Find It Game... a Review & a Giveaway

The winner is Helpful Housewife! Congrats!

Find It Games recently sent us a game to play with and review. We chose "At the Beach" since blue is O's favorite color, and we love the beach. There are over 40 hidden items to find in this game, and we have had fun trying to find them! The top cap of the game has a list of the objects in alphabetical order, which makes it easy to incorporate phonics into the game. In this picture O is looking for an object that starts with "b."

The lack of loose pieces makes this game great for traveling and playing around babies... since you don't have to worry about them grabbing a small piece and putting it in their mouths (this is a constant concern around here since E is extremely fast and puts everything in her mouth). E also loves to crawl around on the floor while pushing the game and watching it roll.

I really like that through playing this game, O is learning to pay attention to details and to concentrate. This game also requires persistance which is something that most 4 year olds need to practice :)

Find It Games is offering a game to one lucky reader, so comment on this post to enter to win a game (US residents only please). I'll get my random number generator (O!) to choose a number on Saturday night, so please leave your comment by then. Find It Games is also offering a discount that is good through July 31, 2010. Enter FIGBLOG to get 5 dollars off your order.

Fun with Worms

O and her Daddy went fishing on Monday morning. They didn't catch anything, but they had fun. O especially had fun playing with the worms when they got back. She made letters out of them and lined them up for races.

She counted the worms and held them all in her hands. Then she insisted that I hold them in my hands. I wasn't excited about it, but I did it. She said "Aren't they wiggly and squiggly?" Yes, they were!

A Fun Math Activity

We have been doing very little "school" work around here lately, but when I saw these plastic shot glasses at The Dollar Tree a few weeks ago I couldn't resist buying them for this activity.

I wrote the numbers 0 through 10 on dot stickers and stuck one on each glass. O put the glasses in order and then put the correct number of toothpicks in each one.

One thing I like about this activity is that it takes up VERY little space!

"Not a Paper Towel Roll"

O was having a GREAT time playing with a paper towel roll a few days ago, and it reminded me of the book Not a Stick. I started asking her "Whatcha doing with that paper towel roll?" and she'd say "It's not paper towel roll. It's a ..."

We had fun reinacting the book (with a twist)...O LOVES to reinact books, movies, recitals, etc. The "not a paper towel roll" was a telescope, microphone, megaphone, microscope, magnifiying glass, vase, cast, drumstick, sword, horse, train, etc. Who needs toys when you have trash?

Conversation Jar

My mom made a Conversation Jar for us for a fun Easter gift. She filled the jar with questions and activities written on slips of paper. O chooses slip of paper each night during dinner, and we answer the question or do the activity. O really loves this nightly activity!

Initial Consonants Practice

I downloaded and printed this initial consonants activity from Confessions of a Homeschooler. I laminated the cards, and joined the cards together with a book ring.

To do the activity, O labels the item on the card and then circles the correct initial consonant using a wipe off marker. She loves this simple and fun activity!

Learning to Lace

O has been interested in lacing and tying her shoes lately. I don't think she's ready to learn to tie her shoes (she disagrees), but she's done well learning to lace.

After she had difficulty with a lacing board, I put these shoes in a basket on her shelf. I left one shoe laced so she would have it as a guide. O was excited to see this work on her Montessori shelf. However, we've recently been reading Fancy Nancy, and she thought she should lace the shoe right up her leg "just like Fancy Nancy." Silly girl!

DIY Letter and Number Stamps

These stamps are simple, fast, and inexpensive to make. Here's how to do it...

To make these letter and number stamps you need 6 wooden blocks (1.5 inches square), foam letters and numbers (sold at WM for one dollar), and glue. O and my mom punched the letters and numbers out of the foam puzzle while I glued them (backwards)to the blocks. Simple, fast, and fun, and O was excited to have a new set of stamps to play with!

The inspiration for these stamps came from Ohdeedoh.

Trap Door Readers

O LOVES these trap door reading cards! I was very excited when Arwen from Walk Beside Me emailed and asked me to try out these cards. I printed them on cardstock and followed the directions for cutting and folding them. They were easy to put together, and O has thoroughly enjoyed reading the words. These cards are a great way to make reading fun! Thanks, Arwen!

You can purchase the trap door reading cards for download from here or here.

The Moveable Alphabet...

...or not! My birthday was the day after Easter, so we celebrated on Easter with the delicious cheese braid that my mom makes for me every year. This year she bought candy letters to spell out Happy Birthday. After they sang to me, O started playing with the letters and making and reading words. What fun!



As an ironic side note, my mom gave me an avocado pitter for my birthday...I cut my finger the next day using a knife to pit an avocado. As I was bringing the knife down to the avocado pit, I was thinking "I should find the avocado pitter that mom just gave me." As I was bleeding all over the kitchen, I was thinking "I REALLY should have found and used the avocado pitter!"

Shape Windows

O and I had fun reviewing her shapes using these shape windows (via Confessions of a Homeschooler).

I printed the shapes on cardstock and used an x-acto knife to cut out the middle of the shapes before laminating them. After laminating the shapes, I cut them out of the cardstock (I like to do most of my cutting after laminating in order to have a cleaner edge). Now they look like windows, which is a fun effect :) O had fun running around the room and looking at different objects through her shape windows, and she's looking forward to using the shape windows to teach "baby sister" her shapes!

Egg Word Match-Up

Since O is really enjoying sounding out words lately, I'm trying to provide her with lots of opportunities to do so. This Easter cvc word match-up game from My Montessori Journey was perfect (via Walk Beside Me)!

We've had wonderful weather lately, so we've been having circle time, work time, and picnics on our screened porch. See E's sweet little hand? She was trying to help her big sister with her work :)

Easter Egg Word Family Activity

Cara at The Peterson Party posted about this fun Easter egg word family game a couple of weeks ago, and I knew we had to try it! It was simple to put together and fun to play. To make the activity, simply write the word family endings on one half of the egg and initial consonants on the other side. O had trouble turning the eggs (I did, too), but she really enjoyed sounding out the words. We've spent a lot of time in the car over the last week, and this was a fun new activity to do while riding. Thanks, Cara, for this fun activity!

Printable M & M Activities

Here are a couple more fun activities from Confessions of a Homeschooler that we've been enjoying lately. I downloaded and printed the pages, laminated them, cut them out, and bound them together on a book ring. O counts the m & m's on each page and matches the correct number to the page.

O has enjoyed practicing writing her numbers. I love that she can just wipe-off the page and do it over again!

Alphabet Movement Cards

O and I have had fun using these using these Alphabet Movement Cards lately. I printed and laminated the sheets, cut out the cards, hole punched the cards, and bound them together with a book ring. I'm enjoying using laminated cards attached to book rings with O lately. They are so simple, easy to use, and don't take up much space.

Gingerbread Bunny Cottage

O and I had a GREAT time decorating our gingerbread bunny cottage this weekend! Usually, she is only interested in making a huge mess with the icing, but this time she REALLY wanted to make the cottage look like the picture on the box. She helped me spread the icing on the roof, but then she decided that she wanted me to do most of the icing while she got to work placing the candy on the house. She also had fun making grass using craft foam and a bunny car using red cardstock.

I bought the bunny cottage kit after Easter last year (for about 2 dollars), so there was no question of eating the candy which made the experience even nicer! I'd decided that I wasn't going to buy any more of these kits since I really don't have room to store them for a year (and I'm not going to pay full price!), but I don't think I'll be able to resist after we had such a wonderful time decorating this house!

Winter Nature Bingo

This fun winter nature bingo card came in the winter issue of O's Just for Fun magazine. I made a color copy of the card onto cardstock (I wish they'd included a removable card or had a downloadable card from the website), laminated the sheet, and cut out the card. We put the card on a clipboard and have taken it outside with us when playing in the yard. We use a wipe-off marker to check things off as we find them. O enjoyed this game the first time we played, but she lost interest quickly. I'm planning to take it with us next time we go for a walk in the woods, and I think we'll all really enjoy it!

What's That Sound?

On Friday afternoon O and I gathered items from our den and kitchen that made sounds. We then took turns wearing a blindfold while the other person chose an item and made a sound. Then the person wearing the blindfold had to guess which item it was. This was a fun and simple game that I'm sure we'll play again soon!

Paint Chips Word Family Game

The idea for this great word family game came from The Snail's Trail.

I wasn't sure if O was ready for this game, but she recently started covering up parts of words while we were reading and asking what the words were. She LOVES doing this, so I thought this word family game would be fun for her. I was happy to see that I was right! O LOVES this game. She has read more than a hundred words, and thoroughly enjoys herself. She's been obsessed with rhyming words for close to a year, so that makes this game even more perfect for her. Check out The Snail's Trail for directions and a list of word families.

Handmade Toss & Catch Toy

Here's another forgotten post that I just found saved in draft...it was written last summer. I think this is the last of the old posts. I guess I'll have to find time to start writing new posts again :)

I made this throw and catch toy for O months and months ago, and she is just starting to like it :) To make the toy, I cut a milk jug in half and put duct tape around the cut edge for safety. I attached rubber bands to the ball and to a hole I punched in the jug. Then I showed her how to toss the ball in the air and try to catch it in the jug. My 5 year old niece LOVES this toy, and now O does, too! (I think she was too young when I first made it...she was 2).