Learning Daze

As much as I'd hate to admit it, my Bug is growing up (way too fast if you ask me), and he will be off to preschool this September. It's shocking how fast time flies. I'm trying to prepare him for the learning environment, as well as helping him get some of the initial information working it's way through his brain. I have a small kids suitcase full of learning objectives I've created (with some influence with the initial idea[s] from online). Usually, I will see an idea that will trigger the beginning of an activity I can create.

The first part of our day was spent with playing my kid version of a headband game, where we had a handful of animal cards in a pile (I laminated them so we can reuse them, and I can use them with Bear in the future). The animal pictures I got off of an internet image search (no copyright infringement). Then I would hold up the card against my forehead, and Bug would have to act out the animal without saying the name of it. I would then have to guess the animal. Next, we switched places, and he held up the card with me acting out the animals. In the future, once he's gotten the hang of it, I will probably play this game with a cooking timer to add to the excitement (I think that would be a big hit with Bug).

Here's the video of me guessing.
Here's the video of Bug guessing.

Next, we worked on our alphabet and letter recognition/writing. This one ended up being a collaboration of activities I have created. It involved a pair of dice (one having capital letters "A" through "F" and the other having lower case letters "a" through "f"), a laminated sheet with an animal for each letter, some letter magnets (I just pulled out the 6 we were working with today), and laminated sheets with dashed font of the lowercase and uppercase letters so Bug could practice writing. First I got Bug to roll the uppercase letter die. Once the letter was rolled, he had to state what it was. The letter magnets are capital letters, so I got him to pick out the corresponding magnet for the letter he rolled. After that, because the animals typed on the laminated sheet were all lowercase letters, I showed him with the lowercase die the corresponding "little" letter to go with the capital letter he rolled. Then he had to find the animal that started with that letter among the six pictures, and place the letter magnet on top of the image. The last part of our letter recognition activity was where Bug then had to locate out of the dashed font cards the letter we were just working with. I got  him to hold the dry eraser marker properly, and I helped him write the letters. At first I let him write them, but he would just trace the lines in no particular order,. I decided I would hold his hand and navigate him through the writing process of the letter to help him grasp the proper flow of recreating the alphabet. When that letter was done, he would roll the uppercase die again. If Bug got a letter we already did, we would talk about what letter it is briefly before we rolled again.

Bug working through the Alphabet

Obviously, the letter activity didn't have to be as extensive as it was. You could simply just roll the die for letter recognition, or the writing portion by itself. I just wanted the activity to last a bit longer, and to tie the knowledge together, which is why I chose to do all of them. I also have been fighting this horrible sinus cold/flu and this was the perfect indoor activity to get Bug's brain working. It didn't require much energy from me :)