Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Reading with Your Child

My family will be moving in a few weeks. I've been so busy looking through things in the basement. Deciding what to keep and get rid of is pretty hard and time consuming. I've been going through all of my teaching things too and downsizing. Talk about painful! It has taken years to accumulate all of the teaching things that I have.

While I was cleaning this week, I found some information on reading with your child. I thought I'd share these tips with you all. Please keep in mind that some of these tips are meant for older children, but there are still plenty of suggestions that will help you with your preschooler.

Before:
  • Talk with your child about the book.
  • Together, look at the book's cover and predict what will happen in the story.
  • Look at the pictures.
  • Set up a successful reading experience for your child.
  • Provide a motivating interest in the book.

During:
  • Give your child enough time to problem solve.
  • Provide clues such as "Look at the picture."
  • If your child makes an error, give him time to realize his error. Then say, "Something wasn't quite right. Try that again." or "Does that make sense?"
  • Not all errors need to be corrected, especially errors that do not change the meaning of the text.
  • Remember to offer praise and encouragement such as "You helped yourself by looking at the picture. Good job!"

After:
  • Discuss the story, plot, and characters with your child.
  • Ask your child to tell you about his/her favorite part.
  • Go back to specific things your child did well.
  • Keep this part of reading with your child fun!

Free Planet Heroes DVD


Fisher Price is giving away a free Planet Heroes dvd. This freebie is real. I got my dvd today. Enjoy!

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Sorry for My Absence

Sorry for my absence these past two weeks. Last week, we were out of town checking into a job possibility. This week, I am in Virginia visiting Kelly. She co-authors with me at Thrifty Mommy. We are working on a surprise writing project together.

The next few weeks, my articles may be sparse as well. My family will be moving across the state. I have a lot of packing, purging, and organizing to do. My days will be full.

If any of you would like to do a guest post with children's activities, please send me an email at knowhimwell@hotmail.com. Please label your email "guest post for little fun".

Thanks. I hope to be back in the swing of things soon.

Friday, June 6, 2008

Fun-Filled Friday: Fun with Weather



I've been looking through my boxes of teaching things. This week, I came across a weather doll that I've had for a while. I found the pattern in a book, made a copy of the pattern, colored the pieces with colored pencil, laminated the page, and cut out the pieces.


Here are some paper doll patterns I found for you all:

  • Danielle's Place has a cute weather bear and a snowman doll.

  • The Berenstain Bears have printable dress-up dolls. Just click on the character you'd like to see and then click "next". This will take you to several pages of wardrobe choices that you can print.

  • At PBS, you can make your own Calliou and Rosie paper dolls.

  • Bry Backmanor has snowpeople paper dolls.

  • Utah Education has a lesson plan and doll patterns (they're not very cute though).
Other weather links:

Do you have any weather related ideas to share?