Scrambled States Memory Game

My son kind of digs geography, which I want to encourage. (We have a National Geographic World Map hanging above his bed.) Learning all the states in the U.S. can seem like an impossible task to a five year old – okay, who am I kidding, I don’t even think I could remember all 50?! [blushing with embarrassment]

To make it fun, I created a memory game for him. Since every state has to be represented twice to form a match, I thought it best to divide the game (and states) up by regions.

• West and Southwest: Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Montana, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Alaska, Hawaii
• Plains: North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio
• Southeast: Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky
• Northeast: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maryland, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey

I made four sets of cards featuring states in each region. Coloring them was a necessity because Wyoming and Colorado are a similar (if not the same) shape. Then, I printed two of each region’s states on cardstock, glued various colors of heavy-duty construction paper to the back of each page (yellow = Plains states, Blue = Northeast, etc.), and cut them out.

When it came time to start our activity, we read Laurie Keller’s book (which I absolutely love), “The Scrambled States of America.” Next we turned the Plains states cards I’d made state-side down, scrambled them up and then arranged them in a nice grid. Each time he turned over two cards to try and find a match, I read the names of the states on the card to him. After awhile, he began to remember their names. I played with him and when one of us got a match, we took an extra turn.

After all the Plains states were matched, he asked to play again. … Of course, I happily obliged.

To make your own scrambled states memory game, click on the regions above to download the states game pieces; remember to print two!

Sticker Story

When I found several pages of LEGO® City brand stickers on a shopping trip to Wal-Mart, I didn't hesitate to buy them. LEGOs are one of my son’s favorite toys and he loves the LEGO City easy-reader books, too. Since we already had the book “Calling All Cars,” I figured this was an opportunity to use the book and the cops-and-robbers themed stickers.

We started this activity by reading the book. It’s longer than what my son is used to, so we took turns. I read one line; he read the next. When the book was finished, I gave my son the stickers, a pencil, and a blank piece of paper with large rules (check out donnayoung.com for free downloadable papers).

I told him to write a story using the stickers. At the top of the paper, I wrote “One day in LEGO City …”. He loved this activity and worked hard to sound out words as he wrote his short story. He filled the whole page. No nagging required. [YAHOO!]

This is a simple activity that could be recreated easily. There are SO many character-themed (Disney Fairies, Cars, Transformers, etc.) stickers for sale and books available at your local library.

Skip Counting by 5s and 10s

My son is great at counting by 10s, but when it comes to counting by 5s, he needed a little lot of practice. I wanted to help him understand skip counting (i.e., the practice of skipping over every fifth or tenth number) as well as help him begin to memorize the sequences.

When he got home from school, first we listened to the “Exercise and Count by 5s” song by Jack Hartmann on YouTube. Before you listen, I must warn you that it is extremely catchy and should you listen more than once, you will have the tune stuck in your head for hours, possibly even days. My son loved it! The more we listened to it, the more he wanted to replay it.

After we listened to the song a zillion times, he circled every fifth number on a worksheet printed with the numbers one through 100. Then, he drew a square around every tenth number.

When he was done:

1. I gave him 10 dimes and 20 nickels, which he sorted.
2. I explained that each dime was worth 10 cents and each nickel was worth 5 cents.
3. I gave him 3 nickels and explained that if he counted the first three circled numbers on his page, he’d know how many cents he had. After he said “15 cents,” we counted together, “5, 10, 15.”
4. I continued to give him more nickels (e.g. “If I give you three more nickels, how many nickels do you have now? How many cents is that?” Then we counted, “5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30.”)
5. I repeated this with the dimes.
6. Then I asked him how many cents he had of each. “100 cents of each! 200 cents together!”
7. I told him that 100 cents was equal to one dollar and asked him how many dollars’ worth he had. “Two dollars!” he exclaimed excitedly. He felt rich!

Afterwards, he fed the coins to his piggy bank.

A PDF of this worksheet is available to anyone that wants it. Just click here to download.

Learning about Lightning

The forecast last week called for five consecutive days of rain (ugh!). What better time to learn about lightning, eh? I checked out a few books from our local library to help explain how lightning is made (electricity in the clouds) and what to do to stay safe during a storm.

Most of the books I found explained the science behind storms with more detail and advanced vocabulary than a kindergartener can understand. To solve this problem, I edited the stories a bit, carefully selecting which pages to read to my son. Franklyn M. Branley’s book “Flash, Crash, Rumble, and Roll” did a great job of explaining lightning and providing safety tips.

After we read up on the topic, I gave my son some story paper that had space for a picture at the top and lines for writing below. I told him to draw a neighborhood at the bottom of the picture window. When he was done drawing houses and trees and a postal drop box (don’t ask me why he added this, we have a mailbox), I paper-clipped a piece of paper behind his drawing, on which I had used a hot glue gun to draw 3-D lightning strikes.

With blue and black crayons stripped of their paper, he held them sideways and rubbed them over his drawing to make lightning magically appear in the dark sky. When his stormy scene was complete, I wrote “When it storms, you should …” at the top of the page and let him finish the sentence on his own.

Alphabetize Surprise

The supply list for this activity is pretty short: index cards, two different colored markers, a lollipop, and a print-out of the entire alphabet. My son knows the alphabet, but I wasn’t sure how he’d do alphabetizing; I decided to find out. On 14, 3- by 5-inch index cards, I wrote a series of simple words, each starting with a different letter, in black marker. I underlined the first letter of each word.

Then, I put them in alphabetical order and on the back of each card, wrote one word of the following sentence using a colored marker: “Red, orange, or blue – which lollipop will you choose? I have one for you.” (I wrote the words in two different colors so he wouldn’t get confused about which words to alphabetize.) Then I shuffled the cards.

When my son got home from school, I gave him a printed page with all the letters of the alphabet and two of the shuffled index cards. He read the words on each of the two cards and then I asked him which letter at the start of the words came first in the alphabet. After finding the letters on our ‘cheat sheet’ and putting the words in alphabetical order, I gave him another card … and another … and another. (I think you get the picture.)

Pretty soon, he had index cards stretching from one side of the kitchen table to the other. When he had them all alphabetized, I asked him to flip the cards over and read the surprise message on the back. He was thrilled! The tootsie pops were inexpensive and definitely worth every penny to have my son read 28 words without argument.

My son's reward was a lollipop, but mine was when he asked if we could do “Alphabetize Surprise” again tomorrow. Success!