You could write sight words down on the fish to add in additional reading practice. Kids can write their own words on the fish for writing practice. The activity is limitless.
Fish in pond box.
Fishing with poles made out of paper and toilet paper rolls.
Adding in color and shape learning for my youngest. (age 2)
Adding in writing practice for my oldest. (age 6) By asking her to write out each fishes name.
My oldest making a shark for the box.
My oldest daughters fishing pole design.
Shark attack.
My youngest began to grow tired of art time. She began to throw a temper tantrum stating she wanted screen time. I often try to engage them in hands on activities throughout the day. To bring back her interest in the activity and steer her away from screen time my daughter put on a play. She placed a toy in the box and began to act as if it was under attack.
Drawing on toys.
I turned my head away from my youngest because my oldest wanted to show me the fishes she was creating and by the time I looked back it was to late she had already drawn all over a toy. I had brought out the toy trying to be silly to further bring her back into the activity and make her laugh. Unfortunately the doll became a casualty in the battle of keeping my daughter away from screen time. That’s why we use washable markers.
Giving the toy a bath to wash away the marker.
( I am a participant in the Amazon Associates Program and any qualifying purchases made through affiliate links I may earn a commission on at no additional cost to you.) Items shown above are my Amazon picks.
Click image above for more counting and number fun.
In our house we’ve adapted a color of the week theme. To try and focus on a specific color each week to help my youngest daughter (age 2) learn to recognize colors. For the color yellow I made a color poster and a matching worksheet that my oldest daughter (age 6) could help my youngest with.
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Click image above for more color learning ideas.
Click image above for a week to week learning plan.
I printed out a sheet to fill out each week. I placed the sheet within a dry erase pocket that I hang on the wall. By placing it in a dry erase pocket I can reuse the same sheet each week and save on paper.
(I am a participant in the Amazon Associates Program and any qualifying purchases I may earn a commission on at no additional cost to you.) Items shown above are my picks for toys and tools to use that help reinforce early learning.
Starting in January I plan on introducing week focuses to hold me accountable when it comes to my two year old daughter preschool lessons. I made a simple chart to update each week with the corresponding letter, number, shape, and color of the week. I placed the chart in a dry erase pocket that way I wouldn’t have to print one each week. By placing a Velcro command strip to the back of the pocket chart I’m able to place it upon my daughters learning wall in the living room.
Basic chart.
My oldest being in Kindergarten already knows her colors, numbers, letters, and most of the shapes therefore I felt it was a great opportunity to bridge their learning process together. By teaching the color of the week, shapes, and number I could make her a Spanish/English chart. That way she could learn in Spanish what my youngest is working on in English, which gives my youngest exposure to Spanish as well. I chose to go with word of the week rather than letter of the week. For example if the letter of the week is Aa then we could learn to say apple in Spanish.
Spanish/English chart
We had begun to learn Spanish, although we never committed to learning it on a regular basis. My daughters enjoy reading the Spanish books my husband and I bought them. Besides reading the books we rarely set time aside each day to learn Spanish. For a while we were studying a new country each week and being exposed to other languages which was great the downside was that it just didn’t feel like enough. My daughters weren’t retaining much of the information and I kept falling behind on getting material together. Therefore I’ve decided to switch the way we were going about it and focus in on a specific language and talk about countries in which speak that specific language. I haven’t decided how long we will focus in on each language, sometimes it works out better if I allow my daughters the opportunity to see how they feel and not rush the learning process.
As I gather and create a comprehensive lesson plan I’ll share each in it’s corresponding post. Until then if your interested in just doing it in your own way, in an order that works best for the kids your teaching you can download the free charts through the links below.
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If interested in checking out Spanish speaking countries my daughters studied during the time in which we studied a new country each week click on the images below.
Learning with Nana Hedgehog 