It is the end of an era. My youngest child finally knows his alphabet well enough that these homemade wall letter posters no longer make sense to display in my home as if we were a full-time preschool. Before I take them down, I thought I would share some of the ways these wall posters have worked ...
Pre-K
Alphabet Star Charts
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When I made a multiplication star chart for my 8 year old and a sight word star chart for my 6 year old, I didn't want my 3 year old to feel left out. I decided to make him this uppercase and lowercase alphabet star chart so that he could learn his letters and be rewarded for his hard work as ...
DIY Number Strip Puzzles
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I first learned about number strip puzzles from the website 3 Dinosaurs. I LOVE all the free educational material on that site, especially for the preschool age group. My 5 year old daughter in particular is currently pretty passionate about these number "puzzles." She has a dream of combining all ...
Reading Log Train
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I LOVE to read. Growing up, I hid a book in my desk at school in case the lesson was boring. If there was a social gathering, I would find a quiet place to hide and read. If we were driving home late at night, I would read snippets of my book by lamp post (which, let me tell you, is pretty ...
Dialogic Reading Cheat Sheet
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Everyone knows that reading picture books to children is good, but what you might not know is that NOT "reading" books might be even better. Don't worry...I’m not suggesting that you part with your child’s personal library quite yet. However, rather than simply reading the words on the page to your ...
Lined Paper for Young Writers
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I just started a "Charlotte Mason"-esque copywork program with my 6 year old that requires him to copy short passages from books we've read. (It's called A Quiver of Arrows (not sponsored) and so far we're loving it, in case you're interested.) Since he's never done copywork before, I thought it ...
Subtraction Strip Board
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I LOVE Montessori teaching tools, especially for math. They're so hands-on and they make learning so intuitive. My 6-year-old uses our homemade "golden" beads all the time. I feel like those beads combined with our number symbol cards are going to get us pretty far. However, constructing that set of ...
Movie Theater Pretend Play
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When I was young, I spent a period of time living with my grandmother who was an expert at having fun. She took me to see my first movie at a movie theater back when I was about 5 years old (we saw My Little Pony) and I was completely in love with the experience. The tickets, the popcorn, the dimmed ...
Dinosaur Cards and Lap Book
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Every night I ask my kindergarten son, "What do you want to learn about tomorrow?" Nine times out of 10, he says dinosaurs. We've been reading lots of library books on dinosaurs, but I wanted to make his learning more hands-on. It took me awhile to put together these dinosaur cards and the ...
Balloon Inflating Experiment
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This is a super simple science experiment, but one that's impressive to young kids anyway. It's so easy, I figured I had no excuse for not doing it at least once with my kids. I started by telling them we were going to blow up a balloon without having to blow into the balloon. (I guess technically I ...
Michelle has a PhD in Engineering from Stanford University and a Bachelor's Degree from the California Institute of Technology. 