Hidden Story Hunt

My son’s reading has come a long way but getting him to read more than 5 pages is still a bit of a struggle. To give him some extra motivation, I used a Scooby-Doo easy reader book to create a fun activity that would make him WANT to read.

This activity is a hybrid of the Treasure Hunt and Scrambled Story activities we’ve done in the past. First, I retyped the book's text, making one “card” per each page of the book. There were 11 cards in all. Then I printed and cut them out.

Hiding small pieces of paper all over our house would have most certainly been frustrating. To make it easier, I limited the hunt to our living room, kitchen, and dining area. I also attached some gift-wrap bows (left over from Christmas) to the backs of the cards. Now all that was left to do was hide them.

My son was excited for the hunt. I told him to look for 11 bows. As he found each of them, I took the opportunity to ask him, “How many do you have left to find?” (I couldn’t resist sneaking in a little subtraction practice!)

When my son found all 11, he pulled the bows off and read the cards. 

Now came the hard part: put them in the right order. We read several cards multiple times, making sure the sequence was right. This was hard and a lot of reading but my son never complained. 

I wish I had a video camera to show you his happy dance when the story was put back in order; He was so proud of himself!

Personalize this activity to match your child's reading proficiency and interests. Ten (10) minutes at the computer and 5 minutes hiding the cards is all the preparation needed for this great activity!!

Spiders: Learn, Craft, and Write

When my son did the Build a Bug activity, all the differences between insects and spiders popped up and got me thinking about how fun it would be to make a spider. This wasn’t the first time we’ve explored these little eight-legged wonders of nature. But it was certainly our most detailed study.

To begin, we read Weaving Wonders: Spiders in Your Backyard, a fantastic book that talks about all things spiders; it even has a diagram of their body parts!

After reading, I gave my son the following supplies:

2 styrofoam balls (one slightly smaller than the other)

1 toothpick

5 black pipecleaners (4 of which were cut in half using nail clippers)

8 googly eyes

School glue

He stuck the two balls together for the spider’s body using the toothpick, poked in the 8 small black pipecleaners (for legs), glued on googly eyes, and clipped some small sections of pipecleaner to add as the spider’s spinnerets. Meet Cyger the Spider!

Afterwards, he wrote what he’d learned on a nifty spider recording sheet I’d created.

To download a PDF of the spider writing prompt, click here.

Blog Post Recap: Favorite 11 from 2011

I can’t believe that I’ve been blogging consistently since April (thank you for tagging along, blog followers!) and that 2011 is nearly over. This year was a phenomenal one. My son has advanced tremendously in school, which is proof positive that a wonderful teacher and the right kind of encouragement at home equal a more successful learning experience.

Before the year closes, I wanted to recap some of the activities near and dear to my heart (and faves of my son) that may have gone unnoticed.

#11

Nature Scavenger Hunt

Get outside and search high and low for the wonders that nature has waiting for you! This free download has been one of my most popular printables.

#10

Where is my money made?

Teach kids about where U.S. currency is minted; then grab some coins and have them graph where the coins are from. Will there be more minted in Philadelphia or Denver?

#9

DIY ‘African’ Mask & Printable Book

Art from other cultures can be so hard to relate to. This printable book draws comparisons between the masks of Africa and many western activities and traditions. Art projects don’t always hold my son’s attention for long periods; however, that wasn’t the case when he made a milk jug ‘African’ mask!

#8

Planets Winding Word Puzzle

Read about the planets and then practice right and left with a winding word puzzle. As kids follow the directions, moving around the word grid, the words they land on form clues. The answer to each clue is one of the planets in our solar system.

#7

Paper Airplane Competition

Make several paper airplanes and then see which flies the farthest. This activity is a fun way to practice measuring and ordering the planes to see which one got first, second, third, etc. place.

#6

GO NUTS! (Mixed Nuts Sort, Tally, & Taste)

Grab a can of mixed nuts; they are an amazing math manipulative – not to mention they taste so darn good too! Kids sort, tally and skip count each variety, then rank them yummiest to yuckiest after doing a taste test.

#5

Kente Cloth-Inspired Pattern Practice

Make a stunning art project by alternating rectangles made from strips of colored cardstock with yarn-block stamped rectangles. This Kente cloth-inspired paper project provides the perfect opportunity to practice AB, AAB, ABC, and ABB patterns!

#4

Secret Decoder Math

My son LOVES this. It’s quite possibly his favorite math activity. Doing a worksheet of math problems is a bore. Make the answers a code and WHAM!, your child feels like a secret agent on a math mission.

#3

Snappy the Syllable Turtle [Board Game]

A DIY castanet-style snapping turtle is perfect to click words’ syllables. We made a game of it! Kids draw a card, click the syllables with “Snappy,” and move their game piece the number of syllables in the word. The player to get Snappy back home to the lake first wins.

#2

Under Construction (a Greater-Than Less-Than Game)

Got LEGOs? Then simply print these downloads and get ready for some fun greater-than/less-than practice. Kids put the blocks in two piles, determine which is greater than the other, then use those to build with.

#1

Paint Your Organs Shirt and Printable Body Book

Months after making his organs shirt, my son can still identify many of the organs he painted and what they do!

My son is growing into a very curious boy. I hope to continue to encourage his inquisitiveness in 2012. Stay tuned for more fun activities that sneak in science, history, math, art, and language arts in the new year!

Build a Bug

Boys like bugs. This I know is true. When my oldest son was in preschool, I discovered the book Bugtown Boogie at our local library. After renewing it that first time, and checking it multiple times thereafter, I finally broke down and bought it. (I was starting to feel guilty that we were denying other kids the joy of reading this amazing book!)

The story is about a boy who stumbles on a bug’s dance club. It describes a myriad of insects and how they shake it to the buggy-wuggy beat. The book’s rhyming text is lyrical and after a few readings, we started to sing the “chorus.” The book starts:

I was strollin’ on home through the woods the other night,

When I saw something a-flashin’ – it was shinin’ mighty bright!

It was blinkin’ and a-winkin’ near the bottom of the tree,

So I scurried on over just to see what I could see.

To say that Warren Hanson’s masterpiece is one my most favorite children’s books is an understatement. It’s the kind of book you give as a gift, you are glad your child asks you to read over and over, and reminds you how magical the world seemed when you were young.

When I pulled it out to read with this activity, my son was thrilled (he hasn't tired of this book even after two years)! We also read a great non-fiction book from The Cat in the Hat Learning Library – On Beyond Bugs by Tish Rabe. It’s cleverly written and filled with fun facts about all kinds of insects.

After we’d finished reading, I gave my son a die and two pages of bug body parts.

Download a 2-page PDF of bug bodies and parts here.

First I had him pick the bug body of his choice, cut it out, and glue it to another piece of paper. Then he rolled the die to determine what he’d add to the picture. If he rolled a three, he could add a leg. I left it up to him whether his creation was an insect or spider (i.e. 6 or 8 legs).

Every time he rolled a four, he added more spots, a two meant he had to keep building his bug’s habitat (first, he added clouds, then a tree – his bug was flying!). He used examples from the sheet I made to help him know what to draw and how many of each (the number of body parts is noted above the die on the ‘parts’ page).

My son’s buggy creation may be the very first winged spider! I love his creativity!

Baking Up Some Math Fun!

I love being in the kitchen with my two cookie monsters. My boys never hesitate to volunteer to help make a mess. My toddler loves to dump pre-measured ingredients into the bowl; my first-grader is a master at driving the Kitchen-aid mixer.

When grandma and grandpa were coming for lunch and we needed cookies to go with our ice cream dessert, I recruited my oldest son to help. We whipped up one of my favorite kinds – cowboy cookies. YUM. They have a zillion ingredients, everything delicious (with the exception of peanut butter and m&ms) in one cookie.

To sneak in some math practice I made some general ingredient cards. Each has a value; for instance, oats are worth six, sugar has a value of two, etc.

Download a 2-page PDF of these cards here.

While we waited for the cookies to bake, I told my son to pick three ingredient cards and add the values together.

It was so fun to see the combinations of ingredients he came up with (of course, he picked m&ms + chocolate chips + frosting as his first cookie problem; HA!).

His reward for a job well done? A cookie, of course!