FIVE-A-DAY

Before Nate (BN) I’d been trying to do NUMBERS, LETTERS, COLORS, READ, and MOVE each day with Caleb.
Looking for teaching moments and planning easy activities really keeps me on my toes and helps me take advantage of our time.
usually counting something such as: the toys we pick-up, the number of blocks we stack, or perhaps beans we are prepping for dinner- you get the idea.

printing off letter-themed coloring pages from offline, plucking scrabble tiles from a bag, flipping through a few flashcards, singing the alphabet song, playing this game online together (there’s a few good online games @ pbskids and fischer-price)
playing a watered-down version of Uno or Candyland, preparing and eating color-themed snacks, playing Don’t Eat Pete with Skittles or M&Ms, flipping through a few more flashcards, digging through a pile of crayons, separating laundry (colors, whites, blue jeans, etc)
As an English major/teacher and lover of books, I never thought I’d have to pull teeth to get my child to read (I mean isn’t book-lust heredity?), here are some things that have helped us:

• The best time to read to Caleb is when he is splashing around in the bath tub, bedtime and when he asks. Take the path of least resistance and take advantage of the time allotted.

• The search engine is the second best thing that has happened for literacy. Whatever your child’s obsession is this week you can google a list of books on that given topic.

• The best thing that has happened for literacy is the public library system. You don’t have to purchase a collection of books your kid won’t be interested in by the end of the week.

• Back to the second best thing: You can google hassle-free activities related to whatever book your kid is digging. You can also knock-out NUMBERS, LETTERS OR COLORS with any given book. In the past I’ve done grocery-clippings collage (use the circulars you get in the mail) as we read this book. The activity was a big hit with Caleb and now I just keep clippings for antsy days. Right now, Caleb loves Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom so I googled and made this the other day:

a physical activity such as: playing red rover, pretending to be animals, vehicles or some occupation, London bridge, acting out nursery rhymes, dancing etc.

* * *

Some days we nail all five… other days, uh, not so much. But I try, and on some days I just need to know I put forth effort, you know? I bet you do.


Sidenote: Got any additional activities that could fall into one of the five categories to share?